December 29, 2022
We have achieved a lot in 2022! Here is a review of our year.
We have achieved a lot in 2022! Here is a review of our year.
The year is slowly coming to an end and we want to pause for a moment and look back. It has been an exciting year for Expertise for Animals. We went public, realized exciting projects with different organizations and met interesting people at conferences. This is how we expanded our network and established Expertise for Animals in the movements.
In spring, Expertise for Animals went public. First, through our social media channels on Instagram and LinkedIn, and second, through this website.
We were nervous about how our organization would be received by other organizations and actors in the animal movements. We are happy to say that we are getting a lot of positive feedback. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who support us in our work.
At the beginning of the year, we supported Hilal Sezgin in the new editing of her book "Tiere wollen leben! Warum auch Kühe Rechte haben und Schnitzel schlecht fürs Klima sind." We researched and updated animal-related facts for the animal-ethical book for young people. In this way, we contributed a little piece to this wonderful book.
We already reported on our collaboration with L214 on the abuses in the French turkey industry. One thing we can happily add: As part of this collaboration, we also gained some experience at EU level. In December, Marietheres Reinke supported L214 at a meeting with DG Sante, the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, where she spoke up for turkeys.
We supported foodwatch e.V. in their campaign, in which they critically examined various animal welfare labels. Their main critique is that the seals have hardly any influence on the health status of farmed animals in Germany. In a video by foodwatch e.V. (in German), we provided insight into the health care of non-human animals in German stables.
We are very happy about our ongoing collaboration with Animal Society. We carried out several projects with them this year. Most recently, Animal Society published a report on the killing of chicks. The report is addressed to the European Commission. We support them with checking relevant facts and data with our professional expertise.
At their invitation, we participated in an event at the Federal Parliament on the planned position of a Federal Animal Protection Commissioner. Animal Society is a young organization that advocates for government representation of animals and gives non-human animals a voice in politics, law and society. Check out their website for more information on their current campaigns.
We are also pleased to announce that we are now working again on a project basis with Albert Schweitzer Foundation. As soon as results are published, we'll let you know!
Another longer-term collaboration we are very excited about is with the Qualzucht-Evidenz Netzwerk (QUEN) (Torture Breeding Evidence Network).Through our cooperation we strengthen their work against torture breeding.
We also supported ARIWA e.V. in their animal rights work with research on animal-related technical issues. We will let you know when they publish the results.
At the end of November, we expanded our team and welcomed Berna Valladares as a fundraiser at Expertise for Animals. You will be hearing and reading a lot more from her, as she will be managing our social media channels and writing our newsletters.
We didn't get to write as much as we would have liked this year. So we were not able to give you the insight into our organization and present exciting findings about non-human animals to the extent we would have liked. Leading an organization is new, exciting and above all time-consuming for us. In the meantime, many processes run more routinely. We are therefore in an optimistic mood that we will have more time to write in 2023.
We do not want to end this annual review without at least briefly mentioning the geopolitical challenges of this year. The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, the abduction and killing of young demonstrators in Iran and the banishment of girls and women from the education system in Afghanistan do not leave us indifferent. Even though none of this directly impacts our work, we would like to express our fullest solidarity to all those affected!
Our wish for the new year is that repressive and patriarchal regimes have no future and that all sentient beings have the freedom to lead a self-determined life and to be respected as individuals.
