Many countries and states have been waking up to the need to enshrine the rights of animals and the environments in law. European countries in particular have been setting a trend in passing laws that recognize animal rights and introduce punishments for animal cruelty. What countries are passing these laws and what are the limitations?

Spain 

Spain has recently passed laws that increase punishments for animal mistreatment. Amongst other changes, it has also made training classes for dog owners mandatory and made it illegal to leave them for more than 24 hours. In 2020 Spain also passed laws that allowed for joint custody of animals in divorce, recognizing that companion animals were “sensitive, sentient beings” rather than property.

Switzerland

Switzerland is known for having animal rights laws that are stricter than other countries. The right to animal dignity is constitutionally protected. In 2022, Swiss people failed to vote for a law that would have banned industrial farming. 

Portugal 

In Portugal there is a law that criminalizes abuse and neglect of pets but it has faced challenges because animal protection is not enshrined in the Portuguese constitution.

Netherlands

The Netherlands may soon ban harmful breeding of pets. 

What are the Weaknesses of Animal Rights Laws?

One weakness in animal rights laws is who we choose to protect. This means that some animals are considered more worthy of protection than others, for example there are more laws to protect companion animals than lab animals. In the case of Spain’s new animal protection law, people have protested that the animal cruelty laws don’t protect hunting dogs and farm animals. The laws also don’t affect bullfighting, one of the cruelest “sports” involving animals. 

The manner in which animal protection laws are introduced often says a lot more about what is acceptable or normal for humans than it does about what animals need or deserve. It’s a positive thing that animal sentience is being recognized in divorce and pet custody. On the other hand, it’s easy for people to understand companion animals as an accessory to human existence. Meanwhile other animals like lab animals, farm animals and invertebrates are frequently under-protected in the law. Many other animals that don’t meet the definition of who humans consider to be intelligent or worth protecting aren’t legally protected. As laws to protect animal welfare proliferate, we need to locate the decision-making process within a new transhumanist framework in which our human perspective is de-centered and animals and ecosystems perspectives are at the center.

The question of whether it should be legal for people to rescue animals from slaughter houses and industrial farms is the subject of a recent New York Times op-ed. 

It’s a question that deserves serious consideration. Animal activists have forced the public to confront these questions by filming conditions in slaughterhouses and industrial farms. Their reporting has revealed conditions of unimaginable horror and cruelty, and it has confronted us with our obligation not to be bystanders.

If you are aware of animal abuses committed at large agricultural facilities or slaughterhouses it’s not that simple to do something, however. If concerned citizens want to step in and rescue animals they can face serious charges. The NYT op-ed focuses on the actions of activists at DxE (Direct Action Everywhere) who have gained access to slaughterhouses and revealed abominable treatment of animals. In this case, the activists witnessed chickens at Foster Farms facility who were killed in violent haste. The activists’ infrared cameras showed live birds thrown, crushed and suffocated under piles of dead birds. Many weren’t stunned properly before being killed. There were other reports from U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors of birds that had been dunked alive in a boiling water tank for defeathering. The activists rescued several animals from the plant, and there are other cases where activists have stepped in and rescued animals from industrial farming facilities and slaughterhouses.

The NYT op-ed made the point that if you saw someone boiling animals alive in your neighborhood, you would feel an obligation to step in and rescue the animals. Why is it any different at a Big Ag facility? There are laws that allow people to rescue dogs from hot cars, yet rescuing animals from cruel industrial farms is charged as theft, and filming the scenes of cruelty can be charged as criminal trespass.

Many of the activists say they are happy to stand trial to help set new precedents for animal rescue. This can pay off, such as in the case of a Utah jury who acquitted two activists of burglary and theft for taking two sick piglets from a Smithfield Farms facility.

This is just the beginning of a process that is stacked against Good Samaritans who want to rescue animals who are being treated cruelly. The bigger problem is that the industrial farming and meat industry will continue to commit cruelty as a matter of course. Industrial farming and the meat industry have sacrificed animal lives to the production line. Rescuing animals from these conditions is the first step towards making society confront what the appetite for industrially farmed meat means for animal lives. 

