The Supreme Court later interpreted "maltreatment" as "deliberately cruel treatment", which significantly reduced the ability to prosecute animal cruelty (for instance, a street vendor who killed cats by smashing them against the street was acquitted on the grounds that he intended to get their skins and therefore was not deliberately treating them with cruelty).
[2] As a member of the European Union (EU), beginning in the 1990s Netherlands began to implement EU regulations on animal welfare, including a 1997 measure forbidding pen confinement of veal calves greater than 8 weeks old, a 1998 directive on the five freedoms for farmed animals, and bans on testing cosmetics on animals, barren battery cages, and gestation crates.
Additional legislation implementing European Union (EU) animal welfare regulations is also in place.
[1] Statistics on the number of animals raised and/or killed for food each year in the Netherlands include: In 2006, an estimated 4% of Dutch identified as vegetarian.
[9] According to official statistics, 403,370 research procedures were carried out on animals in 2016 (not including invertebrates), a 16% fall from 2015, and down almost 40% from 2000.
[11] On 11 November 2020, the Netherlands moved the phase-out of fur farming forward, putting 1 January 2021 as the target date to limit the risk of mutation of SARS-CoV-2.
Its successes include more stringent animal transportation regulations and securing 8 million USD to fund research into cellular agriculture.