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Zurich farmers’ manager denies ‘horse cruelty’

The director of the Zurich Farmers' Federation faces charges of animal cruelty and German customs fraud in the cross-border trade of horses.

Published: 23 March 2014 22:05 CET

Zurich farmers' manager denies 'horse cruelty'

Zurich Farmers' Federation director Ferdi Hodel. Photo: ZBV

Ferdi Hodel, a horse breeder from Volken in the canton of Zurich, will go to trial over the death of a show jumping horse he sold to a family in the canton in 2011, the SonntagsBlick newspaper reported online on Sunday.

The six-year-old horse turned out to be “useless” as a sport horse and would not be loaded into a van, the newspaper reported.

Hodel, 48, offered to train the horse so he would go into the van but the animal ended up with a back injury so severe that it had to be destroyed, according to the report.

The buyers sought a refund of their 40,000-franc purchase price for the force.

And investigators, after an inquiry that started last spring, have decided to prosecute Hodel, who denies the allegations, while his lawyer expects he will be acquitted.

SonntagsBlick said the municipal councillor, who is also a colonel in the Swiss army, faces customs fraud cases over horses from Germany allegedly sold to buyers in Switzerland for prices significantly higher than those declared to customs.

He also faces an allegation from the director of a sports horse management company in Fürth, Germany who claims Hodel sold her a horse advertised as healthy that turned out to be injured.

Hodel maintains his innocence in the cases.

Hans Frei, the president of the Zurich Farmers' Federation, said the organization has been informed about the allegations from the outset and has not reason to “mistrust” Hodel.

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Farmers dump sheep killed by wolves in front of Swiss government building

Around a dozen breeders came from the Saint-Barthelemy area in the western Swiss canton of Vaud to lay out the carcasses of 12 sheep in front of the regional government headquarters in Lausanne, the Chateau Saint-Maire.

“These sheep were killed last night,” Eric Herb, a member of a Swiss association demanding the regulation of big predators, was quoted as saying by the Keystone-ATS news agency.

“It is really time to act.”

“We are sick of this. We want the wolf killed,” agreed Patrick Perroud, a farmer and butcher from the nearby municipality of Oulens.

“Cohabitation is not possible. Our territory is too small,” he told Keystone-ATS.

The protesters told the news agency that wolves had killed 17 sheep in the same area late last month, two earlier this week and 13 overnight to Saturday.

“The breeders have played nice until now, but this time it was too much,” Herb said.

The protesters were planning to increase the pressure on the Vaud government environment minister, Vassilis Venizelos of the Green Party, he said.

One of the protesters’ banners read: “Vassilis step down”, Keystone-ATS reported.

The breeders had briefly negotiated with regional police before being allowed to lay down the animal carcasses on tarpaulin in front of the Chateau.

Participants in the protest, which was supported by the regional chapter of the far-right Swiss People’s Party — Switzerland’s largest party — lamented that they were losing sleep.

“We have to check on our animals every night,” one was quoted as saying.

After being wiped out more than a century ago, wolves have in recent decades begun returning to Switzerland and to several other European countries.

Since the first pack was spotted in the wealthy Alpine nation in 2012, the number of packs swelled to 32 last year, with around 300 individual wolves counted.

Nature conservation groups have hailed the return as a sign of a healthier and more diverse ecosystem.

But breeders and herders complain of attacks on livestock and have been ramping up demands to cull more wolves.

Swiss authorities last year relaxed the rules for hunting the protected species, and decided to allow large preventative culls in the most affected cantons but swift legal actions put those plans partially on ice.

The debate in several parts of Europe about wolves rose up the political agenda in September.

In an open letter to the European Commission, eight leading conservation groups said there were ways to make coexistence easier between humans and large wild animals like wolves.

“Damage to livestock is often linked to the lack of adequate supervision and/or physical protection,” they said. They pointed to strategies such as “the training of dogs to protect herds, education of herders, tools and technical solutions to deter wolves”.

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