Stray cats often cause controversy in communities because they can threaten bird populations and other vulnerable populations of local animals. Within communities, there are groups who think that violently culling cats is the answer. However research and conscience dictates that this practice is both unnecessary and cruel. There are many humane solutions that involve management and relocation of the wild cat population. Despite this, some communities still choose to kill wild cats.  

The Dutch province of Friesland is a particularly cruel example of communities turning on wild cats with violent solutions. Shooting stray cats is generally allowed under Dutch law, but every other province has moved to ban the practice. Friesland is the only province that still allows the shooting of stray cats as a population control method. 

The Animal Rights Organization Dier&Recht has called on the province of Friesland to immediately end the cruel practice of shooting and killing stray cats. The organization says that the province is relying on outdated regulations and that the decline in the bird population has little to do with stray cats. By shooting stray cats, they point out, there’s a risk someone’s beloved pet could be murdered. Not to mention the fact that shooting an animal fatally is an extremely cruel and painful way to end any animal’s life.

Other Dutch provinces use humane methods like trap, neuter and release. The cats are neutered, chipped and relocated to farms, riding schools and markets. According to the animal rights activists this practice is effective because it helps with noise complaints, as neutered cats don’t go on heat. 

When combined with efforts to involve and educate the community, TNR can also be extremely effective in promoting responsible cat ownership, so pet cats are adopted from shelters and neutered, which in time will reduce the cat population.

It is generally recognized that killing large numbers of cats in an effort to reduce the population is a dangerous, cruel and ineffective way of managing a wild cat population. The Dutch province of Friesland killed 250 cats in 2021 alone. This cruel and unconscionable practice must not be allowed to continue. To learn more about Dier&Recht’s campaign to put pressure on Friesland to stop this practice, please visit their website:  https://www.dierenrecht.nl/

https://nltimes.nl/2023/01/10/animal-rights-org-calls-friesland-stop-shooting-stray-cats

Vietnam’s illegal wildlife trade is notorious for the sale of dog meat and the cruel treatment of animals caged and sold at so-called “wet-markets.” The country has committed to ending some of these cruel practices, but a probe has found that the cruel animal trade still persists.

The scenes of suffering that play out for animals are diverse and tragic.

Consider the following:

A water-bird is tethered to the top of a small cage with 6 others of its species. This agonizing prison is where these birds will spend their last moments, in noisy markets known as “wet markets.” At these markets animals are slaughtered in front of each other. Many of the animals brought to the markets are rare birds and endangered animals like turtles.

Or imagine what it’s like for a dog who is kidnapped from their owner or off the street, and bundled into a tight cage with other dogs who are frightened, confused, hungry and/or sick. As a captured dog, you witness other dogs being slaughtered in front of you until it’s your turn to be killed. These are the scenes that still play out in Vietnam’s dog meat trade. 88% of people want to end the dog meat trade, but there are no nationwide laws in Vietnam to prevent it.

Wet markets have become notorious since the COVID outbreak due to the health consequences of animal to human disease transmission. At wet markets, animals are kept in miserable conditions and routinely killed without even being stunned.

Vietnam’s prime minister has issued a directive that calls on regional authorities to crack down on wet markets and enforce existing laws to curb the trade of endangered animals. The government has made efforts to curb the dog meat trade in big cities but these efforts are still piecemeal. The investigation by We Animals Asia and the Asia Animals Coalition showed that post-COVID, people have gone back to business as usual, abducting dogs and animals from the wild and enthusiastically slaughtering and selling them at bustling wet markets and restaurants that serve dog meat.

To help animals who are killed and treated cruelly in Asia the public must continue to send the message that these practices are heinous and unacceptable. Work must be done to assist any initiatives that support enforcement and the rescue of animals. To learn more about how to support these efforts, please visit Animals Asia and the Asia Animals Coalition.

Among the saddest and most cruel forms of torture animals humans have inflicted on animals is Bear Bile Farming. Bear Bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine. The process of extraction involves starving and dehydrating bears and extracting the bile through catheters and needles inserted into the gallbladder. Worse still, the bears are captured and confined to produce bear bile for the duration of their lives. This could mean up to 30 years of torture.

