Understanding EU Farmed Animal Welfare with Dr. Neil Dullaghan

And, um, including on farmed animals, I know a little bit, but, you know, probably enough to be dangerous, uh, not really enough to be enlightening. So we're gonna try to fix that today, uh, with political scientist, Dr. Neil Dullaghan, author of the just published The Compassion Mandate: Remaking the European Union's Leadership on Farmed Animal Welfare.

So Neil is an expert in EU farmed animal policy, and he works with Rethink Priorities, and he's going to help us try to understand what has been accomplished, why the EU has probably not progressed as far in protecting farmed animals as many of us would have hoped, uh, if we were kind of aware of what was going on maybe 20, 25 years ago.

Uh, what we can learn from, from both the progress and the lack of progress. And, and that includes for people who are in the EU and people who aren't because, you know, it's all, from the animal's point of view, it's all the same problems, even that we may deal with them in different ways. Uh, just a quick reminder about the Our Hen House podcasts.

Rising Anxieties comes out on Tuesdays, The Hen Report on Thursdays, the long form interview, including this one, on Fridays. Bonus for Flock members comes out on Mondays. And we're a podcast and we're on YouTube, so please subscribe and hit like wherever you listen.

And now, Neil, let's just start with some basic facts. I was just saying before we started that we have to start at the beginning here, because if you're in the US you don't know anything about the EU really. Um, other than that it exists. And it is, you can start making comparisons and it's actually very, very different from the US. So, uh, so it's not a good idea to make comparisons, but starting with the, with the farmed animal question, what are the numbers and what are the conditions for farmed animals across the EU?

I mean, I know it's basically factory farming, and I know there are some variations from country to country, and we'll get into those details later perhaps. Um, but just give us the overall view.

Neil Dullaghan: Hi, Mariann. Yeah, certainly variations, but in a big picture, there's sort of 7 billion terrestrial animals that are farmed and killed every year in the EU. Most of those broilers. Uh, on top of that, there's somewhere between 600 million and a billion farmed fish, uh, within the EU that are farmed and killed. And then on top of that, there's about 390 million egg laying hens and 20 million, uh, dairy cows that are raised in, in the EU every year. Uh, and those are typically the majority of them raised in like very classic factory farming conditions, extreme confinement, mutilations without anesthesia, slaughter without a lot of pre slaughter stunning.

Mariann Sullivan: So really not terribly dissimilar from, from the situation in the US.

Neil Dullaghan: No. Very, very similar basic conditions. Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: Do people in the, you know, do people in the u... i've always noticed this about the UK, which of course we're not talking about the UK anymore, but we'll get into that. Um, and that, that people in the EU tend to be a little bit more naive about how bad it is than people in the US. I mean, I, I not that people in the US aren't naive.

I mean, everybody's naive, uh, you know, and thinks it's, doesn't realize it's as bad as it is. But, but, but there seems to be this image of the small, small holder and, and the, the kind of like factory farming is kind of a US thing. Uh, is, does that still exist or are people kind of aware that it's bad out there?

Neil Dullaghan: I think people are still not quite clued to just how bad it is. So in June, 2025, there was an investigation by Ag Activist Agency. Uh, that showed the EU is home to at least 24,000 of these sort of industrial chicken and pig farms, sort of mega farms where some of them are home to like 1.4 million chickens at any time. And I think most Europeans are not aware that, uh, industrial animal agriculture is now at that scale. They still have the image of backyard family farms, are not quite aware that when they're driving through Europe, you know, doing a Eurotrip, that many of these barns that they pass by are actually full of animals packed together,

uh, sitting in their own feces.

Mariann Sullivan: And you might see a cow or two out in the field. I mean, this is certainly the same here, and think that's how it is. The cows are just out in the field.

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah. And, and yet when you do surveys, even including surveys run by the European Union institutions themselves, that ask people about the conditions of animals in factory farms, most people say they would like them to be better protected than they are. So even with their mistaken view of maybe good it is, they still want it to be better.

So.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I think sometimes, I don't know, we, we don't, we shouldn't get into psychology 'cause you're a political scientist, but, uh, you know, people wanna think it's better than it is and they kind of talk themselves into that, but it's somewhere inside they know that it isn't so good. Alright, moving on to what the, the topic at hand.

Um, let's. Uh, the other thing I really need you to, to summarize right at the beginning is a little bit about EU governance. Kind of an overview of the jurisdiction and function of the individual countries, and then the different EU entities that relate to farmed animals and exactly what their role is.

Uh, uh, you know, just an overview. How, how, so how does the EU work in 10 words or less?

Neil Dullaghan: Uh, no easy task. I think the first central insight to get across is to think of the EU as a trading block of multiple countries, and that most of the governance structure around that is around harmonizing the standards around this trading block to ensure free movement of goods, people and services. And so I think if you understand that core insight, then the rest of the governance structure begins to make sense. Uh, and thinking that a huge part of the EU economy is actually agriculture and the EU has a huge basis in agriculture and protecting, uh, farmers and agricultural products. Then again, a lot of the laws and regulations that have been set up are about like maintaining the free flow of goods and services between member states.

And so when you think about the main institutions, you can think the most important one is called the European Commission. Uh, this is like somewhat similar to the executive branch in the US, although not really a great comparison in that they're the only one that can initiate laws. They're the only ones that can start the ball rolling. Uh, and then the other two co legislators are the European Parliament. Again, similar but not exactly, uh, the same as the House of Representatives in the US where you have people that are directly elected by citizens of the European Union to sit in the Parliament. Then the third co-legislator is the council, which represents each of the member states in the European Union.

Each of the national governments, they send representatives there. Uh, and both the European Parliament and the council have to sign off before any legislation that's originally proposed by the commission is adopted. And the Council in particular has a lot stronger veto powers than the Parliament.

Mariann Sullivan: So by veto power, does that mean each country has a veto power or the council, the majority of the council has a veto power? Like, like I've always heard that you have to kind of talk everybody into everything to get anything done in the EU. Is that true?

Neil Dullaghan: Uh, certainly the case. For most decisions, the council has to achieve a qualified majority vote, uh, which is some sort of complicated structure where you have to have, uh 65% of some member states representing some percentage of the EU population. In, in practice, the council typically tries to achieve consensus.

They like the, the norm of unanimity. Often that just means some member states will abstain or just like quietly accept it. So like most decisions will actually be made by consensus.

Mariann Sullivan: Okay.

Neil Dullaghan: Once they realize that actually they would lose and not have a minority to block anything. Uh, but if you have four member states representing 35% of the EU population, they can at least stop adoption.

And so that's an easy way for four countries to band together and eke out some small concessions. And you see that in many of the EU farmed animal protection.

Mariann Sullivan: So it's not as bad as, it's not as bad as I thought, um, that you had to talk everybody into it, but, but you try. You try.

