Samo
Executive Director at AETP, farm animal welfare group in Slovenia. Biophysics PhD candidate at UCL. @ AETP
I’m a physicist by training (with papers in PNAS, etc.) who moved into animal protection after realising how neglected the field is. I currently direct AETP, we recently secured a country-wide ban on battery cages. I’ve co-founded a few advocacy groups in Slovenia and care a lot about coalitions, institutional change, and strategic campaigning. Moving more into food policy in the medium term.
In my non-activist hours: climbing, dancing, and fighting insomnia :D.
Nice post.
Before we chose to campaign for a phase-out of cages for hens in Slovenia, we also wanted to be quite damn sure we were actually doing good for animals.
We eventually won a legislative phase-out of cages for layer hens. And the reason we felt confident enough to push for it was not just work by WFP, RP, OWA and posts on this forum.
EFSA, the main scientific authority on food safety in the EU, recommends phasing out cages on welfare grounds. Our own veterinary faculty and animal welfare centre experts in Slovenia came to the same conclusion.
So at least in our case, this was not based on vibes or claims by a single community (EA). It was based on a broader scientific and veterinary consensus. Or at least, I should say, an independent assessment of evidence by these institutions.
Thank you for this write-up, it is the second time I read it.
In Slovenia we are currently in a position where shifting some subsidies away from feed crops and towards human-edible crops is politically tractable.
The report suggests this type of reform might either have no effect or could even be harmful for animals.
The conclusion feels unintuitive. For monogastric animals (chickens, pigs), feed is a key, non-substitutable input, often >60–70% of variable costs. It is hard for me to see how reducing feed subsidies (and presumably increasing feed prices) would increase the scale of farming of monogastrics. To me this is like saying increasing the price of energy in EU will somehow help expand the aluminium smelting sector.
I tried to look at the source paper [31] but found it a bit impenetrable (I'm not an economist). So I am looking for guidance. Could you share more detail on the mechanism of how "complex economic relationships" would lead to more animal farming if feed crop subsidies are removed?
Thanks again for the work. I found the the post very valuable. Btw, we are persuing welfare-based subsidies as well. As our main part of lobbying on the Common Agricultural Policy. I think it is quite a neglected way of helping animals. And a policy intervention that is not explored enough in the movement.