Swiss meat habits clash with ethical concerns as EU sanctions ex-intel officer

Dear Swiss Abroad,

On Christmas Eve, we hope you can take a few moments to pause and reflect, and - if you have the chance - to celebrate!

Here in Switzerland, shops are full of meat for the festive season. Today's briefing features the boss of a major meat processor, who has offered some insights into the industry. Meanwhile the case of a sanctioned Swiss ex-colonel is also making waves in the media.

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The former Swiss colonel Jacques Baud is blacklisted in Brussels; the European Union (EU) has put him on a sanctions list. Baud now wants to defend his case.

During his career, Baud had a reputation as a secret service expert, and his analyses regularly appeared in Swiss media. In recent years, he published books on the Russian war against Ukraine and on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At the beginning of the week, the EU froze his assets. As a result, citizens and companies in the EU are now prohibited from making funds or resources available to him. In addition, Baud can no longer enter or travel through the EU.

The 70-year-old ex-colonel is a 'regular' guest on pro-Russian TV and radio shows, according to the EU's regulation implementing the sanctions. For example, it said, Baud has accused Ukraine of having provoked the Russian invasion in order to join NATO.

Baud now wants to challenge the sanctions, and he will also lodge a complaint with the European Court of Justice, he told the Keystone-SDA news agency. The sanctions decision was purely political, not legally motivated, he claims.

According to the CEO of meat processor Bell, the trend towards meat substitute products is over. Sales of such substitutes are only growing by between 0% and 1% per year, which is why they have become a niche product, Marco Tschanz told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). He says the reasons for the stagnating growth are the taste and the high degree of processing needed by such ersatz products.

Tschanz also told the paper that the bigger picture hasn't hugely shifted. "Consumers are paying more attention to animal welfare and the Swiss origin of products than they used to," he said. "But we are not seeing less meat being eaten, on the contrary. In the case of chicken, for example, per capita consumption rose by around 8% last year alone."

Tschanz doesn't believe that chicken from US factory farms will catch on in Switzerland. "Even if sales were to be authorised, they wouldn't stand a chance with consumers," he reckons. Bell is not planning to import any chicken products from the US.