European Union

European Union (EU) law contains a range of helpful provisions designed to protect farm animals on-farm, during transport and at slaughter. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union recognises animals as “sentient beings” and requires the EU and its Member States, when formulating and implementing their policies in certain key areas to pay “full regard to the welfare requirements of animals”. EU law has prohibited some of the worst aspects of industrial livestock production: veal crates have been prohibited from 2007, barren battery cages for egg-laying hens from 2012 and sow stalls (gestation crates) are prohibited (except during the first four weeks of pregnancy) from 2013. This article describes and evaluates the above legislation and indicates the scientific research on which it is based. Nonetheless, EU law has to date only gone part way; substantial and far-reaching fresh legislation is needed before the EU can claim to have a body of law which properly ends the suffering inherent in industrial farming and legislates for a positive state of well-being for farm animals.

Jippes, an ECJ case from 2001, involved a legal dispute over the hoof and mouth pandemic ravaging Europe at the time.  To stem spread of the disease, the EU passed a community directive banning the use of preventative vaccinations and mandating compulsory slaughter. The plaintiff—or “applicant,” as plaintiffs are referred to in Europe—owned a variety of farm animals, and, loathe to kill them,  argued that European law embraced a general principle that animals were shielded from physical pain and suffering. Such a principle, the applicant argued, could only be overridden when absolutely necessary; and the compulsory slaughter directive was in direct conflict with this principle. The ECJ, however, rejected the applicant’s argument, holding that the Animal Welfare Protocol of 1997 did not delineate any new important animal-friendly principles in European law, but merely codified old ones. 

Short Section added to the treaty which created the European Union, the Amsterdam Treaty, which acknowledges animal welfare as a factor when creating policy positions.