Alright, so getting back to farmed animals, back in the day, maybe 25 years ago, it seemed as be as if Europe was on track to really do something dramatic about farmed animals.

I actually, just to focus on me for a while, 'cause why shouldn't we? I actually wrote an article with my friend David Wolfson at that time, it was mostly about the situation in the US, but we referred to the EU and thought that that this regulatory system that they were setting up to pass these regulations regarding certain conditions was the way forward.

And we also mentioned this possibility that, you know, of the ballot initiative in the United States, that, uh, but that, that was gonna be way too hard to make real progress. Things did not turn out the way that we predicted. So, so back maybe 25 years... around, you know, around the year 2000, there had been a lot of progress and, and more was expected and it, it, it didn't really happen.

Although, you know, not, everything didn't disappear. So can you just kind of tell us that story of why it looked good, what was accomplished that is still in effect, and what happened to derail further progress?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, certainly. So if you, yeah, wind yourself back to the post World War II period. EU is industrializing, uh, as it recovers and begins to introduce the factory farming system as we know now. And some initial public arra, uh, awareness raising done by like Ruth Harrison in the uk, Rachel Carson and their book Animal Machines, uh, and also in Sweden sort of raised public salience about, okay, what's happening to animals, uh, for the first time. And after that, and some food safety crises in the eighties and nineties, uh, national governments decided that they needed to change conditions for farmed animals and began to introduce the first sort of animal protection standards for farmed animals. Whereas before then it had been mostly around, um, companion animals maybe. And the first sort of major movement was in, uh, egg laying hens. And I think this sort of case overall shows a good picture, uh, of what change looked like in the European Union. So if you look like in Denmark, their Animal Protection Act in the 1950s originally was interpreted as prohibiting the use of barren battery cages for egg laying hens. Uh, but simply production at that stage moved over to Germany, and then illegal sort of low welfare eggs were simply imported back into Denmark, which forced them to water down their own legislation.

Mariann Sullivan: Now did is that one of the things that, that that provoked the idea that we needed to have EU level, uh, regulations? So that... I mean, we have the exact same problem of course in the states, that, that, uh, when, when only one state makes a change, the question of whether, uh, other states can, can import or export into that state is a huge question, which we, we won't go into 'cause we're focusing on the EU, but it's sure the same problem.

Did that affect this idea that we have to have broader, uh, legislation? And is that, is that direction in which, is that the direction in which it went?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, so that was a huge motivating, I think, force for EU level action that you had these, uh, distortions in the common market caused by member states changing their protections around animal laws. Uh, and that creating an uneven playing field for both producers and for citizens' expectations.

Uh, and that's what motivated many countries, even, who were members of the European Union, uh, like the UK to actually ask for EU wide standards. And so that's when the European Union system began to first commission animal welfare studies and economic studies of, okay, what are the bare minimums that are required here? And to make initial proposals in the eighties for minimum standards around, again let's say, take the example of egg laying hens, where they initially proposed very, very, uh, minimum 450 centimeter squared of cage area per hen, which is I think less than half a square foot, if I've got my conversions

Mariann Sullivan: That's bad.

Neil Dullaghan: Um, at a time when probably most hens were kept in cages, even like with smaller area than that. And over time you saw many member states go ahead of these minimum standards themselves, and that continued to create distortions in the market, uh, such that by late nineties that EU was again forced to update its standards and initially proposed to increase that cage area to 800 centimeters squared. And then over the course of negotiations, watered that down to the current standard, which is 750 centimeters squared of cage area, less than one square foot, in addition to some enrichments that they call them like perches and nests. And so a similar case for the sort of four major species specific directives in the EU.

There's one on hens, which effectively bans the most barren form of battery cages and allows for these enriched cages. You have a directive on pigs where one of the main provisions is to limit how long, uh, sows can be kept in sow stalls. You have another directive on calves raised for veal, which again, puts some restrictions on how long these calves can be kept in veal crates. And then finally, the fourth major directive is on broiler chickens, which set some limits on stocking density and cumulative mortality rates. And these are sort of the four pillars that eventually emerged that actually have some, some teeth and some specificity to them. There's also some more like general, uh, regulations around transport and slaughter and general on-farm conditions. Uh, but those are maybe not the central focus of The Compassion Mandate, anyway.

Mariann Sullivan: And are those, are those all still basically in effect and enforced? Those, I mean, I know those are very minimal, but they are regulations and they do limit what was done before.

Neil Dullaghan: Those are all still in effect, they often had a 10 year transition period before they were implemented and many of them were implemented unevenly at the start. Uh, in the case of the battery cage ban, I think half of countries missed the deadline in 2012 to actually have phased out these cages.

But within a few years after some awareness raising by advocacy groups and court cases, they eventually came into compliance. Uh, the same for the sow stall restrictions. So by now, most of those things are enforced in large part. There are obviously some cases where you find that's not the case. But, but in large part, those four main directives are enforced and implemented on the ground.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And I, I know one of the things that happened, I know from reading your book, that one of the things that happened during this period was that the EU got a lot bigger. Um, and, and even, even though that was the, because of Eastern Europe and, and, and other countries getting in, and that was a, that was one of the big factors I, I think that you, you posited as to why things have stalled, but it didn't stall. These, these were, these were still in place even in these countries that were newly admitted into the EU. Is that right?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah. So

Mariann Sullivan: Also promising.

Neil Dullaghan: New member states that joined the EU had to adopt these laws. Now certainly there were efforts by these countries to weaken them and water them down. Poland in particular led an effort in 2010 to try and delay, uh, implementing the battery cage ban, but ultimately we're unsuccessful. And what's I think more remarkable is actually a lot of these countries that entered the EU in the two thousands and maybe were a bit more resistant, more recently I've actually been some of the pioneers, uh, taking the charge. And again, like Checnya and Slovakia have been passing new standards around banning all cages for egg laying hens. So going above the EU minimum.

Mariann Sullivan: That is so interesting that, uh, I mean, I can understand how at the point of entry there were financial reasons that made this very, and you know, maybe cultural reasons as well. Like, like, we've always done it this way, why can't we? Who knows? But the fact that after time and after the financial reasons ease that they would become leadership.

It, it's just an interesting phenomenon. There was also, um, during this whole period, the departure of the UK. I mean, we always think of the UK as, I mean it's certainly not heaven for animals, let's face it, but as being pretty good on animal issues. Had they been a leader and was their departure, uh, from the EU a blow, um, to the development of, of further progress?

