Animal Welfare Law Research Articles

Traditional chinese culture poses dificulty for new animal welfare laws

Few people in China care about the feelings of animals or<br />possess the concept of animal welfare. Some traditional factors<br />play a positive role in this Weld<br />From childhood, anything about animals, most Chinese children<br />get in touch with has undoubtedly put man above them.<br />Even some of the children’s songs have described the nature<br />of animals as malicious, such as slippery fox and ruthless wolf<br />and so on, which not only casts a dark shadow over their naïve<br />hearts, but also leaves a wide gap between animals and children.<br />It then appears in human ideology the discrimination of<br />inferiority and superiority, eminence and humbleness, primary<br />and secondary. These can all be taken in at a glance at the old<br />saying Man is the master of the universe Disdain in spirit may <br />lead to cruelty in action.

Comments on the dilemma in the October issue: ‘The cow that got up’

The dilemma in the October issue concerned an eight-year-old cow that became acutely recumbent a day after being admitted to hospital, but it remained alert and with a normal appetite....

Squid Have Nociceptors That Display Widespread Long-Term Sensitization and Spontaneous Activity after Bodily Injury

Bodily injury in mammals often produces persistent pain that is driven at least in part by long-lasting sensitization and spontaneous activity (SA) in peripheral branches of primary nociceptors near sites of injury. While nociceptors have been described in lower vertebrates and invertebrates, outside of mammals there is limited evidence for peripheral sensitization of primary afferent neurons, and there are no reports of persistent SA being induced in primary afferents by noxious stimulation. Cephalopod molluscs are the most neurally and behaviorally complex invertebrates, with brains rivaling those of some vertebrates in size and complexity. This has fostered the opinion that cephalopods may experience pain, leading some governments to include cephalopods under animal welfare laws. It is not known, however, if cephalopods possess nociceptors, or whether their somatic sensory neurons exhibit nociceptive sensitization. We demonstrate that squid possess nociceptors that selectively encode noxious mechanical but not heat stimuli, and that show long-lasting peripheral sensitization to mechanical stimuli after minor injury to the body. As in mammals, injury in squid can cause persistent SA in peripheral afferents. Unlike mammals, the afferent sensitization and SA are almost as prominent on the contralateral side of the body as they are near an injury. Thus, while squid exhibit peripheral alterations in afferent neurons similar to those that drive persistent pain in mammals, robust changes far from sites of injury in squid suggest that persistently enhanced afferent activity provides much less information about the location of an injury in cephalopods than it does in mammals.

‘Horse tripping’: animal welfare laws and the production of ethnic Mexican illegality

Conflicts over animal practices have long been used to construct dynamics of power. This essay examines how debates over immigrant animal practices contribute to the production of immigrant ‘illegality’ in the contemporary USA. I examine laws banning the ‘horse tripping’ events of the Mexican rodeo enacted in California (1994) and Arizona (2009), situating these laws and related media coverage within the broader landscape of exclusionary anti-immigrant politics. While the activists (including Latinos) who supported the bills were primarily concerned with animal welfare, their concerns were marshalled, out of context and against their will, by nativists who demand border militarization, exclusion and deportation. This essay shows that a range of actors – not just notoriously nativist groups but also Latinos themselves, as well as progressive people and organizations – participate, indirectly and inadvertently, in the production of immigrant illegality.

Mainstreaming after Lisbon: Advancing Animal Welfare in the EU Internal Market

This article traces the evolution of EU animal welfare law and policy. What scope do Member States have to protect the welfare of animals? Two recent United Kingdom judgments are considered in which animal welfare was condoned as providing a justifiable reason for restricting the free movement of goods. In the absence of an EU animal welfare policy underpinned by a legal basis on which to adopt animal welfare laws, to what extent have the EU institutions legislated in order to protect the welfare of animals. Post Lisbon, what is the significance of the incorporation of animal welfare as a value on which the EU is premised? To what extent can the internal market provision be utilised to legislate for animal welfare? What potential does mainstreaming animal welfare hold for the development of EU animal welfare policy and law, for the CJEU and for compliance with EU animal welfare standards?

