Re.: Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and animal welfare

Dear Mette Gjerskov,At the next meeting of the Agriculture Council on 26 April, the Council will have a de-bate on the Commission proposal on direct payments, and more specifically on theissues of small farmers, and voluntary coupled support, among other related topics. Inthat context The Danish Animal Welfare Society would like to ask you to take into ac-count the need to pay full regard to the welfare of animals, in line with Article 13 of theTreaty.More specifically, we believe that subsidies should only be given to farmers who fullyrespect EU minimum legal standards and thus that all farmers, including small farmers,should be subjected to cross-compliance with EU animal welfare standards. To reduceadministrative burden and the number of controls necessary, we propose that penaltiesbe set at level high enough to be dissuasive.In addition, we urge you to support the possibility for member states to grant directsupport to farmers who engage in implementing higher animal welfare standards, byallowing coupled support also for farmers practicing enhanced animal welfare stand-ards under article 38 of the Commission proposal on direct payments (COM(2011)625).Another possibility would be to add to the text of the proposal an article similar to article68 of the current Direct Payments Regulation, allowing special support to certain typesof farming, including high animal welfare types of production. We also believe thatthere should be no limit on the number of farmers receiving coupled support for apply-ing higher animal welfare standards as there is growing market demand for high wel-fare products, but farmers are currently not getting enough return through the foodchain to be compensated for the extra costs of significantly higher standards.We thank you in advance for taking these elements into account during the debate inthe Council.