Neil Dullaghan: Yes, on, on both counts. So as historically, the UK was definitely, uh, a leader in introducing standards earlier than other member states in the EU and pushing for EU wide action. So again, I mentioned, uh, Ruth Harrison had this book, Animal Machines, uh, in the UK that first brought public attention to the issues of animals on factory farms and stimulated the UK into setting their own standards around egg laying hens, or at least trying to push for standards for laying hands and around prohibiting sow stalls. And then also for crates for veal calves. And this, uh, case in particular is quite absurd and interesting in that they prohibited the use of these crates for veal, uh, and then subsequently up to 40% of calves that were born in the UK were exported to continental Europe, raised in those crates, and then the products sent back to the UK. The British public was outraged at this absurdity and called, sort of began in, and began to mass protest in 1995. And that put a lot of pressure on the UK government, which then put a lot of pressure on the EU institutions, which by 1997 then passed the first minimum standards for calves raised for veal, uh, and sort of extended the standards that had first started in the UK across, the EU.

Mariann Sullivan: And, and just a moment to, uh, salute to those activists because those protests were insane. Like, I think people died, like, like there were accidents where people were hit by... it, it, I mean, that has happened, of course that happened in Canada, not that far, not that long ago too. But huge numbers of people participated in those protests about sending British calves to the EU to to France to be raised at crates.

I mean, it made people furious. And without that participation, that wouldn't have happened.

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, certainly agree. If you look back to these early decades, it's surprising how much public involvement there was. You have examples of UK ministers saying that they were getting more letters in the nineties about this issue than they were about the UK's participation in the Gulf War. So I think that's some sort of indicator.

Mariann Sullivan: Almost every time you hear about animal issues, they always say that they get more letters on that than on any other issue. So why the hell don't they do anything? It's so mysterious. Um, there's another great story you told about an activist in Italy. Was this on battery cages? I forget. Who, who did a hunger strike and actually forced the entire, uh, the entire adoption of, I, I, well, I shouldn't be saying it.

Can you just tell that story?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah. In, uh, 1999 while the, in the final sort of proposal to phase out barren battery cages for egg lying hens was being negotiated and was really on a knife's edge between member states that wanted to see progress and those that didn't. Uh, a key event was that, uh, Adolfo Sansolini, uh, an animal advocate in Italy, went on a hunger strike. And this sort of outrage around this particular issue caused the Italian government within 40 hours to reverse what had been their opposition to reform. And this really changed the voting calculus among member states. Uh, and additionally, Germany, which happened to be the President of the Council of the EU at that time had also been somewhat resistant to change. Uh, and at that time they lost a court case that advocates had launched against them because they were resisting changes to battery cages in their own country. And they lost the case just sort of during the negotiations and realized that they would have to bring in their own ban on battery cages. And that also shifted their position. So it was really many contingent events led by activists during this crucial period that led to us having the barren battery cage ban.

Mariann Sullivan: It's such an important reminder that, uh, activism really has, has created change, uh, and... not enough change, but.

So let's talk a little bit more about the role of the citizens. 'cause we've talked, been talking about the government. I mean, most of the progress of farmed animals legally in the US as I mentioned, has come because of binding citizens' initiatives.

I mean, it's certainly not enough progress, but it has been unbelievable. I would never have predicted, never have predicted. Unfortunately, we only have citizens initiatives in half the states. So, so, uh, there is a limitation there. In the EU there's also a citizen initiative process, I think, but it's, it's different in, in not very helpful ways.

Uh, can you tell us how? And then get us, because this is something that's happened a little bit more... i'm, I've been dwelling in history, but this has happened recently. I think there was one in 2019?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, so the, you have the European Citizens Initiative, it's called. This is an instrument that the European Commission introduced to combat some of the claims that there was a democratic deficit in the eu, that decisions were made by a bunch of unelected technocrats in Brussels, so they introduced this non-binding sort of petition, where it stated if you could get enough signatures, the EU governance structure would have to react to that. And animal issues have actually been some of the most successful issues, uh, that this instrument has been used for. And in sort of, yeah, 2019, there was one called End the Cage Age, which asked the European Union to end extreme confinement for commonly farmed animals that received more than a million signatures from EU citizens across the EU, required a response from the European Commission, which was, and then they gave a positive response saying that they would take this into consideration and act on it. The first time any of these sort of non-binding European citizens' initiatives had ever received a positive response from the European Commission. Typically, they were just ignored or, uh, given a sort of, we can't do anything about that. Uh, but this was the first time they said, okay, we take it seriously. We're gonna do something about that. But the key to remember here is that this was like actually not binding.

And so what they actually had to do is still up to their discretion. And they made a, a claim that they would introduce by the end of 2023, a proposal that would respond to this citizen initiative, including banning cages for hens completely and for for other animals. But you saw this sort of completely get derailed and fall apart, uh, over the course of 2023 and 2024.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. That was the, The End the Cage Age, uh, reform. Yeah. So, what happened? Uh, you know, they kind of got the government on board. Maybe not enthusiastically, but uh, um, so was this all just agribusiness finally getting its act together and, and fighting back? Um, because there were, I mean, like over one and a half million citizens who participated in this.

It was not, nothing. How did they manage to beat it and did they beat it completely? Is it, it just, nothing happened. It was just a lot of sturm and drang and, and nothing happened?

Neil Dullaghan: So I think these proposed animal reforms are like to be proposed animal reforms were a little bit of a victim of timing in that they were tied to this broader initiative in the European Union called The Green Deal, similar to maybe things that have been proposed in in the US. That was at least partly going to make the, the whole food chain more sustainable. And these animal reforms got hitched to that idea, and that seemed good at the time. These were very popular proposals to make the supply chain more sustainable, had a lot of cross party support. But by 2023, the political tide had changed. You had inflation and the war with Ukraine pushing up food prices. And in general, farmers were very upset with bureaucratic burdens and higher costs and lower incomes, and were mobilized by agribusiness into protesting in quite massive scale in Brussels. And animal welfare proposals became sort of collateral damage as like a huge suite of legislation was either watered down or rolled back on environmental issues. By late 2023, it was very convenient for the animal proposals to just be shelved as part of acquiescing to this sort of agrarian revolt led by primarily sort of more right-wing parties trying to court voters ahead of elections in 2024. And on top of that, you saw and have seen documented a really concerted united effort by agribusiness to lobby the institution and scaremonger, uh, particularly around trade issues and farmer incomes, uh, and bureaucracy. And the activists and advocates and citizens who would've preferred to see these reforms were simply not sort of united and mobilized and resourced well enough to, to counter that.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I mean certainly it was a, it was a fraught time with the war in Ukraine and, and the pandemic. But you know, it's kind of always a fraught time. Like there's always something and animals always seem to be at the, you know, on the back of the line. Uh, so I, I don't find that very convincing, but I certainly find convincing that agribusiness, 'cause you saw the same thing happening here.

