Vegetarians let animals live - the ultimate in animal welfare

Dear Sirs,

On behalf of the board and member organisations of the European Vegetarian Union I would like to thank you for having organized the conference 'Animal Welfare - Improving by Labelling?' on 28 March 2007.

We appreciate that the EU Commission and Parliament have already initiated a lot of positive changes for the lives of animals and plan to continue on this road in spite of the huge obstacles put in the way by some EU members. The evident resistances by certain national politicians make all endeavors in the field of animal welfare even more laudable, important and urgent.

However, we want to point out that whilst better treatment will make the lives of animals easier, there is no difference to the final and fatal outcome: They are destined to die. Vegetarianism offers a way-out of mass-killings and the moral, ecological, financial and public-health dilemma accompanying it.

There is no doubt that the number of those shunning meat is growing fast and will accelerate even more. After all, mainly young and well-educated women chose to live without meat today - and they will be the ones educating tomorrow's children. Furthermore, also thanks to the FAO (Livestock a major threat to environment ), people are now becoming aware of the havoc on climate created by animal husbandry and will draw their conclusions.

Considering the growing public awareness of the enormous damage brought upon us all by the production of meat and because of the consequent increase in the number of vegetarians, we want to suggest a proactive role of national governments and international bodies: Please include the concept of vegetarianism in all future deliberations regarding animal welfare, human- and animal health-matters, environment, consumer trends etc.

Regarding the planned animal-welfare-label I want to point out that an even better alternative already exists: the EVU V-Label guarantees that the labeled 'product does not contain slaughter products'.

Sincerely,
Renato Pichler
President
European Vegetarian Union (EVU)