Research for animal protection: Regensburg woman receives important prize!

Research for animal protection: Regensburg woman receives important prize!

On March 18, 2025, Dr. Nina Kerstensteiner, a research assistant at the University of Regensburg, awarded the Felix Wankel Animal Welfare Junior Research Prize 2025. This prize, endowed with 6,000 euros, honors her dissertation with the title "Animals on trial? Structural enforcement deficit in animal protection law". In her work, Kerstensteiner sheds light on the implementation weaknesses in German animal protection law, which is one of the strictest in the world.

A central result of her dissertation is the identification of a structural enforcement deficit, particularly with regard to judicial control options. While the interests of animal owners can be sued for, animal welfare is often not taken into account. Kerstensteiner's research analyzes how this discrepancy between legal objectives and reality can be overcome.

Research questions and decisions

The work focuses on two essential questions: Which instruments can help solve the problem? And can these be implemented through the courts without a legislative initiative? In this context, Kerstensteiner suggests introducing a representative action, which could help in the short term to overcome the existing enforcement and implementation problems. She also calls for legal reforms to make animal protection law more effective.

According to the researcher, strategic lawsuits could promote social acceptance of animal legal capacity and thereby contribute to the further development of animal protection law. Your study contributes to an important discourse about the future of animal protection in Germany.

The award ceremony took place in the Great Auditorium LMU Munich took place and was accompanied by a keynote speech by Dr. Christian Dürnberger from the Messerli Research Institute accompanied. In addition, a team of researchers from the Technical University of Munich received the Felix Wankel Animal Welfare Research Prize 2025 for their study of the sensation of pain in chicken embryos.

Criticism of current animal welfare practices

As part of the discussion about animal protection rights and their implementation, several animal protection organizations, including the DJGT, are positioning themselves against the federal government's plans to make it easier to kill surplus laboratory animals. The move is criticized as a violation of German and European animal protection law as well as the state goal of animal protection enshrined in Article 20a of the Basic Law. In 2022, around 1.77 million “surplus animals” were killed in Germany, which exceeds the number of animals used in animal experiments.

The federal government has proposed a change to the Animal Welfare Laboratory Animal Ordinance (TierSchVersV), which would like to redefine the “reasonable reason” for killing animals. Animal protection organizations consider this regulation to be insufficient and argue that the placement or permanent accommodation of surplus laboratory animals remains excluded.

Current case law requires that economic reasons or a lack of capacity cannot constitute a reasonable reason for killing an animal. Animal protection organizations have also issued a joint statement containing suggestions for a catalog of criteria to better ensure animal welfare. The debate about animal testing and the associated animal protection is supported by the work of scientists like Dr. Kerstensteiner continues to have a significant influence.