After many years of kind of like ignoring animal protection movements, agribusiness really got its act together. Uh, and they're enormously powerful when they wanna use that power. I did promise we were gonna come back to the, to the, and and now that we're talking about it, I don't understand how it works, so I'm glad we're gonna come back to it. This idea of single country reforms, because I have always, I always hear of things happening in, in individual countries. I mean, you mentioned Sweden, that's one, um, Switzerland, uh, like there are various countries that do something on their own. But now that you mentioned that whole trade problem, how does that work?

Uh, like why doesn't it affect, uh, either if they're importing those foods, can they legislate on, on what can be sold in their country? And if they're exporting foods, um, uh, do they have to follow, uh, the rules, um, so that their foods would be unable to compete in other countries? I mean, how does trade work within the EU?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, it is quite interesting and confusing sometimes. So within the EU, member states are free to introduce laws that govern production standards within their own country, but they're very restricted in terms of restricting sales of products, uh, because that would interrupt the free flow of goods and services and people, which is central to the European Union Single market project, uh, except for extreme cases around maybe food safety.

There are some exceptions that Netherland, the Netherlands, for example, has been able to exploit. Typically, they can ban production, for example, of uh, battery cages for egg laying hens in Germany or in Austria, for example. But they can't ban supermarkets bringing in eggs from caged hens from a neighboring country and selling them.

So that has often led to a lot of this pressure then among those member states to ask for EU minimum standards to sort of avoid these distortions in the market 'cause it's putting a lot of pressure on their domestic producers who don't particularly like that.

Mariann Sullivan: That's ex, I mean that's the huge fight that's going on here in the States is that, uh, you know, some states have passed sales bans and, um, and the pork industry in particular, though now the egg industry too has, has signed on too. Like, just they took it to the Supreme Court. They, like, they have done everything and they won't stop.

They just keep coming up with new arguments as to why this is not to be allowed. And they keep losing so far, but, but they have, you know, they still have many options in front of them. But it's so interesting that it's exact same situation, but there are countries that do, like, how, how do they pull that off?

Um, without, you know, getting buried by imports from other countries. If a state does wanna propose, I mean, Germany's got pretty high standards, right?

Neil Dullaghan: Germany has pretty high standards, um, for many, uh, farmed animal issues. Typically, where this works best for, for animals, which is what we care about, in this context, is when either most production and consumption happens domestically. So most of the purchases and consumption of the chicken product is from chickens that are raised in that country. Then those standards work pretty well. Imports are pretty minimal, or where the country in which products are being imported from also has high standards themselves. So in Germany, the case is actually that most of their eggs actually come from the Netherlands. Which is a huge overproducer of eggs and exports, a lot of them.

And they have segmented a part of the production to be cage-free, to cater to the German market.

Mariann Sullivan: Even though they don't really have to, they they do to, uh, I mean, I assume to smooth out trade issues or, or, uh, that, that's

Neil Dullaghan: because

Mariann Sullivan: interesting.

Neil Dullaghan: They perceive that there's a bigger market for cage-free production. They have their own national standards as well, but they allow for colony cages, these larger cages.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. God, it's all so complicated. Um, but it generally, across the EU, I mean there, there are not trade barriers. I mean, that's the whole point, right? There aren't trade barriers.

Neil Dullaghan: Exactly. And this is what creates pressure for EU wide standards often.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. What about this, um, law in Switzerland? I just read something about it the other day. Their labeling law. Um, uh, d does that mean if, like, if Switzerland has a labeling law, which I've read is very, very good and like is horrifying, if you read the label. It's unbelievable that anybody would buy it.

'Cause they actually say on the label, what happened to the animal. Can they impose that on imported foods?

Neil Dullaghan: So Switzerland as a non-member of the

Mariann Sullivan: Non member. Yeah. Alright. This is where my ignorance, uh, enters in. Yeah.

And Norway isn't either, is it? That was that shocked me. I just assumed everybody was, you know?

Neil Dullaghan: They sit in these like sort of gray zones of like economic areas where defacto often they do try and meet EU standards because they export into the EU single market. And so they want to have standards that they think meet them, but they're not actually required, uh, necessarily to meet all these standards.

Uh, and they definitely don't have a say in those standards. So sometimes they actually lose out from their situation that they have to meet EU standards to get into the market, but they have no say in what those standards look like. But Switzerland, I think is the unique case in that actually most of their, uh, purchases and consumption is also from Swiss production.

So this sort of effect that it's gonna have on imports might be pretty minimal, even though would be good if it forces production in other countries to shift their standards because they want to get access to the Swiss market.

Mariann Sullivan: Have you seen any of those labels? They sound insane.

Neil Dullaghan: I haven't, I haven't seen them since it's been introduced. Uh.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I have to. Alright, the other issue about trade is what's imported into the EU as a whole, obviously, and where do EU countries get animal-based foods from? And what are the barriers to putting EU wide welfare reforms as conditions of allowing those imports into the EU as a whole? And I, I understand that there's a, the EU-Mercosur deal, is that how you say that? Mercosur?

Neil Dullaghan: I, I'm not actually sure, uh,

Mariann Sullivan: But it's South America, basically.

Neil Dullaghan: You'd have to ask someone Latin America, I guess.

Mariann Sullivan: I, I'm not very internationalist. I've only very recently heard that expression though it's probably been, but apparently that's the, uh trade

organization. Anyway, I heard that there's like a big deal going on there.

Like, so what, what... does the EU have, have standards that they can impose on, on those countries that are importing into the EU?

Neil Dullaghan: So the EU is like a huge market for many goods, including agricultural products, um, because it's 27 countries and more than 400 million people. And so countries from across the world, especially South America, China export into the EU. And there's some sort of impetus then for them to meet standards that are in the EU because they assume EU consumers want to see those standards.

And in some cases they're actually required around, like food safety. Uh, certain licenses are required. Animal welfare is typically not part of this.

Mariann Sullivan: Okay.

Neil Dullaghan: There are, There have been like a handful of trade agreements between like Chile and New Zealand, where an animal welfare chapter has been included so that, for example, eggs have to meet the same standards as EU standards. But, but typically animal welfare standards are not required, uh, to, to import into the, export into the EU. Uh, some producers anecdotally do change their standards because of perception that that's what the market's there for. But there's really nothing to stop any country outside the EU producing a product with standards lower than the EU and exporting into.

And that's actually an issue that's been raised around Ukraine 'cause they predominantly still use barren battery cages for egg laying hens and export a lot of their eggs in into the European market, which puts pressure on domestic producers there. But

Mariann Sullivan: Well, but if the EU wanted to put those limitations on, they could. These are just deals. I mean, there's, they, they just... that's so crazy because they have these requirements of their own producers and they're not putting the same requirements on those importing into the EU? That seems to be disadvantaging their own people.

