charter for animals welfare

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ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR JEAN-MARIE GIFFROY Director of the Prince Laurent Foundation

Your Royal Highness, Members of the Government, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The text of the Charter will be handed over to the members of the press following this meeting. You will have the opportunity to get acquainted with the tenor of this document, as well as the press release very shortly. My intervention will only attempt to elucidate concretely certain aspects.

The Charter offers a specificity on which its seems to me quite important to dwell - rather than on the intentions of a profession or a sector of production - which is the case in most similar texts - it represents the engagement of all actors more or less concerned by the welfare of farm animals, producers, truckers, merchants, slaughter houses, the distribution, the consumers, the protectors of animals and all competent authorities.

The objective is the improvement of the animal welfare well beyond the legal requirements. The various actors have indeed pledged their collaboration in this sense, and more particularly to promote and give added value to production which, on a voluntary basis, consents to show more respect for the animals.

Even the elaboration of the Charter has also assumed another specific aspect : for the first time all the players mentioned above, have been brought together around a table to discuss the document.
The initial draft has been discussed during many dozens of hours of negotiations. Most of the articles have been reworked. Some of them have been withdrawn, while others have been added. Each participant has had to make concessions. The final draft is the outcome of a consensus, validated "hic et nunc" on a common statement of intention.
The Charter will be subject to evolution and we are therefore ready to revise it in the light of the evolution of the expectations of society, of the progress in the field of scientific research and the technical advances.

Finally, the Charter is only a statement of intent. It still needs to be put to the test. The Prince Laurent Foundation for the Welfare of domestic and wild animals is ready to prolong its collaboration to this initial step and prop up the concrete and significant initiatives of the sector which are inspired by the Charter and strive for the recognition of products related to it by a distinct mark or a label based on negotiated specifications and to be controlled by an external independent body in order to guarantee real progress with regard to the applicable legal obligations in the matter.