I've written before about the what can only be described as a "Draconian Animal Welfare Bill" that's working its way into UK law. In a follow-up post, I made the case that the bill isn't an Animal Welfare Bill at all, but an Animal Rights Bill. If you haven't read those posts, you might want to do so.
Today, there is further comment on the bill which, disturbingly, only serves to chill us further:
. . . This year Mr Meads and his wife Jaqui have taken in [to Safewings wildlife sanctuary] more than a thousand birds from 64 species and released 751 back into the wild. The birds were brought to Safewings by policemen, vets, by PDSA and RSPB officials and by members of the public. Conspicuously absent from the above list of referrers, however, is the RSPCA. ‘Although the RSPCA runs three wildlife centres of its own,’ said Mr Meads, ‘its policy concerning wild birds is to euthanase all but the most superficially injured. People ringing the RSPCA call centre, anxious about injured or orphaned young birds, have been told to place them in a plastic bag and suffocate them.’
Mr Meads believes that the RSPCA’s problem runs deeper than a simple question of time and motion. It has become a secretive and hegemonic organisation, he said, with an anti-pet agenda. In evidence he cites the RSPCA’s overweening interest in, and influence on, the drafting of Defra’s [Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs] Animal Welfare Bill, the most comprehensive piece of animal legislation since the 1911 Protection of Animals Act, which will be introduced in the current session of Parliament.
[ . . . . ]
Because of the impending Animal Welfare Bill, the Meads are closing Safewings, and theirs won’t be the only business to suffer. New licensing laws for animal sanctuaries, riding schools, dog and cat boarding kennels and pet shops will mean the end of many small firms. . . .
Defra’s Welfare Bill has a new name for pets: ‘companion animals’, it calls them, which sort of says it all. At the heart of the Animal Welfare Bill is a charter of pet rights called the ‘Five Freedoms’. A kept animal, it proclaims, should have freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury and disease; freedom from fear and distress; and, controversially, freedom to express normal behaviour. Inspectors selected by local authorities — in other words, the RSPCA again — will be given powers of entry and a mandate to intervene in cases where they consider an animal or pet is not enjoying any of its Five Freedoms. They will also come knocking if they consider an animal is ‘likely’ to suffer at some point in the future — if you’re under 16, and you’ve won a goldfish at the fair, for instance. [Emphasis added — ed]
dra·co·ni·an (dr-kn-n, dr-) adj. Exceedingly harsh; very severe: a draconian legal code; draconian budget cuts.
Let's see. A law that codifies for animals their freedom from discomfort, pain, hunger and thirst, fear and distress, and the freedom to express normal behavior, and which authorizes authorities to enter homes when they merely suspect that one of an animals 5 freedoms has been violated, sounds draconian to me.
The "freedom from" provisions suggest that spaying and neutering animals, like tail docking, should be illegal because they're not done for therapeutic reasons (spaying and neutering isn't performed to better the health of animals, but to make them less numerous and more compliant, solely for the convenience of humans).
Spay and neuter surgery is stressful, causes pain, and will effectively prevent "companion animals" from expressing their normal behavior, be that normal sexual behavior, normal birth and rearing behavior, or normal "marking" and vocalizing behavior (as in what unfixed cats do) . . .
Or, perhaps those obsessed with guaranteeing that the "rights" of animals be protected by law believe that an exception should be made for the single most fundamental "right" after life itself, viz. the right to reproduce.
Which would reinforce my belief that the "philosophy" of Animal Rights is based on an attitude, not on a principle.
It’s as if the idea of presuming to own an animal at all is offensive to Defra. There is a long, disapproving section in the Bill on the subject of pet fairs, which may be banned altogether on the grounds that an animal could end up in an undesirable part of the country. In its report on the Bill, the Labour-dominated rural affairs committee says: ‘It is difficult and unsettling for a bird to be driven up from Cornwall, to go to a sale in Newark or somewhere, then to be passed on to somebody perhaps with less knowledge who lives in Carlisle.’
[ . . . ]
The RSPCA in particular seems to think of pet owners as latent sadists. They argue for the list of animal rights to be expanded to include: ‘The need for adequate exercise, appropriate environmental enrichment, appropriate freedom to move and the need to provide, whenever possible, conditions which avoid mental suffering including protection from fear and distress.’ Can you teach a dog to sit without violating its freedom to express normal behaviour? Or beat a horse over a jump while respecting its right to freedom from distress? Or even house-train a puppy?