Neil Dullaghan: Exactly. I think this is one of the rare cases where actually the wishes of citizens and animal advocates and farmers should actually all be aligned, at least European Union farmers, where they want to be protected from these imports from abroad who don't have to meet the same strict standards they do. And so actually a lot of farmers have been opposed to this Mercosur deal that you mentioned that would open up free trade between, uh, Latin America and Europe, uh, including lower welfare animal product imports. But typically this is just not a priority issue for the EU institutions.

They're not willing to sacrifice free trade for animal welfare, except in these very small handful of cases where you can find it, uh, like Chile and New Zealand that I mentioned before. But typically this has just not risen, uh, to the top of the agenda. And I mean, I argue in The Compassion Mandate that it should exactly for the reasons that like they should care about their domestic producers, citizens actually wanna see this. If you look at the opinion polls that the European Union has done of their own citizens, the vast majority of them want to see agricultural imports of any, uh, origin should have the same standards that are required in the EU, but you get a lot of opposition from the European Union's trade arm, DG trade, which first and foremost just wants to ensure a free trade of goods.

Um.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, you make the point. Um, uh, I, I think a couple of times that there's basically three, three legs to this stool. There's the, the consumer, totally on board with, with higher standards. Well, not totally, but you know, pretty on board with higher standards. Science, which has advanced dramatically in demonstrating that this is a really important issue.

I mean, the difference between the science about animals just 25 years ago and now is dramatic. Uh, we know so much more about them. And then, um, government, and it seems to be government that is just like, just totally letting down, uh, the deal here, like both the science and the public are in favor of this.

Is that right?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, the European Union's own scientific body, EFSA, The European Food Safety Agency has repeatedly come out with opinions on animal welfare showing that the current conditions in conventional factory farms are not adequate for meeting animal welfare and recommended changes, and said that these are totally feasible based on what you can see already adopted in some member state markets. Again, European, European Union surveys of European citizens show overwhelmingly 80, 90% of citizens want to see better protections, want to see specific policies like phasing out cages. You even have member states in the European Union themselves, not only introducing their own national legislation to phase out some of these standards, but specifically calling on the European Union institutions to enact EU wide standards. And you have like we saw in the previous administration even efforts within the European Union institutions by DG SANTE, the one that's normally in charge of animal welfare, to propose these higher welfare...

Mariann Sullivan: DG SANTE, just explain what that is.

Neil Dullaghan: So DG SANTE is the sort of directorate in charge of health and food safety.

And yeah, it's important to remember in the EU context, animal welfare is not like a specific,

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

Neil Dullaghan: um, responsibility of the EU views itself.

It views animal welfare under the context of like food safety and consumer information. So that's why this agency is typically the one proposes...

Mariann Sullivan: Wasn't there some kind of shift in that recently that there was, am I wrong? Did, did, am I remembering that wrong?

Neil Dullaghan: Recently they changed the title of the commissioner. The sort of minister in charge of this to now include animal welfare in their title, but the unit in charge of this hasn't been given like particularly extra resources or an extra mandate to deal with animal welfare.

Mariann Sullivan: Wow.

Neil Dullaghan: It's still up to the discretion of the political leaders.

Mariann Sullivan: Um, all right, so a lot of people would take this story that you've told so far, which is a pretty sad story, let's face it, um, as proof that welfare reforms just don't work. But that this, this isn't, this shouldn't be the work of the animal protection movement. That the, the, the reforms that have been achieved are not really that much and they've just been a dead end.

You don't seem to, you seem to think that it's proof that the EU should try again. Um, do you think that there is promise here? Like we could actually, I mean, I'm not gonna ask you to say, come up with a system that would actually be okay, because nobody listening to this thinks that any of it is okay, but that there could be improvement?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, I would take, yeah, issue with the idea that there's been no improvement at all. I think if you look at these major four species...

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, no, I, I didn't mean to imply none, but just kind of it hit a wall.

Neil Dullaghan: It certainly hit a wall. Although I think you can view some of the reasons that there was no progress between, let's say 2007 when the last species specific directive on broilers was introduced, and now there's been like no other major changes, is to do with like structural issues. Like we mentioned before about new member states joining who were preoccupied with other issues. And also I think something to do with the animal advocacy movement not being resourced and politically sort of mobilized. So the European citizen initiatives that we've talked about was like the, one of the first big actions since the nineties that the movement had done at an EU level and actually was reasonably successful.

They were the first, European citizen initiatives that got a positive response from the commission. The commission genuinely did seem to be moving towards some reforms. They began uh, fso opinions from their commissioning FSO opinions and conducting economic feasibility studies. They have, we know in the, in the file drawer, proposals that they've been working on, uh, that could have been introduced.

And it was really just at this last step of political will that they failed. But political will can be changed, right? It's malleable through, through elections, through pressure campaigns.

So

Mariann Sullivan: Hunger strikes.

Neil Dullaghan: Through hunger strikes like, I, uh. Adolfo Indeed.

So I see that the groundwork is all there. Like we have national member states that already have this legislation.

The market in many cases has already moved there. 62% of eggs are already cage free in the EU. The citizens are on board. Advocates clearly are willing to be mobilized by this issue and can actually gain a lot of political and public support when they mobilize around this. And I think it's more about just getting the, the timing and the framing right. And then you can see big changes for animals. You can see a complete end to the extreme confinement of multiple species. You can see that you bring in the first standards for farmed fish, which have been lacking for decades. And you can see maybe some more efforts on, uh, restrictions for imports, whether that's directly through trade deals or just like more regulatory policy wonk solutions around like licensing agreements and things like this, and permits that might defacto make it harder to import lower welfare products into the EU.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, well you're working at the government level. You can get into real details of small ways that sound small, but that can change policy. I mean, you point out that that, um, there's already a lot of cage free production in, in Europe and that that going to cage free has been one of the major undertakings of the animal protection movement in maybe the past 10 years.

I think it's probably the major effort. Not everybody agrees with it as the the right way to go, but it certainly had a lot of resources put into it and some other welfare reforms, not just cage free, um, not through the law, but through pressure campaigns and negotiated agreements. Um, so you say that, I mean, and, and that's my understanding, that these efforts have had an impact in, in Europe.

What are the limit? Like why is having a law better or why should that be the first step toward a law and why is it not good in and of itself?

Neil Dullaghan: So I think changes in the market that have been brought about through pressure campaigns against retailers and companies are good in themselves.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. I maybe I should have said not enough in themselves. Yeah.

Neil Dullaghan: I think typically because not all companies are susceptible to these type of campaigns, not all companies are very public facing and these sort of pressure campaigns can't exert that sort of pressure on them. They're in more closed sectors, um, where it's gonna be harder to exert the sort of pressure on social media. They don't actually have a public consumer of their goods, and this is where only like government regulation can probably get at them. You can also think about products that are exported primarily and maybe the animal advocacy movement is not strong enough in the countries where the products are exported to, to put pressure on the companies through those consumers abroad. So there again, you might expect the government to play a greater role to serve the demands of citizens at home. And I think there's also just a case that like there will always be laggards, be people who are trying to not meet the, the highest standards available in the market, trying to squeeze out some competitive edge and government regulation can help to plug those gaps.

