Europe’s farming landscape is rich and diverse. This diversity should be explored and leveraged to create more opportunities for sustainability in the sector. Different farming systems across the continent offer unique advantages, and recognising their potential is key to future agricultural development.
Over the past years, animal farming has been increasingly criticised for contributing to environmental pollution, climate change, biodiversity losses or animal suffering. This narrow view overlooks the complexity of the sector and the potential for improvement within existing systems.
While such criticism raises valid points, this narrative often disregards the positive contributions of the sector. The discussion has become increasingly polarised, and a select few farming practices and systems are idealised as the only sustainable way forward.
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For its launch, the new Sustainable Livestock Intergroup invites you to discuss a familiar topic in the European Parliament: animal transport. But with a renewed approach—what if we finally gave the floor to those who manage animal transport daily?
Farmers and transporters’ perspectives are often overlooked or difficult to find through simple research. Yet, their insights are essential to understanding how and why animals are transported in Europe and what practical measures could improve animal welfare—without compromising the well-being of those who care for them.
With this shift in perspective, the Sustainable Livestock Intergroup aims to foster a truly depolarized, fact-based, and field-oriented exchange between professionals, academics, policymakers, and civil society organizations. This approach is essential to grasping the economic, social, and environmental complexities of the issue—reflecting the three pillars of sustainability that inspired our Intergroup’s name.
This kind of in-depth dialogue, which was lacking in the previous term, especially on agricultural and livestock matters, is, in our view, the only way to advance balanced European policies and find meaningful compromises that work in practice.
To bring the discussion closer to real-world conditions, we will organize a live demonstration of a livestock truck in front of the European Parliament at the end of our first meeting for interested MEPs, assistants, and advisors.
During the presentation of the Vision for the Future of Agriculture, Commissioner Hansen paid special attention to the livestock sector, announcing that a dedicated strategy and vision would be presented in the coming months. At the same time, the European Parliament has taken up the issue and will also propose its own initiative report on the subject. It is therefore evident that the Intergroup on Sustainable Livestock should dedicate time to reflecting on this topic, always maintaining its unique approach of fostering dialogue between the political, academic, and professional spheres.
It would be wrong to think that the future of livestock is merely an agricultural issue. Given its numerous contributions to our societies, the future of livestock farming influences many aspects of our daily lives and deserves to be addressed in depth, considering all the sector's externalities. That is why we will dedicate not just one but two interconnected events to this topic, ensuring a thorough and serious discussion.
We propose to start by exploring the various contributions of livestock through presentations from academics—many of which are often overlooked or simply unknown to the general public! Presentations will help participants building a more comprehensive and precise diagnosis of the situation. On these foundations a follow up event on 10 July will focus on hearing directly from farmers and industry professionals about their vision for the future of their sectors and their expectations for EU policies to advance the sustainability of the sector.
The inaugural meeting of the Intergroup opened with a discussion on a hot topic.
