Animal rights written into law? This still seems very far off
Do cattle have a right to an “animal-worthy” existence? On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted on this. The sweeping change in the law raises questions about how many rights animals actually have, and how that is regulated by law. Jack Jan Wicker, director at Animal-Human Studies, explains. “We need to start doing something about the fact that before the law, a horse is the same as a floor lamp.”
The “welfare and health of animals” must soon become the baseline. This is what is stated in a legislative amendment to be voted on in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. It all sounds very logical, but the subject is so far causing much discussion.
Because what exactly is an animal-worthy livestock farm? What rights do animals have? And how will this affect livestock farmers? Folia asked Jack Jan Wicker, master of law, former lecturer at the UvA, and director of Animal-Human Studies.
What status do animals currently have under the law?
“Traditionally, the idea was that humans were at the top of the pyramid. This religious and philosophical view translated into a legal system in which humans, referred to in a legal sense as natural persons, have the sole claim to participate fully in the law; to be, with a cumbersome expression, legal persons. This ‘law-subjectivity’ ensures that human beings have certain rights, duties, and powers enshrined in the legal code. This has since been granted to only one other category besides people: legal persons. These include foundations and associations, for example (see box).”
“Animals very explicitly do not fall into that category of being legal subjects. Descartes still thought that animals were a kind of machine that could not feel pain. We no longer think that, but the idea that animals do not have the right to an autonomous legal status still prevails. The thing I used to tell my students is that legal objects are natural persons like you and me, legal objects are tables and chairs. But this also refers to animals because they are not recognized as legal objects. So that means that a sentence like ‘the dog’s basket’ cannot be legal, because a dog is an object and therefore cannot have a basket.”
A legal entity is a legal construct that is seen as fully-fledged and capable of acting in legal matters, with the same rights and obligations as a human being, and therefore also becomes a “legal subject.”
As a result, a legal person can, among other things, own property, enter into contracts, but also file lawsuits or be sued. In other words, a legal person is almost equal to a human being.
“Now that we know that animals have feelings and can experience discomfort and suffer, we are in a somewhat uncomfortable position. The approach to the animal purely as an object no longer seems tenable. Today, for example, Article 2a of Book 3 of the Civil Code makes it clear that there are limits to that object approach. There it states that ‘animals are not things.’ But this has not led to an expansion of the circle of legal objects. For the law, a horse still essentially belongs to the same category as a floor lamp.”
Does the law then not differentiate between, say, a cat and a cow?
“To ask the question is to answer it, unfortunately. Why do we love one and eat the other? There is a painful discrepancy between theory and practice. People speak highly of the dignity of the animal, but it is fair to say that in the bioindustry this dignity is denied in every way. It is only difficult to denounce this legally. After all, the law states that an animal’s dignity may not be impaired any more than is justified for a reasonable purpose. But of course that ‘reasonable purpose’ is a very vague concept and is different for a pig farmer than for a vegan. That makes litigation very difficult.”
How is it that the bioindustry treats animals in such an undignified manner?
“The Hunger Winter during the war left a very deep scar on all of Europe and made food security a very important issue. The whole EEC, the predecessor of the EU, was to a large extent based on that and made economies of scale and land consolidation possible. That made it possible for the son of a pig farmer with about 30 pigs in the 1950s to suddenly be able to increase that number to 3,000 pigs when he took over.
“The food shortages in World War II had a deep impact on Europe. Food security became a very important issue. The EEC, the forerunner of the EU, was very much influenced by that, and the agricultural budget made up the lion’s share of the budget for decades. European subsidies and price guarantees for agricultural products and the great willingness of banks to provide loans to farmers led to an enormous increase in scale. For the Netherlands, this produced the situation that, with our small country, we are now the second largest food exporter in the world, with all the misery that entails for animal welfare and the environment.”
The new law should be guided by the fact that “animals are creatures that can experience pain and pleasure.” This seems so logical to me that I’m surprised it hasn’t been so in the law before.
“Make no mistake: The regulations and their interpretation are a kind of window-dressing, intended to show that we are concerned. But the inherent value of the veiled language of ‘the worth of the animal’ can be disputed. In the end, politics, the banks, the feed companies, and other players behind the farmer protests of recent years appear unwilling to do anything to change the earning model of the pig farmer.”
Germany was the first country to include animals in its constitution in 2002.
“Yes, that has been suggested in the Netherlands as well. A CDA MP at the time expressed his party’s reluctance to this idea with the statement that animals belong in a cage, a pen, or in the pasture but not in the law.”
“But including animals in the constitution would not guarantee an improvement in their fate. The constitution also states that adequate housing and a solid labor market must be provided. There is a difference between classic fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, and fundamental social rights, which often begin with ‘the government shall ensure...’ The latter does not mean anything other than that the government should do its best. I don’t see Germany, with their tradition of festivals where sausages take center stage, being very concerned about the consequences of having included animals in the constitution.”
In your opinion, should animals be given fundamental rights?
“I would like them to have an autonomous legal status and thus be seen as legal subjects, as I explain above. That would mean that we could no longer eat animals because you can’t eat a legal subject. Unless someone offers to be eaten, which seems to occur but is rather rare. But all kidding aside, such an autonomous legal status would also have the effect of entitling animals to animal-like conditions and care independent of the benevolence of humans.”
How feasible is that?
“There are individual cases where rivers or lakes were given autonomous status, in Spain or New Zealand, for example. But those are isolated incidents. Still, I have a certain hope that there will be a transformation. We have seen that with other things as well. In the 1970s, it seemed inconceivable that smoking could even be banned in classrooms, trains, and airplanes. We become so accustomed to things that we think there is absolutely no way around them until things change. The same could be true of animal consumption. It may well be that in a few years, we will look back in amazement that we treated animals this way. Last week was the news that Jumbo is stopping kiloknallers (Dutch for cut-price meat), a step in the right direction.”