Mariann Sullivan: So let's take a step back and talk about what cage free actually means when it comes to laying hens. How bad can it be and still be called cage free? And I don't know whether you've seen it, PETA just put out a white paper and PETA has always been against these kind of welfare reforms, but this is a very well researched paper, and, and they're still, you will not be surprised to hear, against welfare reforms. They think that cage free, it may sound good, but it's terrible, and in some cases it's even worse than caged.

I don't know how that could possibly be the case, because the battery cage seems like the worst thing ever. But, you know, I I, I don't think their work is careless, by any means.

Um, I don't actually, I've never like, well. I've never actually opposed welfare reforms, which I think has been much more of a huge debate within the American, um, animal rights movement than perhaps, uh, in Europe.

Neil Dullaghan: Mm-hmm.

Mariann Sullivan: I, but I've never been a passionate devotee, I mean, of, of, of welfare reforms. It, it's obviously better than battery cages because what isn't better than battery cages?

But I, I've never really understood the theory of change that after we get cage free, which is probably bad and we know it's bad, it's just maybe I always refer to it as circles of hell. Um, it's probably a higher circle of hell. What, what happens after that? Like, what's the next step? Um, I've never really understood that. Alright, I just asked you 12 questions and threw out a lot of ideas.

Um, but, uh, but what is cage free? Is it good enough? And if not, how do we get to the next step? And, you know, I don't know whether you've seen the PETA paper, but if you have, I'd love your comments on it. Yeah.

Neil Dullaghan: No, unfortunately I haven't seen that paper yet. But, so in the context of the EU, what's being sought is expanding the amount of cage area that hens are allowed to have from the current 750 centimeter squared to, you know, something that would be larger than that. Something similar to the US, maybe like a thousand, which would defacto make it uneconomical to use cages. In practice that would most likely mean most of these hens are kept in sort of barns rather than free range and organic or outdoor.

I think realistically you should expect most production is gonna be indoor in barns, which is still huge numbers of hens kept together in sort of vertical aviaries.

Mariann Sullivan: That's, that's how I think of it. The, the tears of of, of, uh, perches and,

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, and I think there's certainly a danger that you, you can see already industry have come up with this, uh, ingenious solution like combination systems where they effectively still introduce cages into these barns, but keep the doors open, at least when the inspectors are there. Um, but in theory could close the cages.

And they've even said that they, part of the marketing appeal of these is that, well, if the tide turns on cage free, then they can sort of just close the cages again.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh my God.

Neil Dullaghan: Um, it's not clear to me actually like how many of these systems have actually been purchased in the EU or in countries that have introduced cage bans, like how much of the market shares.

But it's certainly, you can tell the industry, uh, maybe is still trying to hedge their bets on whether this will actually be the, the dominant trend in the long term. But it seems like in many places, hens are no longer kept in cages, at least in the handful of countries where they're completely banned. Uh, and that seems like a meaningful improvement, even if not optimizing for welfare, certainly.

Mariann Sullivan: But I, I mean, I, I think that the PETA paper and other people talking about it are assuming that we're talking about barns with, you know, the tiered aviators and, and are still saying, like, this is not good enough. This is very bad. The welfare, particularly when it's been put into place and, you know, less experienced people are putting, uh, these into place and not doing a good job, it's still very, very bad.

And, and once you achieve it, is it possible to then achieve something else? Or, or have you signed off on saying, well, this is what we need and we've talked everybody into thinking this is fine. That's always, I mean, that's the crucial piece of the American movement, I think, that isn't so strong in other countries, that this fear that by putting this into place, you'll lose your argument that it's bad.

I mean, I've never signed on to that myself, but it has a certain amount of appeal.

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah, I, I understand that perspective. I would just say one point to keep in mind is looking at sort of even the history of the EU cage reform,

um, has

always been sort of incremental. The first proposals in the, so if you think in the eighties there were no standards at all, you could do whatever you wanted, uh, but by 86 they set the standard that it had to be 450 centimeters, which is not a lot. Um, and then began to discuss this larger standard of 750 and now is thinking about a thousand. So you can imagine like there is this incremental progress that happens over time. I can't say right now what would be the step after this.

I haven't seen a particular standard from a country, maybe outside of Switzerland, i'm not exactly sure of all their standards, whether there's something that goes beyond that, like barn free.

Um, I think there are issues maybe around that, around avian flu becomes a higher risk.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. There are always trade-offs. Predators too. Like even if you're talking about outdoor access and you know there are hawks.

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah. So certainly, and yeah, I think I've also heard the cases of people, at least when they're initially changing from caged farming or very intensive confined farming to more extensive, there's issues of, yeah, cannibalism and higher mortalities because they don't know how

to raise animals in that condition because they've been trained in something else.

Uh

Mariann Sullivan: They take their beaks off so they won't kill each other in those close confines. So if you start banning debeaking... the whole industry is so sick, like in so many ways that like it, like that's, I think that's kind of the point. Just fiddling with it just doesn't work. I'm sorry. Go on. It can... finish your thought.

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah. All I would say is that the history of the EU shows that like the sort of fiddling with that approach has made some progress. Uh, maybe not as much progress as people would like. Not as much progress as citizens certainly demand, but like has made progress in the past. So there is is some precedent that this can deliver some improvements and maybe it's a useful way to think about how to make improvements in the future.

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, another thing that enters into it, which you talked about a bit, is, um, the argument that, that these reforms are not substantially, actually sometimes even at all, costs... uh, more expensive. I mean, that's one of the arguments you always hear. This isn't gonna cost you more, we should do, but, but I mean, we all know that if you're gonna treat an animal well, it costs a fortune.

Like, oh, if you have a dog. Like , at some point the argument has to be made, it's worth spending more money. Um. Is, so is there, is there a role for like, just the argument of moral progress in the EU agricultural system? I mean, can we only grant animals better lives when there's a new technology that makes it cheap?

Neil Dullaghan: I think often the most progress you're gonna make easiest is in those cases where there's like a market benefit and where there's some sort of technological innovation. It doesn't mean it's the best, that you can't have any progress purely on moral grounds. But I imagine that that's where you're gonna get the progress the soonest, where other actors in the system will be most receptive to these sorts of reforms. And I think that's one thing like that people need to keep in mind is that often political change, if you're pursuing political change, is sort of coalition effort. And so you need to find appeals to multiple different stakeholders. And often the lowest common denominator that gets reform is not, uh, aligned with the optimal outcome that you're intending to achieve.