Flugunfähigmachen von Vögeln – Für und Wider

The techniques and biological functions of avian flight are briefly presented. The reasons for rendering zoo birds flightless are explained taking into account the tasks and obligations of modern zoos, and the various deflighting procedures are described. The legal situation regarding deflighting as it currently exists in Germany and other countries is clarified. It is discussed in detail under which circumstances it would be justifiable to render a bird flightless, to what extent keeping the birds in aviaries would be an alternative and whether reversible or irreversible methods should be preferred. A legal opinion has been sought which came to the conclusion that even under the restrictive Animal Welfare Law of Germany interventions to render a bird flightless were admissible if based on veterinary indication on a case-by-case basis. Such indication may be justified by the anticipation that a bird may be injured or die from an accident in future if not deflighted. Contrary to the views of some legal experts commenting on the German Animal Welfare Law the authors consider feather clipping not to be an intervention prohibited under the law. In the interest of the good functioning of european and international breeding programmes the authors suggest that the German legislation should be modified with a view of containing a general derogation for rendering flightless at least certain species of zoo birds.

"Legitimacy based on diversity: A study of the U.S. animal welfare institution, 1865-2010"

This study examines how persistent micro-level diversity develops field-level legitimacy of animal welfare institution. The present research proposes a new concept: institutional foci where individuals have a common definition and shared prescription for dealing with an issue. Using network analyses of U.S. animal lawsuits and event-history analyses of animal welfare law adoption from 1865 to 2010, this inductive study reveals that: 1) the persistence of micro-level diversity leads to cross-referencing among different institutional foci; 2) prevalent cross-referencing enables each focus to retain its heterogeneity and validity; 3) cross-referencing begets a transitive inter-focus network structure that furthers cross-referencing; 4) transitive cross-referencing networks contribute to field-level legitimacy development, measured by animal welfare law adoption. The study suggests that field-level legitimacy emerges even without neither convergence nor truce at the micro level.

Ethics, Law, and the Science of Fish Welfare

Fish farming is one of the fastest growing sectors of agriculture, attracting considerable attention to the question of whether existing farming regulations and animal welfare laws are adequate to deal with the expanding role of fish in feeding humans. The role of fish as model organisms in scientific research is also expanding -- a majority of research biology departments now keep zebrafish for the purposes of genome biology, and they are used widely used for basic neuroscience research. However, due to their diversity and distance from mammalian biology, fish pose difficult questions for the application of legal and ethical principles of animal welfare. This paper reviews the developing legal and scientific context in which such questions must be answered.

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer Cloning: Practical Applications and Current Legislation

Somatic cloning is emerging as a new biotechnology by which the opportunities arising from the advances in molecular genetics and genome analysis can be implemented in animal breeding. Significant improvements have been made in SCNT protocols in the past years which now allow to embarking on practical applications. The main areas of application of SCNT are: Reproductive cloning, therapeutic cloning and basic research. A great application potential of SCNT based cloning is the production of genetically modified (transgenic) animals. Somatic cell nuclear transfer based transgenic animal production has significant advances over the previously employed microinjection of foreign DNA into pronuclei of zygotes. This cell based transgenesis is compatible with gene targeting and allows both, the addition of a specific gene and the deletion of an endogenous gene. Efficient transgenic animal production provides numerous opportunities for agriculture and biomedicine. Regulatory agencies around the world have agreed that food derived from cloned animals and their offspring is safe and there is no scientific basis for questioning this. Commercial application of somatic cloning within the EU is via the Novel Food regulation EC No. 258/97. Somatic cloning raises novel questions regarding the ethical and moral status of animals and their welfare which has prompted a controversial discussion in Europe which has not yet been resolved.

'Normal' Behaviour of the Legal Animal Is More than Just 'What They Do in the Wild'

A hallmark of modern animal welfare legislation is the incorporation of positive duties of care based on principles broadly known as the ‘five freedoms’. The duties create a legal obligation on animal caregivers to provide for the needs of animals in their care, one of which is the to display patterns of behaviour. The freedoms, including the opportunity to exhibit normal behaviour, are all premised on the inclusion of human involvement in animal care. Consequently it would be inconsistent for the judiciary to define “normal”, in a manner that excludes the human caregiver or interpret “normal” behaviour of domesticated animals solely by reference to the animals “wild” counterparts. Contemporary reality clearly indicates that the legislative definition of “normal” behaviour for the purposes of animal welfare law must be based on legal and scientific constructs that give significant weight and consideration to the animal’s ability to adapt, and to the individual animal’s past and present environment which includes the presence and role of the human caregiver.

