"ENFORCEMENT OF EUROPEAN ANIMAL WELFARE RELATED

LEGISLATION"

Brussels 12-13 June 2012

Animals as goods (things)

or sentient beings. A legal

historical indicator for

Animal Welfare

Teresa Giménez-CandelaUniversitat Autònoma de Barcelona

www.derechoanimal.info

THINGS VS. SENTIENT BEINGS

A major change took place during the 90’s which challenged the continued existence of a category that has existed in Law since Roman times: animals are objects that are owned.

ANIMALS IN CIVIL AND COMMON LAW SYSTEMS

ANIMALS AS NO-THINGS

ANIMALS AS NO-THINGS

This change (animals are “non-objects”) can be criticised for lack of ambition, in that it does not give a new legal status nor does it improve animals’ legal condition. While maintaining animals’ continued existence as Property,

by denying that they are “objects” and opens the door to animals’ legal’ condition being governed by its own laws.

Kinds of Kinds of propertyproperty

Personal propertyPersonal propertyReal estate property

Intellectual property

Property on living beings (?)

The expression “sentient beings” as a standard for regulating animal wellbeing is now being implemented in many of the EU’s legal texts

Art. 13 Treaty of LisabonOnly one programmatic

legal text has included this highly expressive legal expression which recognises animals’ condition as beings who share with us a capacity to feel and suffer

TWO DIFFERENT PLANES WITH DIFFERENT CONSEQUENCES

TWO DIFFERENT PLANES WITH DIFFERENT CONSEQUENCES

1. - The health and welfare of animals is the aim sought by Animal Welfare Legislation, primarily intended to regulate the activity of industries, producers and veterinarians

2. - Avoid conflicts and punish cruelty that could be described as a crime, is the purpose of Animal Law, which applies internally in Member States.

A reduction to absurdity of this dichotomy is that companion Animals (private) are protected from cruelty, abandonment, torture and death, but instead, it seems that in this category are production animals , or testing animals, at least they are not referenced in the criminal codes

Building bridges for cooperation

Legal texts, particularly those that provide the basic structure for the entire regulatory system and the enforcement of standards, need to be worded with categories that put animals in a context that more accurately reflects their status as sentient beings, taking them out of the category of objects governed by narrow Property relationships

Building bridges for cooperation

Veterinary surgeons and jurists should work closer together with the goal of improving animals’ living conditions’.

This in turn will enable us to address from firmer ground the changes that must be made—now more than ever—in the legal systems governing animals.

SPECIFIC PROPOSALS of HARMONIZATION

1. - Making of European legislation on animal welfare issue an instrument intelligible. Much of the legislation is repetitive, dark and excessive.

2. - Extending the classification of 'sentient beings' to all animals. The Declaration of Article 13 of the Treaty of Lisbon, with all its defects, should be extended to Member States as a standard of their internal law.

SPECIFIC PROPOSALS of HARMONIZATION

3. Consistently harmonization of legal texts to the classification of 'sentient beings'.

In other words, to replace the classification of animals as "things" or as "non-things" in the legal texts of the law countries, who develop texts or programmatic basis.

SPECIFIC PROPOSALS of HARMONIZATION

4. – Application of this qualification to companion animals and animals used in shows.

5. - Standards by which Animal Welfare Law are measured, be applicable to any legislation on animals within the EU

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!!

teresa.gimenez.candela@uab.cat