Mariann Sullivan: So you've, you spent an entire chapter on, on fish, and we haven't mentioned fish at all, and you've brought them up a few times. And I know it's a huge, big issue, and I certainly don't wanna be one of the people who ignores fish because everybody ignores fish. Can you just kind of tell us what the status is and maybe if there's any kind of hope of welfare regulation of fish in the EU?

Neil Dullaghan: Sure. So the status is not good. So within the EU, they farm somewhere between 600 million and a billion fish, predominantly trout, carp, sea bass, and seabream. They also import a lot of Atlantic salmon from Scotland and Norway. And for the most part, these farmed fish have no real protections. There's no species specific on farm standards around water quality or anything, stocking density. Um, in the slaughter regulation, they're explicitly excluded so that you can kill fish in ways that would not be acceptable for terrestrial animals. The transport regulation is so poorly worded that it's like clearly designed not with aquatic animals in mind. For example, that has some like, uh, provisions around animals being able to walk unassisted, is sort of irrelevant for a fish.

Um, and so for the most part, these animals are raised, um, in sea cages or increasingly on, on land and sort of recirculatory agriculture systems. These sort of on land, uh, farms for fish, uh, with very little regard for their welfare, not optimal water quality or stocking density or slaughter standards. So these have been predominantly sort of the forgotten animal in the EU system. There's even just like this basic issue that I raised in The Compassion Mandate where the European Union is not even tracking how many fish there are, uh, in terms of individual animals. That when a member of DG SANTE, uh, was, was asked about which fish dominates EU production, they spoke in terms of tonnage in salmon.

But if you actually look, actually looked at the number of individuals, it would be sea bass and seabream, uh, potentially rainbow trout if you include the juveniles. So there's just this huge disconnect between the reality on the ground and what the political leaders and the political system is providing. But I think that means that there's actually a lot of room to improve. There are standards in other countries, including in EU member states for farmed fish, particularly in like the Netherlands and Germany, around slaughter and water quality and stocking density that the EU could easily pick up, um, and introduce. And actually in the reform proposals that were shelved in 2023, they did have some initial ideas about pre slaughter stunning for some of the most commonly farmed fish species. So those are sort of in the file drawer ready to be enacted, uh, if the EU would choose. And they are supposed to introduce a new suite of EFSA animal welfare opinions on farmed fish over the next decade on top of the ones they produced in 2008 and 2009, which led to the EU already recognizing that fish should be regarded as sentient beings capable of pain and suffering. So that already should be enough to motivate them to act.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I've, there've been a number of times that the EU has, has passed laws declaring that animals are sentient, or individual countries, or in different contexts or whatever. Do they... I mean, that's very nice. Like, you know, it's like saying this, passing a law, saying the sun rises every morning, uh, you know, this is true, but do they have any effect?

I mean, does it, do they ever? Are they just symbolic?

Neil Dullaghan: You're right, the primary law in the EU, the treaties, do recognize animals as sentient beings and say that member states should pay full regard to the welfare requirements of these animals, but when you look at the secondary legislation, the directives and regulations, often, unless they're made very specific, nothing on the ground changes.

So there's a general directive on farms and like that alone, plus the sentience recognition didn't seem to deliver any real on farm benefits. You needed these very species specific directives and regulations to deliver 'em. So I think sentience recognition in itself doesn't seem to be a strong theory of change for delivering impacts for animals. It might be, in some cases, a precursor. Maybe it speeds up change. Maybe it makes it more politically feasible and tangible to other stakeholders. But in and of itself, I think is not enough.

Mariann Sullivan: You know, one obstacle of the US in getting support for reforms that I think is even bigger in Europe. Is this, uh, or in some countries in Europe, is, is this whole worship of farmers.

Neil Dullaghan: Mm-hmm.

Mariann Sullivan: It's just crazy. I mean, it's a business, you know, they're good people, there are bad people. I dunno. It's like, there, it's just, it's crazy here too.

Um, including, you know, obviously not just farmers who raise plants, but farmers who raise animals and, you know, they're the, they're the salt of the earth or the best. Like, it's unbelievable. And they all believe it themselves. I'm digressing. I'm sorry. Um, so this kind of gets coupled with this deliberate, kind of naive te about where animal-based food actually comes from.

What you were saying before, that people like don't seem to recognize that it's all factory farmed. I feel like you're, I mean, in your, the way you write, you're pretty sympathetic to farmers as well. Is, is that right? And if so, who are the bad guys? If it's not the farmers and, and, and, uh, I don't know, it's not the government, the government's just doing... like who is, who are the bad guys here?

Like what is causing this, this, this obviously swell of public opinion that people are probably care about, but not quite enough to largely vote on. So that's a problem. Always that they, it always gets left behind because, you know, it's not like human rights issues. Who, who's the problem? Is it just the system is bad or are there bad actors?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah. So The Compassion Mandate is written from the perspective of a political scientist, and particularly from the view of like institutional, rational choice institutionalism, which just views sort of yeah, exactly. The problem is like systems, system of rules of the game and incentives. Um, and it's simply the case that the sort of costs of inaction, um, are not as high, are, are lower than the, the cost of action in certain cases. And so I think that's simply the case. I wouldn't necessarily blame consumers who are trying to feed their families, farmers who are trying to make a living, legislators who are trying to get elected, that's what they're there to do. In theory, they're supposed to represent, uh, their citizens, but like they have more short term, uh, desires.

And so I think it's more a result of there's simply not enough costs being, uh, exerted on the system to do with this issue to create the action. In the 1980s and nineties, there clearly was. You had a lot of public awareness, raising, uh, and mass protests. You had food safety scandals. You had organized issue publics, uh, around like voting blocks, that all created costs for inaction that were higher than the cost of inaction. Um, but more recently you just haven't had that, uh, equilibrium reached.

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, I think you're right. I, I just wonder why like, still there are still many people who care deeply, deeply about this issue. I wonder why activism has gotten so stymied in a way. I mean, maybe it was just frustration, you know, and increasing... uh, lawyers in, in, in the US because our system is so bad.

I think, you know, some, like back back when I was writing that article like 25 years ago, our issue was that the United States system for protecting farm animals was so awful that you had to come up with these crazy creative ways to, uh, to, to, um, create change. Actually, I'm just gonna tell a little anecdote.

My friend David, who I wrote the article with, David Wolfson and I had lunch with Peter Stevenson. I don't know whether you know him. He was at the time, um, with Compassion In World Farming in the UK and a big, just really trying to explore like how to do something in the US. He was a big campaigner. Um, did great work.

