Taking of down and feathers from live geese - an endless story?!

FOUR PAWS Marcus Müller

Live Feather Plucking Roundtable 16 Feburary 2011, Brussels

1) Why Four Paws went into the topic

• Four Paws was the first organisation publishing live plucking video in 1991

• Big animal welfare problem • Big threat for our cooperation partners in the geese

meat industry

2) Situation in the EU

Live plucking and harvesting in Poland, Hungary, Germany and Romania etc

• EU is the biggest industrial geese producer in the world (china may be bigger by number of geese but not in industrial scale, yet)

• What kind of birds are live plucked• How many birds are live plucked• Local differences

3) Experience with the situation

• lack of care and controll• no enforcement• illegal practises/black market

4) Risks

• discrediting the meat market and european geese industry• huge animal wefare problems• spreading desease by live plucking bregades• impossible to controll (black/ not stationary/tricks)• weak legal position of willing authorities due to lack of clear

legislation • tactics of the industry• the one % tactic• secret of the good harvesting farms• the black sheep tactic

6) Solution • Total ban without loopholes• Strong enforcement

7) Benefits of a ban

• securing the european geese meat market against non EU competitors

• upgrading slaughter down and making slaughter down a profitable replacement of live plucked down

• more transparancy and consumer protection resulating in trust of the consumer in geese meat

• ending a long term animal welfare drama• ending a huge risk for animal desease controll• ending a tradition of black market and tax fraud and bad practise

in the down trade.

8) Problems:

• No change of finding solutions with the industry• Good producers are under big threat by competitiors

acting with price dumping possible due to live plucking.• Lack of in the field knowledge at the EU• Lack of enforcement in cetrain member states• Use of current EFSA report to legalize live plucking• Industry organisations an d controlls are not usefull and

real cooperationis not likely.

Thank you for your attention!