EU Directive on the protection of farm animals

Extract

The Council of Agriculture Ministers agreed a final text for Directive 98/58/EC concerning the protection of animals kept for farming purposes in June 1998, and the Directive was formally adopted in July 1998. This Directive sets minimum standards for welfare of livestock throughout the EU and a framework for adoption of more detailed standards for individual farmed species. It is not uncommon in legislation for the taxonomic range of the species covered to be rather poorly defined and often more inclusive than, one guesses, the legislators had in mind (eg specifying ‘bovine animal’ when ‘domestic cow’, rather than any member of the subfamily Bovinae was intended). In this case, it is made clear that the Directive applies only to vertebrate animals kept for farming purposes. However, while Article 3 requires that owners or keepers of any vertebrate animals kept for these purposes ‘…take all reasonable steps to ensure the welfare of animals under their care and to ensure that those animals are not caused any unnecessary pain, suffering or injury’, Article 4 applies only to some vertebrates, thus: ‘Member states shall ensure that the conditions under which animals (other than fish, reptiles or amphibians) are bred or kept‥, comply with the provisions set out in the Annex.’ The provisions in the Annex outline requirements for staffing, inspection, record-keeping, freedom of movement, buildings, accommodation and mechanical equipment, feed and water, mutilations, and breeding procedures. The final paragraph of the Annex, paragraph 21, appears strikingly sweeping and perhaps a potentially powerful force against the use of strains with high prevalences of production diseases. It states: ‘No animal shall be kept for farming purposes unless it can reasonably be expected, on the basis of its genotype or phenotype, that it can be kept without detrimental effect on its health or welfare’. Member states are required to bring the legislation, administrative provisions and sanctions necessary for compliance with the Directive into effect before 31 December 1999.