In the past, bears were killed and their gallbladders removed. Since the 1980s, the practice of bear bile farming took off. There are many synthetic and plant based alternatives that could replace this cruelly sourced extract, however bears are still kept in tiny cages for their whole lives to allow the extractions to take place. Bear bile farming is still legal in many countries. Korea, for example, still allows bear bile farming, though it has pledged to put a stop to it by 2025.

Vietnam is one of the countries that has banned bear bile farming but bear bile farms still exist there under the radar. It was on one of these farms that Paddington Bear, a moon bear, was kept for 17 years in a tiny cage where she was dehydrated and starved and her bile extracted. She was rescued by Animals Asia, but unfortunately she died less than a month after her rescue. Paddington Bear was dehydrated when she was rescued and suffered from multiple health problems typical of bears who are farmed for bile. These bears are often captured when they are bear cubs. They witness their mothers killed by poachers and are kept on bear bile farms for their whole lives where they are isolated and confined to the point that their bodies grow stunted to fit their tiny cages. Throughout their lives, they are tortured routinely with cruel bile extraction. The extraction of the bile leaves bears in poor health and causes many diseases and malignant tumors.

Paddington Bear was so close to living a better life, freed from the farm where she spent 17 years. Unfortunately, her health problems were overwhelming. She didn’t get to enjoy a healthy, peaceful retirement at her new home, but with renewed efforts to end the practice of bear bile farming, other bears may never have to go through what she did.

To learn how to end bear bile farming and help to rescue bears kept on bear bile farms, please visit Animals Asia’s website:

https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-bear-bile-farming.html

Plainville Farms was allegedly designated by a third-party labeling program as “animal welfare certified.” PETA was skeptical and sent a private investigator to check. They found horrifying evidence of turkey catchers committing some of the most extreme acts of animal cruelty a PETA Vice President said the organization had ever seen.

PETA’s undercover investigator abstained from the cruelty and was berated for taking too long. “There’s not time for that,” he was told. “You need to find a different job.” His co-workers’ acts of cruelty were documented on video. Co-workers stomped and kicked turkeys, clubbed them with rods, and picked them up by the heads and shook them violently. The workers mock-raped the Turkeys and threw them like footballs.

The horrifically cruel treatment of the turkeys appeared to be the norm. Despite the blatant disregard for life at the catching facilities, Plainville CEO Matt Goodson released a statement that painted the company in a responsible and ethical light. He stated that Plainville had zero tolerance for such abuse and that the workers had been fired.

PETA has asked the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit Plainville from “using false or misleading claims in advertising its turkey products.” Despite the publicity surrounding the abuse, and being suspended from the Global Animal Partnership, the company continues to claim that its turkeys are “humanely raised” in a “stress-free environment.” As animal rights activists know however, respect for life is not compatible with the business of industrial farming. It’s probable that there are many other industrial farming facilities out there where animals are suffering horribly.

PETA has long been critical of the Global Animal Partnership’s humane certification, calling it misleading and insufficient. The organization has certified more than 4,000 farms in 11 countries. Plainville’s “earthwise” seal is not even an independent certification, it was invented by the company itself.

“Greenwashing” is used as a cover for cruelty, and people who buy cheap meat don’t ask questions. Meat-eating consumers who toss meat products into their supermarket baskets are satisfied with labels claiming humane certification and don’t inquire further. Those who choose not to eat meat on ethical grounds understand that the industrial farming model is cruel by nature. No matter how vehemently these companies promise to make animals’ “experience” of being raised and killed for meat stress-free and safe, it will not reflect reality.

A state police animal cruelty officer has confirmed that the investigation was “lengthy, detailed,” and that it involved “reviewing a lot of evidence at multiple locations.” Police said that the abuse took place at multiple farms in Chester, Cumberland, Franklin, Fulton, Perry and Union counties. 139 charges were filed, including 6 felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals and 76 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. According to PETA, this cruelty-to-livestock case has the most criminal counts they are aware of in their time reviewing such cases.

It is almost certain that this horrific cruelty is not limited to those who got caught. People should not be distracted by the “bad apples” theory that views the cruelty of these workers as individually motivated. This cruelty is part of the reality of meat production. Workers who kill animals for a living are more likely to become desensitized, traumatized and cruel (there has been plenty of research to show that this is the case).

