ICARE submission to the European Commission public consultation on modernising EU on-farm animal welfare legislation
Overview
This submission responds to the European Commission’s 12-week public consultation (19 September–17 December 2025) supporting the impact assessment for a revision of EU on-farm animal welfare rules, including work linked to phasing out cages. It was submitted on 12 December 2025.
It also sits in the broader political and legal context shaped by the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) ‘End the Cage Age’, which gathered 1,397,113 validated statements of support and calls for legislation to prohibit cages for multiple farmed-animal categories (including laying hens, rabbits, and various pig confinement systems, among others).
What this publication includes
The export of the completed questionnaire, reproduced as submitted, with personal data removed.
This is a public version prepared for publication by ICARE. Limited redactions were made solely to protect personal data (e.g., name, email address, and technical identifiers). No substantive changes were made to the content of the submission.
Key messages
In this submission, ICARE argues in particular for:
enforceable, species-specific rules grounded in animals’ sentience and fundamental interests;
phasing out cages and other structurally harmful confinement systems through EU-wide legal prohibitions and short, credible transition periods;
stronger, harmonised enforcement through official controls supported by animal-based indicators;
inclusion of species frequently left behind (including certain poultry categories, rabbits, equines, and farmed aquatic animals); and
an EU approach to ‘level the playing field’.
How to cite
International Centre for Animal Rights and Ethics (ICARE), Submission to the European Commission public consultation on modernising EU on-farm animal welfare legislation (Initiative 14671) (12 December 2025) (public version).
Download the submission
Image credit: Balding laying hens occupy a crowded battery cage inside an industrial egg production farm housing tens of thousands of chickens. Hens lose their feathers due to stress and exhaustion in the laying cycles latter stages. Poland, 2022. Andrew Skowron / We Animals