The Laboratory of Dr. Moreau: The Use of Chimeras in Biomedical Research and the International Implications

Beginning in the 1980s, scientists have been creating and experimenting on chimeras, organisms with at least two distinct sets of DNA. While chimeras have become an increasingly valuable research tool, they have introduced ethical quandaries that science is only beginning to grapple with, especially when some of the cells used are human cells. These newly created organisms pose a challenge for the existing laws concerning animal welfare. This paper will discuss different types of chimeras and how they can be created, animal welfare law as applied to laboratory animals, and possible ways for regulatory regimes to adapt to the unique issues presented by chimeras.

Sentencia 198 de 2009, Supreme Court of India (criminal), Bharat Amratlal Kothari and another Appellants Versus Dosukhan Samadkhan Sindhi & others

In India, the animal welfare law has great importance, a fact that is quite unknown in the West. It is a branch of the law, complete with multiple regulations governing a wide range of topics: animal cruelty, animal testing ... The sentence of the order discussed criminal court, in it, an animal of Rajpur has news of a truck that transported flock of goats, illegally, and decides to stop the truck and then put the case before the police.

Developing a common law of animal welfare: offences against animals and offences against persons compared

Most animal welfare/suffering cases heard by the courts focus only on the facts: did the defendant, as a matter of fact, do those things with which they are charged? Analysis of the 2010 Amersham horse cruelty case reveals that there is significant room for ambiguity and subjective interpretation within the statutes that underpin animal welfare law. To provide certainty and to allow the law to develop it is essential that cases such as Amersham are not only subject to a review of the facts, but also a full analysis of the legal principles contained within the relevant statutes.

Ethical justification for the use and treatment of fishes in research: an update

Readers of, and contributors to, the Journal will be aware that the Journal continually strives to ensure that papers published promote best practice and ethical use of live animals, including fishes, and are aware of the associated public debate. Currently, contributors to the Journal of Fish Biology in the course of their research are required to adhere to the Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research published in Animal Behaviour (1998), 55, 251–257 (see Item 16 in Instruction to Authors) and the guidance published in this Journal more recently [Journal of Fish Biology (2006), 68, 1–2]. Recent experience indicates that authors are clearly paying more attention to welfare and ethical issues; nonetheless, it has become apparent that more specific guidance is needed with respect to studies that involve lethal endpoints, predation of live prey and euthanasia. The following is intended as guidance, but authors should be mindful that the Journal will not publish studies that might cause unnecessary, avoidable or insufficiently justified adverse effects, or lasting harm, to a sentient animal. Lethal endpoints: Studies involving lethal endpoints need to be fully and clearly justified. Authors need to explain (1) why a non-lethal endpoint would fail to achieve the objectives, (2) how the benefit gained (or expected) balances the harm caused and (3) what mitigation was used to minimize adverse effects, both in terms of individuals and the numbers of animals used. Predation of live prey: Similarly, studies involving predation of live prey need to be fully and clearly justified and authors need to explain why alternative (e.g. invertebrate) prey, or an alternative predator and prey model, could not be used. Again, the authors must justify how the benefit gained (or expected) balances the harm caused. Euthanasia: Where animals have to be killed, this must be carried out as humanely as possible. For larger fishes, overdose of anaesthesia or percussion stunning followed, in either case, by destruction of the brain is currently considered the most appropriate and is approved under current U.K. legislation and anticipated EU legislation. For smaller fishes, particularly larvae, this method is not practical and killing by immersion in ice or a fixative (e.g. ethanol or formalin) is often more appropriate. This should be preceded, however, by rendering the fishes insentient, e.g. by using an overdose of an appropriate anaesthetic. Any non-use of anaesthesia on the grounds that it would compromise the aim of the study will need to be fully justified. As identified in the previous guidance, authors need to explain both in the declaration that accompanies a submitted manuscript and in the text of the manuscript itself how the care and use of experimental animals complies with any and all relevant national and local animal welfare laws, guidelines and policies, and evidence is required to show that protocols involving the use of animals have undergone an ethical review process, such as by an institutional animal care and use (or similar) committee, a local ethics committee, or by appropriately qualified scientific and lay colleagues. Nonetheless, the Journal is mindful that some ethical approval processes may be rather generic and that such general ethical approval in itself is not necessarily proof that a specific experiment is ethically justified by default; authors must therefore provide specific justification (as above) in the Methods section of their papers. J. D. Metcalfe 1 , J. F. Craig, Editor-in-Chief 1