PETA has organized protests outside Wegmans asking them to reconsider their ties with Plainville Farms. To learn more about PETA’s response to the protests and about how to volunteer, visit their website or contact local animal rights organizations in your area.

Read More: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/11-turkey-farm-workers-charged-cruelty-caught-video-91103726

Last year when the world was struggling to find a solution to the global COVID-19 pandemic, researchers who were testing on animals moved quickly to human trials and conducted some of the fastest ever research using human trials. The vaccines were ready for rollout 6 months later.

This is not a normal timeline. Usually, animals are tested on and suffer for years in clinical trials before drugs and treatments are deemed safe to test on humans. Yet in 2020, somehow it was possible to speed up development and cut out years of animal suffering.

Also in 2020, animal testing dragged on even though the vaccines were showing promising results in humans. There was a “monkey shortage,” as labs rushed to perform unnecessary tests on rhesus macaques who were imported over great distances to suffer in labs and then be euthanized.

Over 100 million animals die during animal tests every year according to PETA. One reason so many animals are killed in the US is that animal testing is simply a bureaucratic requirement to receive drug approval, according to this blog.

And of course, animal testing is also big business. The demand for animals in research is subject to predictions and betting about how much money it’s worth, just like any other market. The so-called “monkey shortage” is yet another way humans reveal the value they place on animal life. Animals are a commodity to serve humans, not living beings.

PETA has an informative list of reasons why animal tests are unnecessary and cruel. One of the reasons is the abject failure of many treatments and drugs tested on animals when they are tested on humans. It is an inexact science to compare human and animal biological systems, and some of these tests even harm humans. The thinking seems to be to just throw any research at the problem and see if it sticks. The excuse for being able to do things this way is the underlying belief that animals are disposable.

Please check out this PETA list of reasons why animal testing isn’t necessary and why other testing methods are becoming the norm: https://headlines.peta.org/end-experiments-on-animals-for-covid-19/

Read More:

https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/268699398/animal-model-market-driven-by-developments-in-pharmaceutical-and-crispr-genetic-research-opines-factmr

https://insidesources.com/there-is-no-monkey-shortage-for-covid-19-research-because-no-monkeys-are-needed/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/10/covid-vaccine-treatment-trials-create-monkey-shortage-science/5714115002/

The manatee was swimming around in Florida’s waters, when Trump supporters lured, then detained the animal to scratch a slogan into the animal’s back. The Trump supporters etched the word “Trump” into the algae on the manatee’s back. It was an act that must have taken a while to complete. The letters were 12-14 inches in height. The animal was discovered within days of the Capitol insurrection

Even though the animal appears to have been unharmed, we don’t know what harassment took place while the animal was detained. It’s possible that the animal didn’t resist because it was hurt or injured. The idea that an animal is nothing more than a billboard, a lifeless prop humans can etch slogans onto is what makes this incident horrifically disturbing. The animal was harassed, violated but more generally, it was made to stand for a human ideology that has no concern for any obstacle that stands in its way, even if that obstacle is a living being.

A “hands off” approach in Florida means that people are prohibited from harassing manatees – ie chasing, touching or riding. After this incident, there have been calls for a strict 100 percent hands off rule for approaching manatees. Human behavior towards animals clearly shows it’s not always in animals’ best interests to trust humans.

The figures show that animal abuse and human abuse is a revolving door. Domestic abusers abuse dogs and companion animals. Serial killers start with small animals. We must never make the mistake of seeing the suffering of any living being as meaningless. Violence is violence. The entitlement of the people involved in harassing this living creature only communicates the hideous violence of the Trump ideology and its lack of regard for any creature that gets in its way.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/12/us/manatee-with-trump-on-its-back-trnd/index.html

https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article248668315.html

“Please forgive me. If I don’t kill you, I can’t feed my family” was the desperate apology a slaughterhouse worker used to whisper to the dogs in their cages in the Cambodian slaughterhouse where he used to work. The worker burst into tears as he described killing up to 6 dogs a day in a Cambodian slaughterhouse. Unlike workers in slick Western meat processing plants who are removed from the killing, Cambodian workers who participate in horrific violence on a daily basis fully experience the reality of what they are doing.

