Factory farming in Europe has reached unsustainable levels. Inflicting extreme and needless suffering on billions of animals, this harmful agricultural model is also fuelling multiple overlapping threats to our health and the natural world we depend on. But it doesn’t need to be like this. Alternatives are available, and a brighter future is possible!
As part of a broad measures needed to make Europe’s food system sustainable, resilient and fair, we urgently need to improve our treatment of farmed animals. Current EU animal welfare rules are outdated and unfit, and Europeans have time and again demanded better. It’s time for EU policymakers to deliver on revising the legislation and to finally End the Cage Age!
Next week, the European Environmental Bureau and The European Institute for Animal Law & Policy are organising a joint photography exhibition in the European Parliament (launch event on 25 March). Showcasing the work of 12 photographers across 13 EU countries, this exhibition is an ambitious attempt to tell the interconnected story of animal, human and environmental suffering caused by factory farming, and the dangers this poses to Europe. Not to be missed. Ben Snelson reports.
The greatest myth of our time?
From children’s books to misleading marketing, we’re used to believing that animals farmed in Europe enjoy high standards of welfare: they live out their happy lives on small farms with plenty of fresh air, so the story goes. In reality, only a vanishingly small minority do. For the majority of animals raised for food in the EU, health and well-being are nothing but a myth, and the evidence of that reality is overwhelming. Overcrowding and routine mutilations (without painkillers), complete neglect and wanton cruelty are commonplace, as animals’ needs and natural behaviours are suppressed.
Evidence of this systemic cruelty and suffering regularly reaches our screens, with photojournalists and filmmakers leading the way in dispelling the myths through storytelling – as recently shown by Food for Profit, which has enjoyed huge success touring cinemas across Europe.
The votes are in: Europeans demand better
Europeans agree that animal welfare must be improved. In fact, of the only 10 successful European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECI) (i.e. those gathering over 1 million signatures, fast-tracking EU citizens’ access to EU policymakers), five related directly to animal welfare. The End the Cage Age ECI, submitted in 2020, gathered almost 1.4 million signatures and was the first and only ECI to result in concrete policy commitments from the European Commission – specifically, to phase out the use of individual cages on European farms. Continued inaction on these commitments puts EU democratic legitimacy at serious risk.
The latest Eurobarometer survey on animal welfare shows just how much people care about the well-being of farmed animals. A huge 91% of Europeans think it’s important to treat animals raised for food well. On top of that, 84% believe that farmed animals in their country deserve better protection.
What’s more, 67% of Europeans want more transparency and would like to know more about the conditions in which farmed animals are raised.
Polluting the air we breathe
Factory farming – and the policies that prop it up – are also responsible for troubling levels of air pollution in Europe.
EU agriculture, in particular intensive animal production, accounted for 93% of Europe’s ammonia pollution in 2022 (in some Member States, these emissions are still rising). Exposure to this harmful gas, often highly concentrated around industrial animal installations and people living near them is a known risk to human health and the environment.
Animal rearing in Europe also accounts for the largest share of methane emissions (56%), a hugely powerful greenhouse gas that also exacerbates air pollution.
Ammonia and methane emissions are at the same time a transboundary issue, given the capacity of airborne pollution to travel long distances, and a local one, with rural communities across Europe complaining of the harms these emissions cause to their health and environments. For many such communities, this has had major financial implications too – with houses in affected areas facing devaluation, in some cases by as much as 80%.
Threatening the water we drink
Europe’s water is facing crisis. As the fastest-warming continent, Europe is increasingly water-scarce. Yet perversely, we continue to pollute what remains of our natural waters – which sustain ecosystems and which we rely on for drinking water – our survival!
Animal waste from factory farms is a leading cause of the worsening quality of Europe’s waters, leading to not only widespread ecological ‘dead zones’ but also severe financial consequences. In 2022, the estimated cost of water pollution from animal-sourced food production reached €25 billion.
The way we are mismanaging water in Europe is now putting people and communities at risk. As shown in a recent Eurobarometer survey, the vast majority of Europeans want more EU-level action to fix the scandal of water pollution!
Public health risk: a ticking time bomb
The crowded and unhygienic conditions animals are forced to endure on factory farms make them a breeding ground for pathogens. This greatly increases the risks of zoonotic disease transmission – when viral infections spread from animals to people and then advance through human populations.
When animals are crammed into small spaces and neglected, the spread of disease becomes highly likely. In fact, it’s practically guaranteed. To counteract this, we’ve long been pumping farmed animals with antibiotics, fuelling yet another growing threat: antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – our own immunity to the beneficial effects of antibiotics for human consumption. Medicine that becomes useless. Delaying one crisis by fuelling a separate crisis. Without action, by 2050, AMR could kill more people than cancer does today.
Here’s what we’ve got to do
To tackle the interlinked crises facing animal welfare, environment and health, the EU needs to make some important changes. To begin with, non-technical measures, such as reduced meat production and consumption, are needed.
At the same time, animal welfare laws need an overhaul to improve farming conditions by reducing overcrowding, banning cages, and ending cruel practices like mutilation and force-feeding.
We also need a clear strategy for the livestock sector, centred on better (more sustainable, healthy and fair) farming practices, and a territorial approach that accounts for local needs.
On top of that, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should shift to support farmers who are doing the right thing for nature, animals, climate, and humans, rather than funding hugely harmful factory farming.
To mitigate the devastating harm caused by factory farming, the Commission must enforce existing environmental laws, like those around water and air pollution, and apply the long-established but oft-overlooked Polluter Pays Principle.
The EU should set strong targets to reduce ammonia and methane emissions from agriculture (the review of the National Emission reduction Commitments Directive is ongoing).
On the consumption side, there are many gaps to be filled – fortunately with plenty of simple and popular solutions, like updating public procurement rules to encourage sustainable, healthy food consumption that supports local smaller producers, along with creating a plan to promote plant-based diets.
Alarm bells should be ringing for policymakers. We need this Commission to act on reiterated but unfulfilled commitments to improve animal welfare, and to deliver on the clear and unanimous conclusions of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture. Europe is calling out for a sustainable and compassionate food system, with healthy food accessible to all: time to pave the way for the brighter future within reach!
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We would like to thank MEPs Tilly Metz (Greens/EFA), Manuela Ripa (EPP), Krzysztof Śmiszek (S&D), Michal Wiezik (Renew Europe), and Anja Hazekamp (The Left) for their support in hosting this exhibition in the European Parliament.
We express our gratitude to the many dedicated photographers whose work has contributed to this exhibition: Andrew Skowron, Havva Zorlu, Human Cruelties, Jo-Anne McArthur, Lukáš Vincour, Milos Bicanski, Pierre Parcoeur, Santi Donaire, Selene Magnolia Gatti, Stefano Belacchi, Timo Stammberger, and Zuzana Mit. Their brave work showcased here collectively illustrates the many cruelties, dangers and threats posed by today’s industrial factory farming model in Europe – and what the vast majority of Europeans agree must change.
We would like to extend our thanks to We Animals, which serves the important role of showcasing the widespread issue of poor animal welfare standards across Europe, as well as their many harmful consequences for people and the environment.
Feature photo credit: Timo Stammberger