Of course, the "whenever possible" caveat is the loophole that opens wide the opportunity for the law to be enforced when it should not be, and for it to not be enforced when it should be. When "appropriate" is in the eye of the beholder (as it is here) and ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, the poor citizen is negotiating a minefield every time he interacts with his pet, or any animal, for that matter.
How invasive the Animal Welfare Bill will be will depend on how rigorously people interpret and apply the rules — but that’s not necessarily a comfort. There’s every sign that animal rights groups are itching to report the slightest infraction, and after their triumph over the fox-hunters, they are looking for the next big challenge.
A hopelessly vague and over-broad law that can only be capriciously enforced will poorly serve everybody — except those with an agenda who have the power to enforce the law, perhaps settling old scores along the way.
The League Against Cruel Sports is worried about rearing pheasants for shooting, especially about wing-clipping, bitting (fitting them with a bit to keep the beaks permanently open) and beak-trimming. ‘Part of the Five Freedoms is for those animals to be able to express their normal behaviour, and if you’re going to stop them flying you are not meeting the requirements of the Five Freedoms,’ it says. Which is what you’d expect from LACS [League Against Cruel Sports — ed], but the MPs agree. They’ve added to the Bill a recommendation that gamekeepers should not be trusted to look after their birds properly, but checked up on regularly.
[ . . . ]
Other field sports [than shooting — ed] won’t be far behind. There is a strong possibility that anglers could also be liable for prosecution. It would be hard to argue that a fisherman was undertaking his duty to care for fish, when they’ve been mutilated by hooks and nets.
And both Defra and the select committee seem particularly anxious that livery yards (which depend for their survival on looking after hunting horses during the season) should be subject to mandatory licensing and regular inspections.
But you ain't seen nothing yet . . .
Here’s another peculiarity. The term ‘animal’ is defined as ‘a vertebrate other than man’, and when the Bill was run past a cross-party committee for pre-legislative scrutiny, it strongly recommended, on the advice of the RSPCA, that the definition of the word ‘animal’ (and presumably the application of the Five Freedoms and the duty of care) was extended to octopus, squid and cuttlefish, crabs, lobsters and crayfish. The Born Free Foundation took things a step further, urging the inclusion of insects, spiders, scorpions and centipedes. And once again, the rural affairs committee failed to add common sense. ‘While this assessment [into cuttlefish pain] is being undertaken,’ it said, ‘a code of practice should be issued giving details of humane ways in which crabs and lobsters should be stunned prior to cooking.’
The MPs also endorsed a clause protecting wild animals, including ‘mussels, newts, shrimp, species of beetles, butterflies, moths, snails and spiders’.
Will we soon be reading in the newspapers about people being fined for baiting a cuttlefish, crushing a snail or shrimping with nets? Will a Master of Foxhounds find himself sharing a prison cell with somebody doing time for cruelty to a beetle? And if, as I did recently, I put several velvet crabs in with my ferrets to see what would happen (it was a stalemate), could I be prosecuted for animal baiting?
Of course, the answer to these questions is this: apparently, there is nothing in the Bill to prevent just such prosecutions. The provisions of the Bill are hopelessly vague and wide-open to interpretation. If adopted, the law cannot be enforced even-handidly, or close to it, even if that is the fair-minded goal of all concerned. Indeed, those running afoul of the law might have reasonably thought themselves innocent of wrongdoing and made conscious efforts to abide by it.
More worrisome is that the Bill's vaguenss could be used by Animal Rights activists to use the weight of the goverment to harass people, or to punish them by fine or imprisonment. (We already know what AR zealots are capable of doing — for example, see this and this.)
The problem with this Bill is not just that it misunderstands the countryside and those whose real intention is often the protection of animals. At every stage the lobbyists and the MPs are determined to ascribe anthropomorphic ‘rights’ to the animal kingdom, without seeing that this will put out of business the very people who love and care for animals, to the detriment of the animals themselves.
From the point of view of this simple-minded 'mericun, it seems much worse than ascribing anthropomorphic "rights" to animals, or driving people out of business.
It is a Bill that forces people to live according to rules they cannot know and cannot avoid breaking, on some level, virtually every day. It places even honest, well-meaning and thoughtful citizens at the mercy of powerful people who may be wise or unwise and who may or may not have a personal or ideological agenda.
And is there anyone who believes the RSPCA is without an Animal Rights agenda?
This is scary stuff.
Thanks to David S. for the tip.
Brian