The dogs themselves are rounded up and put into cages and then suffer a drawn-out, tortuous end to their lives. They are transported to the slaughterhouses in crowded cages huddled with other dogs, and kept in rusty cages before being killed. The dogs are killed in brutal, horrific ways with no agreed upon system of killing. Some are hung from trees, others are drowned in fetid water. Some are strangled. Some are stabbed and some are beat over the head. Workers learn to prefer beating dogs over the head because it’s quicker, or drowning them in closed cages so they don’t have to hear their cries.

Yet amid all the horror, somehow there is a ray of light for Cambodian dogs. The organization Four Paws, which has worked tirelessly on behalf of dogs in Cambodia, has succeeded in shutting down the worker’s former employer, one the country’s biggest slaughterhouses. If the closure of this business disrupts the supply chain, it will send a strong message about the acceptability of the dog meat trade in Cambodia. The province of Siem Reap has also decided to ban the trade. But in Cambodia over 3 million dogs a year are slaughtered for the dog meat trade. There is still so much more work to be done to turn the tide against this horrific slaughter.

Four Paws did not just shut down the slaughterhouse, it supported workers to find alternative income and helped some of them to open a grocery store. The organization follows through on an understanding of the relationship between human misery and animal misery. One begets the other as poor workers are forced to kill for a living and dogs die to make profits for rich humans who are conveniently removed from the killing. The kind of clothes that those in business wear are different from the blood-stained rags of hired animal killers, yet it is the clean suits that are the real hallmarks of mass killers.

In a poignant moment, the worker who had murdered the dogs was able to release fifteen of them from their cages when the factory shut down. This time the worker was able to whisper to the animals: “you are free now” In this moment, the workers’ freedom and the animals’ freedom were not different, they were intricately intertwined and impossible without each other.

Please visit Four Paws website and make a donation to support the important work they are doing: four-paws.us/campaigns-topics/campaigns?utm_source=google&utm_medium=grant&utm_campaign=Evergreen&utm_content=UNR1907ADGRNTevergreenBrand&gclid=EAIaIQobChMInt2_1rKq6wIVFIzICh25fAV7EAAYASAAEgLww_D_BwE

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3037201/inside-cambodias-brutal-dog-meat-trade-which-claims

Mountain lions in California are isolated, dejected, without chance of finding a mate and vulnerable to poisoning, death on highways and deliberate targeting by humans. That is the picture painted by this LA Times Article, ahead of a major decision by the Fish and Game Commission that went in favor of Mountain Lions. The Fish and Game Commission have decided to review the Mountain Lions’ Endangered status over 6 years and afford them certain protections in line with this. The article delves into the ways Mountain Lions should be protected. While these considerations apply to Mountain Lions, it would be even better if some of the protections could be universally applied to protect wild animals in shrinking habitats encircled by human development.

One suggestion the article makes is that highways should not restrict Mountain Lions’ Movements. It seems a no-brainer to require green overpasses for all animals in highway development plans. The needs of wild animals to roam freely and seek food and better conditions are fundamental. Animals may not be imprisoned in Wildlife Parks but encircled by “highways of death” they may as well be.

Then there are poisons. Poisoning animals that are considered pests doesn’t just kill them in an inhumane and horrible way, it also risks the life of any other animal happening upon this poison, whether by predation or by other exposure. Poisoning “pests” is the equivalent of planting landmines in wild animals’ natural habitats. Raptors like owls, for example, are much more likely to die from anticoagulant rodenticides. These poisons induce fatal bleeding in animals. It is an unthinkably cruel way to die.

The only reason people are starting to wake up to this inhumanity is that their own pets are sometimes killed by poisons. The sad and difficult lives of Mountain Lives tell a much bigger story about life for wild animals who are forced into exile on the borders of human habitats.

Read More:

https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article243374736.html
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article237937419.html

https://messengermountainnews.com/mountain-lions-win-major-victory-at-fish-and-game-commission-meeting/

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-15/mountain-lions-protection-freeways-rat-poison-property-owners