Actor Hannes Jaenicke has been fighting for endangered or abused animals with his ZDF documentary series since 2008. In the current issue from Tuesday, “Hannes Jaenicke: In action for the pig” (available in the ZDF media library), he also devoted himself to so-called farm animals, which end up on our plates as meat. Many pigs are slaughtered in the huge meat industry companies, whose bosses Jaenicke accused in an interview with the teleschau news agency: “For me, such people belong in court.”

Jaenicke also denounced what he considered to be an obvious breach of the law in his documentary. “They break laws so shamelessly that I ask myself: why aren’t they in jail?” It’s not just about individuals who represent the meat industry in public. “The whole system has to be turned completely upside down,” demands the actor.

But shouldn’t our Animal Welfare Act prevent the tormenting of animals? “The Animal Welfare Act isn’t even worth the paper it was printed on,” said the 62-year-old on the legal situation. The philosopher Richard David Precht explains in the film that the sentence: “No animal may be tortured without good reason” is replaced in practice by “economic reason”.

In Jaenicke’s opinion, everything is wrong with meat production when it comes to animal welfare. “It starts with torture breeding: The crate stand has been officially banned since the 1990s, but it is still common practice in 99 percent of the companies.” Controls in the companies are rare. “On average, checks are made every 17 years, after prior notice.” But nobody seems to care about improving the conditions for pigs. “Everyone is looking away, politicians, industry, the police and consumers,” Jaenicke said angrily in the teleschau interview.

The German meat industry turned over more than 40 billion euros a year. It wasn’t difficult to see “who really ruled in Germany – at least until the start of the traffic light government,” Jaenicke railed. The star places great hopes in the Green Party, namely Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir as well as Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock: “There has been almost nothing among the lobby puppets of the CDU and SPD in recent years as far as environmental protection and animal protection are concerned happened.”

The birth of Clueso Cobain, lots of tears and a speech for the “Sing mein Song” history books: The sixth episode of the VOX show was dedicated to Floor Jansen, frontwoman of the metal band Nightwish. Kelvin Jones provided the memorable highlight of the evening with an empowerment anthem for all black people.

RTL celebrates its own cult programs for an evening and reveals manipulations and true backgrounds. The “jungle camp” enemies Nick and Buster are also asked to reconcile. But the opposite happens.

Ex-beach volleyball player Julius Brink loses his pants on public television, Andrea Kiewel tries his hand at old man humor and forgets the name of her British star guest: This time the game edition of “ZDF Fernsehgarten” mutates into “Bruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns “-Show.

The original of this post “Hannes Jaenicke on meat moguls: “Why aren’t they actually in jail?”” comes from Teleschau.