A Litigation Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Lia Wilbourn reports on a new law in Switzerland that requires that products like meat, dairy, and eggs be labeled to disclose if the animals were subjected to mutilations without pain relief—a common practice in the animal farming industry.

Switzerland Adopts a Historic Law to Label Cruelty in Animal Products
From Lia Wilbourn, IDA In Defense of Animals, idausa.org
August 2025

Images from Canva

As of July 2025, Switzerland will begin to phase in a landmark law requiring food labels to disclose if animals were subjected to mutilations without pain relief. It’s the first law of its kind in the world, marking a breakthrough in transparency around animal cruelty.

The new law will require producers, importers, restaurants, and grocers to label these items on packaging, menus, or elsewhere. It applies to meat, dairy, eggs, and imports of foie gras, which is produced through the merciless force-feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers, although the practice is banned in Switzerland. It requires labeling when animals are subjected to excruciating procedures, such as cutting off their testicles, horns, beaks, tails, teeth, or legs (as in the case of frogs’ legs), or force-feeding, all without painkillers.

The law also extends beyond food to ban some fur imports, but only from animals subjected to specific cruel practices, not others. It’s a major step forward, but two issues remain.

First, with no determined label, it’s unclear for now how noticeable these disclosures will actually be to consumers.

Second, the deeper, systemic brutality of all animal farming and exploitation remains unaddressed. Glaringly absent from the law is any requirement to provide pain relief, let alone a ban on these torturous procedures.

Excruciating procedures will remain standard and routine. This is true in virtually all animal-exploiting industries globally.

The law also doesn’t address many other horrors of animal farming, including the psychological torment of confinement, separating babies from their mothers, and the violation and pain of forcible impregnation. Nor does it cover the suffering of animals transported to slaughter in extreme weather without food or water for days, the terror of the slaughterhouse, or piglet thumping, which involves slamming the heads of weak or slow-growing piglets against a hard surface to kill them.

This legislation is bold progress — it exposes a reality most consumers don’t realize: mutilations without painkillers are entrenched in industries that exploit animals. We hope that it will encourage people to peer through the massive wall of secrecy, deception, and systemic cruelty of using animals for profit.

True justice for animals demands not just mild reform, but a reckoning with the normalized violence of animal exploitation and a commitment to ending it altogether.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing. You don’t have to wait for politicians to legislate. Do the right thing for animals today: live vegan and defend animals. Start by downloading our free Vegan Guide.

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Posted on All-Creatures: August 8, 2025
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