Animal rights activists have achieved a stage victory in the dispute over shocking images of pigs being stunned from a slaughterhouse in Lohne. In a recent decision dated January 27th, the Oldenburg regional court allowed the secretly made recordings to be distributed via social media channels. In July 2025, the court banned the videos from being broadcast on the Animal Rights Watch (Ariwa) homepage.
The photos show how the animals are driven into the carbon dioxide shaft of Brand Qualitätsfleisch GmbH. The slaughterhouse operator tried to have the relevant reels on the account “The Slaughterhouse Process” stopped through court. The court has now decided that its July ruling does not cover this and other publications of the video material.
The distribution of the images via social media is of central importance for the activists. In addition to current reporting – for example from an intervention at the Agriculture Minister’s appearance at the Green Week in Berlin – they use the account for fund-raising campaigns in order to be able to cover the legal costs.
They also point out the progress of the proceedings: The hearing is scheduled to take place before the Oldenburg Higher Regional Court on April 28th. “Today we lodged an immediate appeal against the decision,” brand lawyer Walter Scheuerl told the taz on Monday when asked.
Animal protection causes animal suffering
The films also pose the problems of CO2-Stunning. At the beginning of the 20th century it was enforced as an animal welfare standard during slaughter. Cramming pigs into cages and bringing them into a carbon dioxide-saturated atmosphere in an elevator system has become established as a factory solution adapted to mass consumption: most pigs in Germany are stunned in this way.
Animal rights activist Anna Schubert believes that there is “hardly anything more cruel to animals” than this method. At least it has been a scientific consensus for decades that it causes considerable animal suffering. It causes “aversive reactions,” as the specialist literature puts it, which in turn leads to dramatic scenes. Because on the one hand, CO combines2 with the pig’s saliva to produce caustic carbonic acid. This causes acute pain on the mucous membranes.
On the other hand, the gas causes feelings of suffocation. It causes anxiety, which then manifests itself in panicked squeaks and futile attempts to escape: the animals hyperventilate, defecate, hit the dirty steel bars with their hooves and stick their snouts into the gaps as if they were hoping to squeeze through them. Seeing and hearing this is oppressive. It is almost never documented on film and even rarely shown publicly.
Replacement methods are now being sought across Europe. Also in Germany. Researchers from the Celle branch of the Friedrich-öffler-Institut Celle and the University of Göttingen worked together here from 2020 to 2023 under the humorous acronym “Tiger”. The joint project sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and the meat industry was intended to find out whether stunning with nitrogen or argon would be possible and more gentle in existing systems.
The animals hyperventilate, defecate, beat their hooves against the dirty steel bars and stick their snouts into the gaps as if they were hoping to squeeze through them
Until then, the use of these inert gases “was not considered commercially viable due to concerns regarding gas stability, stunning effectiveness, meat quality and cost,” according to the project outline. Most of the concerns were dispelled. The only thing that cannot be denied is the cost factor of almost 1 euro extra per kilo of pork.
In the court case against Schubert and her colleague Hendrik Haßel, it emerged that the slaughterhouse operator himself had also used the images taken with a hidden camera. He used them to document the proper functioning of his stunning system.
“We are always shocked at how aggressively Brand acts against us,” said Schubert, commenting on the court decision. The regional court’s ruling obviously did not stop the Insta-Reels. “Nevertheless, Brand wanted the images deleted there too.”
Schubert suspects there is a strategy behind such secondary procedures. The slaughterhouse wants to “intimidate them, ruin them financially and silence them,” says Schubert. In short: She sees herself as the victim of a slap lawsuit.
If in doubt, new lawsuits
Fire lawyer Walter Scheuerl counters: The current decision in no way means that the “redistribution of the illegally obtained video recordings is permitted or even legal”. If the decision stands up before the Higher Regional Court, a separate lawsuit would have to be filed against this individual publication.
“That would be absurd,” says Scheuerl. “Then exactly what Ms. Schubert mistakenly complains about would happen.” “New lawsuits would then be necessary with every posting.” As a result, only the court costs and the Procedural costs continue to rise.
date: 2026-02-11 18:06:00