Law and the Question of the (Nonhuman) Animal

AbstractThe turn of the millennium has witnessed an extraordinary paradox—one identified by Jacques Derrida as a simultaneous increase in violence against nonhuman animals and compassion toward them. This article turns to critical legal theory as well as to recent work by continental philosophers on the human/animal distinction in order to make sense of the ways the paradox manifests in law, arguing that so-called animal welfare laws that appear to be politically progressive are, in fact, iterations of the very violence they purport to redress. What legislation designates as “animal” has neither language nor a recognized image, which not only renders this singular object of law voiceless but also denies that object access to any experience of death, and thus, to life. Through a deconstruction of recently enacted Japanese “animal welfare” legislation, this article proposes that the inability of the legislator to think the animal as having a relation to death belies a deeper struggle at the heart of law itself, to constitute its subjects through language.

Continental Drift: Agricultural Trade and the Widening Gap Between European Union and United States Animal Welfare Laws

Over the last decade, the European Union has incurred trade sanctions of over $100mil/year, to the U.S. and Canada, for refusing to allow foreign imports of beef products from cattle treated with natural or synthetic growth hormones. The retroactive reparations were assessed against the E.U. by the World Trade Organization after the U.S. and Canada prevailed in a prolonged trade dispute over the E.U. trade ban. However, hormone-raised beef products are still prohibited in the E.U., under an extensive agricultural reform policy aimed at improving food safety and animal welfare standards. The U.S., in contrast, offers scant protections for farm animals, and conditions on “factory farms” have steadily worsened. Similarly, the U.S. food safety paradigm has been static for decades, its inadequacies underscored by the August, 2010 recall of almost 400 million eggs feared tainted with salmonella. The Beef-Hormones dispute is a bellwether for agricultural trade relations between the two trading giants, as domestic economic pressures inevitably lead to more of the same international trade bans on certain U.S. foods derived from animals. Unless E.U. food producers are compensated for the up-front costs of using production methods that incur fewer environmental and public health externalities, their products will not survive direct competition with less-expensive American imports. To preserve its higher food security and animal welfare standards, the E.U. must insulate its animal agriculture industries from these imports. Therefore, as E.U. animal welfare and food safety regulations are implemented more broadly, products derived from “factory farm” U.S corporations will be less welcome in the E.U. marketplace. This article posits that the E.U. will ultimately prevail in a prolonged trade conflict borne of the diametrically-opposed policies, and that U.S. corporations desiring access to E.U. markets will have no choice but to initiate good faith animal welfare and food safety reforms, in the absence of legislative reform. Part I depicts the developing chasm between animal agriculture regulations in the U.S. vis-a-vis the E.U. Part II reviews the legal scaffolding on which trade agreements are built and disputes are resolved, illustrating the contradictory twin goals of supporting sovereign authority over domestic policies and enabling unencumbered international trade. Finally, Part III analyzes relevant WTO disputes and suggests arguments the E.U. might use to preserve its animal welfare standards and human health regulations, focusing on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”) and the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (“SPS Agreement”). The article concludes that, irrespective of inevitable diplomatic and economic pressure from the U.S., existing trade agreements do not foreclose the use of trade bans to preserve E.U. reform directives.

The Animal: A Subject of Law? A Reflection on Aspects of the Austrian and German Juridical Systems

In recent years there has been a marked increase in interest in animal welfare issues worldwide. This subject often evokes extreme points of view, and can be both intellectually challenging and emotionally dividing. It is undeniably a field where substantial progress has taken place, with a multitude of countries worldwide implementing their own animal welfare and protection laws. However, calls continue to be voiced for more extensive and courageous measures to be taken concerning both the content and the enforcement of animal welfare legislation. To highlight a variety of these promising and noteworthy ideas this article outlines and examines some selected and qualified aspects of a potential juridical approach to the subject by consulting the legal systems of Austria and Germany under this particular premise. The aim will be to ascertain the extent to which animals have been granted consideration and protection, for instance in spheres of Constitutional or Civil Law. What options exist to safeguard an animal by a legally founded and secured position, and on which rank in the legal system could such provisions possibly be established? Ideally, a complete legal network on all possible levels of the legal system should be developed, ensuring a comprehensive and an all-embracing protection of the individual animal.

