Held out for hours

14 animal rights activists arrested in front of the ministry

On Thursday, 20 animal rights activists gathered in front of the Ministry of Agriculture to demand an end to fully slatted floors.(Bild: VGT.at)

On Thursday, 14 animal rights activists were arrested in front of the Ministry of Agriculture in Vienna. According to their own statement, they had held out there for seven hours to speak to Minister Norbert Totschnig (ÖVP). Their request: an end to the fully slatted floor.

The 20 animal rights activists came to the Ministry of Agriculture on Thursday as a "delegation of pigs", according to a press release from the VGT Association Against Animal Factories. When they were not received by Minister Norbert Totschnig (ÖVP), they waited in the entrance area and some of them chained themselves with bicycle locks around their necks.

Here you can see a tweet from Martin Balluch.

VGT chairman Martin Balluch posted several photos of the action. "Even if the minister has once again buried his head in the sand, the problem will not go away. A ban on full slatted floors is necessary," he wrote on Platform X. The interests of the animals must be taken into account, according to a statement.

14 activists in police custody
According to the VGT members, they held out in front of the Ministry of Agriculture in Vienna for a whole seven hours. The police then cut the activists loose and arrested 14 out of a total of 20. They were taken into police custody.

After seven hours, the police intervened.(Bild: VGT.at)

One demand was "Straw instead of concrete".(Bild: VGT.at)

The activists wore pig masks.(Bild: VGT.at)

Fully slatted floors are usually concrete floors with slits through which the animals' manure and urine fall into the slurry pit below. Straw is not used. According to Statistics Austria, around 70 percent of pigs in Austria are kept on fully slatted floors (as of 2020). The law stipulates, for example, a certain width for the slats and a minimum distance between them.