EU to ban raising farm animals in cages

The European Union wants to introduce a legislative ban on the cellular cultivation of most farm animals, reports the BBC.

This decision was made by the European Commission after more than a million people have already signed the petition “End The Cage Age”, previously published by citizens on the Internet. Later it was also supported by the European Parliament. The new rules will apply to young chickens, quails, ducks, geese, and rabbits. Now a similar ban is already in place for calves, sows and laying hens.  

The law will be proposed in 2023, and should enter into force only in 2027, subject to acceptance by all 27 countries of the bloc. In addition to the fact that farmers were given a lot of time to adapt to new requirements, the state will also provide them with subsidies. They will go to retraining and purchase of new equipment for keeping animals. Similar bans have already begun to be carefully introduced in some European countries. For example, in November last year, the law on cage keeping of chickens was adopted in the Czech Republic, where it will also enter into force in 2027. In 2025, it will also work in Germany, and in 2030 - in Slovakia. In Austria and Luxembourg, it was adopted several years ago.

And this fact will be taken into account when preparing the monthly analytical report Meatinfo.ru

The new rules were supported by EU HEALTH Commissioner Stella Kyriakides. According to her, the conditions for keeping animals on farms should come from the fact that they are the same intelligent creatures as people. But for now, the problem remains. According to the authors of the petition, 49 percent of chickens, 85 percent of sows and 90 percent of rabbits are now kept in cages on EU farms.