EU backs cage-free farming but not ethnic minority pact
July 3rd, 2021A pro-government pundit lambasts the European Commission which, after rejecting the ‘Minority Safe Pact’, has now embraced a citizens’ petition entitled ‘End the Cage Age’.
‘The only way ethnic minorities can hope to have their voices heard by the European Union is to give up their identities and become hens’, Ottó Gajdics writes in Magyar Nemzet. After the ‘End the Cage Age’ petition was supported by the European Parliament earlier this month, the European Commission made it clear that it would issue the necessary decrees to enforce the ban on certain types of factory farming. In contrast, the commentator remarks, the Commission flatly refused even to discuss the Minority Safety Pack which sought guarantees for minorities to be allowed to use their mother tongues and preserve their cultures. Both petitions were supported by over a million EU citizens. Gajdics sarcastically adds that while European Commissioners attach high importance to the comfort of a Union hen, they appear to show no interest in the plight of ethnic minority citizens who wage a day-to-day struggle to have their rights respected.
The use of cages in farming will probably be banned in the European Union from 2027. A leading official of the Hungarian Poultry Raising Council told Klubrádió that Hungary’s producers have just recovered from an earlier decree that prescribed larger cages and often find the cost of new investments prohibitive. Increasing the costs of keeping poultry will make European poultry meat and eggs too expensive to withstand outside competition, she warned.