Anyway, uh, he was saying, I just don't know what to do in the US because the way the Congress is set up, that the legislative system is set up, everything goes into committee, subject committees, gets, goes into the agriculture committee, gets stuck there. That's not the way it is in the UK

We have back ventures. You can introduce bills and that's basically how everything has been achieved. And I mean, things that David and I had been hearing people talk about, um, we're, uh, this idea maybe of ballot initiatives. Then we said to him, you know, like you can, uh, in some states you can actually get a bunch of signatures and get a law passed.

And he was like, are you joking? Like, this is brilliant. Oh my God. Because people actually care about this issue. It just gets stuck in the legislature. And so I think that was a very imaginative way that, that the American, um, movement went and, um, an increasing number of animal lawyers in the US are looking at criminal cruelty laws and trying to do something with that.

And, and I just wonder, in the EU, is there also that level of, of legal activism and, um, kind of imaginative ways through, or because it's such, I don't know anything about civil law and or how, how these legal systems work. Is it, is it really like we have a system here and we have to do this through the system? Again, that was a ridiculous question, but um, if you can make sense of it. Uh.

Neil Dullaghan: I think there's a range of efforts that are being tried. Some are working within the system as it is, and trying to appeal to the set of incentives already there. There are some people who have some imaginative ideas about trying to change the rules of the game to be more in favor of animals. So for example, we've talked about how animal welfare is typically under the, is under the remit of food safety and consumer information. And there has been a general push to try and get animal welfare recognized in its own rights. Which resulted in the commissioner having this animal welfare title. Uh, but further effort would be to have a specific DG for animal welfare that's separate from food safety,

separate from consumer information, definitely separate from agriculture. Uh, it stands alone as as its own. So there's efforts like that. Uh, there's efforts...

Mariann Sullivan: But those efforts, like are efforts to change this governmental system. Is, is, is that where all of the efforts going to be? I, that's not a criticism of where the efforts are. I just don't understand how the system works.

Neil Dullaghan: No, I wouldn't say that's where all of the effort is. I would say that's like a small niche. There's also just, yeah, it's mostly smaller efforts tinkering around with the sort of institutional change. I would say most of the effort is working within the system, trying to pass national laws in member states and asking them to request EU level action and to lobby members of the European Parliament to also pass resolutions, saying that they would support EU level reform to sort of tell the other actors in the system that there's, uh, fertile support for, for reform. That's, I'd say, where most of the political effort is.

Mariann Sullivan: Interesting. Yeah, well, I, I mean, I, I truly believe that, uh, that the, the passion from the people is still there and, and it just hasn't been channeled in the way it was in the nineties. Maybe people are more frustrated, maybe people think it's being taken care of as, as many who are opposed to welfare reforms are worried that, that they just create a patina of, of reform without real reform.

But I think the passion is still there. And so I think that, uh, though there was a, there was a somewhat depressing development recently, right? About, um, about the, I, I don't know which entity it is, but the EU not taking up the issue of, of animal welfare, um, in the coming year. Is that, am, am I right?

Neil Dullaghan: So not, not sure what exactly, but one issue I've heard is that EFSA, this European scientific body that traditionally issues opinions on animal welfare, was supposed to issue opinions on aquatic animals, including farmed fish, over the next decade/

Um, what I've

heard recently is that they have sort of now quietly been told not to prioritize that and not to dedicate resources to that.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

It's not a good moment. It's not, but there's a lot of people working on this. There's a lot of people who care about it. And let's face it, everybody does care about it. I don't know why, why don't they all go vegan, Neil? Why don't, why don't, like, what is all of this about? Like, it's so crazy, right?

Neil Dullaghan: Yeah. I think a lot of it is about people not being organized into specific issue publics. This is an issue that there's broad, you know, 80, 90% public support, cross party support, but people are not organized on single issues around this. It's like a nice to have, not a must have. I think that's a huge part of it, that they're not organized into voting blocks that will put specific pressure on specific actors in the system and say, this is the one thing I care about.

I'm gonna be watching you, I'm gonna be,

Mariann Sullivan: yeah.

Neil Dullaghan: forcing

Mariann Sullivan: It's usually not the one thing anybody cares about though, because there are other things to care about. But that doesn't mean that'll, I mean, for some of us it is kind of like, you know, there are still people, there are people I would not vote for, even though they're good on animals 'cause you know, it's a, you never, it, it's a cross party issue.

It is so complicated.

Neil Dullaghan: And it's not very visible.

So there have been some efforts now to rank members of Parliament based on their animal welfare protection votes, and make that more salient to voters and citizens. So that you can see specifically, okay, this member of parliament is really doing a lot of good for animals, this person is constantly voting against them. And, but for most countries and most places, and most political parties, there isn't that visibility of like, how, how good is this party or this member of parliament on the issue of animal welfare? Even if I did care about it, how would I know if this is someone I should vote for.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh yeah, that's crucial. Yeah. Yeah. That, that is really important. And, and I, I, I imagine people running for office would, uh, would really pay attention to that. Uh, 'cause people, um, where we started out, you saying that, you know, they're always saying, I got more letters on this than on any other issue. They always say that I think they are telling the truth.

Neil Dullaghan: Mm-hmm.

Mariann Sullivan: So it's so mysterious why so frequently nothing gets done. Alright. This was a depressing interview, Neil. I'm not gonna deny it, but it was so informative and, and really helped me understand, like, because I haven't paid, like I paid a little attention 25 years ago because I was writing that article and I wanted to talk about, or we were writing that article and we wanted to talk about it. Since then, I just haven't paid much of any attention at all, but I knew not much was happening. Um, and this does explain why, but, but I really appreciate your enthusiasm for the possibility that things are going to happen and that there is, there is, there's the will, there's the will from the people, there's the science and what you just have to get the legislators to recognize that.

Neil Dullaghan: Exactly the sort

five, six years, you've seen

growing momentum, building pressure towards, uh, change again. And I think it's just a matter of whether like the movement and different actors can keep up that pressure to reach a tipping point.

Mariann Sullivan: We haven't even talked about, and I don't think it's your area, though, I'm sure you know a lot about it. All of the move towards the new foods. I mean, the new foods are obviously a huge piece of this. Some of what Europe has done recently is pretty stupid, I think, with the labeling issues. Uh, but, um, but all in all, they can put these small roadblocks.

It's the same here. They put roadblocks in front of it, but it's not gonna stop it. So, and the development of the foods in Europe has been, has been extraordinary. Um, and the growth of veganism has also been extraordinary, at least in some countries. So, uh, there's lot, there's lots to hope for, and at least now I have a little bit of a framework and how to think about it, uh, what's happening in Europe.

So thank you for that.

Neil Dullaghan: Thank you. I had a lovely chat.

Mariann Sullivan: And thank you all of you for joining us today and to Vicki Beechler and Jen Riley and Akber Khan for their help in producing the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite pod catcher or on YouTube and see you next time.