Food Safety vs. Animal Welfare – Does the Moral Status of Animals Really Matter?

Abstract This article studies animal welfare in food production in the European Union concentrating on the interface between animal welfare and food safety regulations. Animal welfare and food safety laws have very different aims and objects of protection, which overlap in many areas and often conflict with each other. Animal welfare laws aim to ensure and protect the well-being of animals, whereas food safety legislation safeguards the health and life of humans. The conflict of interests is evident e.g., regarding medicating farm animals, where protecting the health of humans is often placed before safeguarding the well-being of animals. The article aims to define when an animal becomes food in the sense that it activates the food safety regulation, and to give a justified interpretative suggestion for situations in which the object of protection is simultaneously the well-being of animals and the interests of humans. The research method is legal dogmatics with a legal-philosophical approach. The article argues that despite of the requirements of animal welfare law, the current interpretation of animal welfare and food safety regulation puts the economic interests and pure pleasure of humans above the painless lives and treatment of farm animals, which is not morally acceptable.