Wiesbaden (dpa/lhe) – In order to reduce the often painful transport of animals, a mobile slaughterhouse for poultry has been approved in Hesse. In it, up to 600 broilers or laying hens can be slaughtered directly in the poultry farms per day – the animals do not have to be driven to a slaughterhouse beforehand. As the Ministry of Agriculture in Wiesbaden announced on Thursday, this is the first EU approval of this kind in Germany.

“This mobile slaughter is particularly important to support species-appropriate husbandry in mobile stalls and smaller farms with free-range poultry so that they can also market their poultry,” said Secretary of State for Agriculture Oliver Conz. An organic farm from the Odenwald district applied for the approval, which was initially limited to three months. According to the information, the mobile is the further development of a system that was put into operation in 2019 in a Hessian pilot project in the Wetteraukreis and is used throughout Hesse.