Visibility and Invisibility of Animals in Traditional Chinese Philosophy and Law

There is yet to be any animal welfare or protection law for domestic animals in China, one of the few countries in the world today that do not have such laws. However, in Chinese imperial law, there were legal provisions adopted more than a 1,000 years ago for the care and treatment of domestic working animals. Furthermore, in traditional Chinese philosophy, animals were regarded as constituent part of the organic whole of the cosmos by ancient Chinese philosophers who saw no strict delineation between humans and non-human animals. Notwithstanding, the attitude and practice towards animals in ancient Chinese life was also ambivalent and was predicated upon the practical utility of animals for the service of humans and society. Such practice can be seen through the legal provisions in imperial China. This paper first discusses animal’s place in traditional Chinese philosophy and then in Chinese imperial law. It raises the issue of the gap discernable from the philosophical thought on animals and practice regarding animals in everyday life in China. The paper argues that given the gap in perception and attitude regarding animals, law can play an important role that moral teaching has not been able to achieve.

The Role of the Magnetite-Based Receptors in the Beak in Pigeon Homing

Magnetite-containing structures in the upper beak of birds have been described as putative magnetoreceptors [1-4], but so far, all positive evidence indicating their influence on behavior has come from laboratory studies using rather unnatural stimuli (e.g., [5-7]). Here, we demonstrate these receptors' possible role in a natural situation: we released pigeons with these receptors deactivated by a local anesthetic within and outside a magnetic anomaly, together with untreated control birds. Within the anomaly, the untreated birds showed unusually long vanishing intervals and scattered bearings, indicating confusion by the anomalous magnetic conditions. Anesthesia of the beak suppressed this adverse effect. Outside the anomaly, in contrast, the treatment had little effect. These findings indicate that the receptors in the beak mediate magnetic "map" information and that this information is normally included in the navigational process yet can be replaced by nonmagnetic factors at most sites.

Animals as Vulnerable Subjects: Beyond Interest-Convergence, Hierarchy and Property

This Article presents a new paradigm, premised on the equal protection principle, for the legal regulation of human interactions with domestic animals: Equal Protection of Animals (EPA). EPA combines the insights of vulnerability theorists with the equal protection principle and capability theory to create a mechanism for recognizing the equal claims of human and nonhuman animals to protections against suffering. Under such an approach, domestic animals - like humans - have claims to food, hydration, shelter, bodily integrity (including avoiding pain), companionship, and the ability to exercise and to engage in natural behaviors of movement.Existing animal welfare and anti-cruelty laws, despite their stated purposes, fail to protect animals adequately. This Article identifies the ontology of the problem as interest-convergence, famously described by Derrick Bell in the desegregation context. The privileged (humans in this case) protect the disadvantaged (animals) only when their interests align. Because humans profit economically and socially from the exploitation of animals, interests often diverge. When this divergence occurs, all protections for animals are placed in jeopardy. Unlike protections for other disadvantaged groups, there is no constitutional or other legal floor guarding the basic liberties of animals. Interest convergence results in what I term “legal gerrymandering for human interest,” or the redrawing of the natural baseline of protections for animals to further human use of animals. In addition to undermining fundamental protections for animals against abuse and suffering, legal gerrymandering creates inconsistencies that violate legal norms of precedent and procedure. Specifically, I address differential treatment of animals of the same legal and species classes as well as different treatment of scientific evidence in animal law as opposed to other legal contexts.While some scholars seek to address the problem of inadequate animal protections, their proposals - treating animals as legal persons or quasi property - suffer two shortcomings. First, under traditional rights- and interests-based reforms, strong human rights or interests in using animals will always trump animal rights or interests, even with regard to avoiding some types of suffering. Second, existing scholarship is entrenched in a paralyzing debate about whether categorizing animals as “persons” instead of “property” will improve their legal protections. EPA does not have these limitations. EPA seeks to maximize the basic capabilities of human and nonhuman animals within the same population, addressing the hierarchy problem that human rights and interests are privileged over those of animals. Human claims to maximize basic capabilities cannot be valued above nonhuman animal claims for the same. Further, EPA directly considers animal capacities without regard to category; there is no need to categorize animals as persons or as a special form of property.