Anyone who looks after an animal will know beyond any doubt that they can experience pain. I certainly do. I have two dogs, one of whom was born with an array of genetic disorders as the result of irresponsible breeding, which have led him to become paralysed from the waist down. While he has lost the use of his rear legs, he has gained a hearty appetite and a lust for life we hadn’t seen in him before. The reason? He was no longer in pain.
In May this year, the government introduced a Bill to recognise animals as sentient beings as part of their Action Plan for Animal Welfare. Sentience is the awareness of feelings, emotions and sensations such as joy, fear and pain. Thanks to the new Bill, vertebrate animals (any animal with a backbone, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) will be recognised by law as sentient beings for the first time in history with the aim to improve standards and eradicate cruel practices for animals both domestically and internationally.
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It comes just in time. The rise in puppy farming, puppy smuggling and irresponsible breeding has reached an all time high following a surge in demand for new family pets during lockdown, and resulted in more dogs being euthanised as a result of neglect, cruelty, improper breeding and otherwise avoidable circumstances. Plus, the meat and poultry industries have faced criticism for years over their animal welfare standards, with US-style industrial-scale beef farming, “mega-dairies” and indoor livestock units that deprive animals of natural light threatening to become prevalent in the U.K. after the companies behind them received almost £70 million in subsidies from public funds in 2016 and 2017.
Enshrining animal sentience into law will ensure that animal emotion is always a consideration in any decision regarding domestic and commercial animals – and failure to do so will be subject to criminal punishment. Combined with the new Animal Welfare Sentencing Bill, which came into force on 29th June this year and enforces tougher penalties for animal cruelty crimes including a maximum prison sentence of five years (up from the previous term of six months) and an unlimited fine, and it seems as though things are, thankfully, looking up for animals.
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As someone who lives with the devastating consequences of animal cruelty every single day, I couldn’t be more in support of the recent changes. However, not everyone shares my sentiments. Some MPs have raised concerns that the new Sentience Bill would block infrastructure projects like building development or rail line construction, and that it could damage trade relations with countries that do not have such strict animal welfare policies. Farmers are concerned over pest control and how to prevent animals like foxes and birds ruining their crops and eating their livestock. Some people are also concerned the Bill will be used to try and ban some religious practices, for example Halal and Kosher slaughter and preparation of meat.
Surely we could find a way to diminish the suffering of the helpless, while still fulfilling our obligations and progressing as a society?
While these are all completely valid concerns, for which I couldn’t possibly claim to have the answers, I still have to agree with the introduction of stricter laws that support humane treatment of animals and protect them from suffering. I struggle to see how these things could be a bad thing. Surely we could find a way to diminish the suffering of the helpless, while still fulfilling our obligations and progressing as a society? Surely doing so is the actually the mark of progressing as a society?
This would certainly be in keeping with the famous observation by Mahatma Gandhi, in which he said: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. Evidence suggests that countries with stricter animal welfare laws also have fewer human rights violations. For example, Iran is consistently found to have among the highest number of human rights violations per year, and the country also has the fewest laws to protect animals with no policy recognising animal sentience and no basic legislation regarding animal abuse (a bill covering the protection of animal was passed in 2017, but it has never been enacted into law), and has received the lowest possible score on World Animal Protection’s Animal Protection Index.
There’s also evidence to suggest that people who abuse animals are more likely to go on to commit crimes against people and, famously, many serial killers harmed animals when they were children, including Ted Bundy and the Boston Strangler.
While both of these points only imply correlation, not causation, they should still give us pause for thought. Do our attitudes to animal rights dictate our attitudes to human rights, at least on some level? And if so, how can anyone justifiably oppose the new laws?
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