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The future key players in environment friendly farming and animal welfare based on new legislation in Croatia

There is a high demand of nowdays civilization for producing huge amounts of different kinds of food from agriculture. Pressure of competition between producers forces them to produce in the most economic and efficient way. They are trying to follow these trends by going into intensive farming, which opens many questions about environment friendly animal husbandry and animal welfare as well. On the other side, we can find increased care about consumers covered by EU (European Union) standards where many consumers are ready to pay more for the same product if it has clear history that starts from the field itself. Still, Croatia remains, for now, the part of the World where most consumers prefer cheaper price of food instead of clear history, which allows producers to think in their economic way. Recently, Croatia has brought new legislation concerning this topic in order to prepare itself for joining EU. Therefore, we can expect in next few years firm interaction between key players in farm animal welfare: consumers, farmers, food retailers, media, politicians, vegetarians, welfare campaigners and farm animals itself. Scientists are going to be involved in this power struggle as well with everyone's expectation to contribute objective investigations and researches. This paper analyses how much the Croatian standards are confirmed by those from EU, goals, strengths, possible weaknesses, opportunities and dangers faced of different key players, as well as scientists' role in this power struggle, which will continue until the players see the mutual benefit of balancing conflicting interests.

key players; environment; animal welfare; legislation; Croatia

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