Construction of stables: trade-offs between animal welfare and emissions

Background and Objective

The trade-off between animal welfare and climate protection is a concern for livestock farming in Germany as well as in the EU. For socially accepted and sustainable livestock farming, animal welfare must be improved and at the same time these improvements should be accompanied by a reduction in emissions.

So called "particularly animal-friendly husbandry practices" are already supported through the Rural Development  Programme (RDP) measure „Support for investments in restructuring or modernisation / investments in physical assets“ (M04). However, a link between animal welfare and climate protection goals as well as an effective  contribution of the investment support to improve animal welfare have hardly been observed so far, so that  adjustments seem to be necessary. In addition, the design of the investment support measures varies greatly between the federal states of Germany and between EU member states despite the common policy framework in Germany and the EU.

Against this background, the aim of the project is to develop recommendations for suitable policy measures to achieve animal welfare while at the same time considering environmental protection goals. To this aim,

(1) obstacles to and favourable factors for the construction of animal-friendly housing are to be identified,
(2) best practices of support measures from Germany and EU Member States are to be described and
(3) proposals for the improvement of (RDP) support measures and the legal and economic framework are to be developed.

Approach

Based on a literature review as well as expert interviews, the project will:
(1) identify obstacles to and favourable factors for the construction of animal-friendly housing,
(2) describe best practices of support measures from Germany and other EU Member States
(3) develop proposals for the improvement of support measures and the legal and economic framework.