Hunger Fight Must Protect Animals Too - Campaigners

PlanetArk 1 Oct 08;

ROME - Assuring farm animals are reared in humane conditions must be an integral part of efforts to fight world hunger, animal welfare campaigners said this week.

"It's often seen as a luxury, Western-driven concept, but increased and improved animal welfare can lead to more productive animals," Justine Holmes, of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, said.

The society is one of the groups attending a four-day Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) conference on animal welfare.

A coalition of animal campaigners handed the FAO a 10-point plan for protecting animals as the United Nations agency tries to help the developing world meet a surging demand for meat.

The groups want the UN agency -- which has an annual budget of some US$500 million to promote food production -- to make the protection of farm animals an integral part of its work. They also want it to stop encouraging intensive agriculture such as factory farming of chickens and pigs.

The campaigners want World Trade Organisation rules to explicitly allow subsidies to improve animal welfare.

Simon Mack of the FAO's animal production section said on Tuesday the agency takes animal welfare seriously, as it had proven by hosting this week's meeting, but that intensive farming was likely to increase to supply global demand.

"I would hope everything we do throughout the livestock sector is pro-welfare," Mack told Reuters.

"Prevention of diseases, improving animal feed, housing, the use of indigenous breeds, it's all pro-welfare."

"There is a growing demand for animal products and the livestock sector is having to respond to that demand and some sort of intensification of livestock production is inevitable," he said.

That did not necessarily mean animal welfare standards would decline, he said, adding that small-scale farming did not necessarily guarantee better conditions for animals. (Reporting by Robin Pomeroy; editing by Michael Roddy)