Animal Rights after the Brexit Repeal Bill

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/nov/23/steve-bell-conservatives-animal-rights-cartoon

Listening to Mr Gove on Radio Four at the moment, he's making sense.

Animal welfare standards in the UK are infinitely higher than a lot of European countries. The standard of care and treatment in some actually make your hair stand on end, from Foi Gras in France to bull fighting, obscene so called festivals in Spain, and treatment of animals in some Eastern European countries that is SO barbaric that its unprintable making a complete mockery of any EU protection legislation. I think our own standards will be more than adequate compared to European ones!

The RSPCA does cover Farm Animals under a different scheme called, I think, Farm Animals Assured.

Looks like this is the topic of Newsnight this evening.
Did they mention us? Stars of the small screen?

"Your Opinion Matters"

nigglynellie Well said.

Jalima Sadly no, we didn't get a mention on Newsnight. Perhaps we should be more extreme in our discussions next time, our opinions must have been too balanced to be newsworthy.

Nigglynellie I couldn't agree more.

voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/11/24/gove-panned-by-the-public-after-social-media-slur/

Have you forgotten that Gove stood in front of the biggest lie of the lot, a red bus promising lots of money for the NHS?

infacts.org/gove-makes-dogs-dinner-animal-suffering-vote/

Worth reading if you want to see the difference between what is law and what is not, and whose responsibility it is.

Oh give it up durhamjen this animal welfare fake news is just a pile of dung.....stop spreading it.

Stop spreading dung?

We probably forced Europe to have better animal welfare in the first place, it’s better here than almost anywhere on the planet.
Bull fighting, throwing animals off Towers, overloading donkeys, veal rearing, foix gras and the force feeding that goes into it etc.

Yes, a good analogy, if I say so myself [ grin]

Yes, it was rather good! Made me smile, and that's saying something. I thought it was wind at first!

"In practical terms, not copying across Article 13 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty won’t make much difference to your average cat or cow. “Animal sentience” is explicitly mentioned in the EU text and absent from the UK’s Animal Welfare Act. But the principle of sentience is implied, and has been for all British animal welfare legislation since 1822.

The big difference is that Article 13 says that governments shall “pay full regard” to animal welfare. UK law places this responsibility on the owner or keeper. This means government could make policy – in agriculture, fisheries or transport, for example – without having to consider animal welfare issues. If Gove’s pro-animal zeal is genuine, then this might not be a problem. But that’s not a guarantee and, in any case, he won’t always be environment secretary."

With regard to the above posts: The Independent website has published a clarification stating it had been incorrect to claim MPs had voted to remove the protection from law. What has been referred to elsewhere today as fake news, or
' half a dozen caterpillars making the field ring....with their mportunate chink.'

They voted against accepting article 13 amendment into law, which amounts to the same thing. They voted against it being the responsibility of the government to protect animals.

The whole point about article 50 is taking all EU laws into UK law, then deciding in parliamentary committee, which in this case means the whole of the commons, whether to keep certain laws or not.
They decided they did not want parliament to have responsibility for animal sentience. It's not fake news.
The Tories voted against Caroline Lucas's amendment which would have put the onus on parliament to accept that all animals are sentient beings, not just people's pets.

www.independent.co.uk/environment/animal-sentience-brexit-vote-caroline-lucas-michael-gove-truth-fact-argument-a8072071.html

"Some of the Government’s attempts to dismiss the controversy have been overly extreme, apparently in an attempt to write-off the entire discussion. Despite claims about fake news, it’s not definitive why exactly MPs voted against the amendment, or that the Government will meaningfully recognise animals as sentient – instead, it relies on people believing the Government’s claims that it will guarantee protections.

At the same time, many of the reports did miss a very specific but very important detail of what happened. Nobody voted that animals aren’t sentient, because that wasn’t ever up for a vote. Instead, they didn’t vote that they were. A number of stories gave a misleading impression by eliding that distinction.

With all of that out of the way, what you feel about all of this ultimately comes down to the issues above: whether you think it’s important that animal sentience is specifically recognised in law, whether you think the 2006 act goes far enough, and whether you believe the Government that it is going to guarantee similar protections in its own time."

Don't forget that this is the government that promised to bring back fox hunting.

No dj, It promised to have another vote on Fox Hunting, not the same thing at all. Animal welfare within the EU is almost laughable and whether they are sentient or not is, to most EU country completely unimportant especially Spain who comes well up near the top of the list on the cruelty animals level. Their behaviour and lack of compassion is quite disgusting particularly for a so called civilised country. I'm ashamed to have visited this awful country and never will again.

Why would it have another vote on fox hunting if it didn't want to bring it back?
It was in the manifesto.

It doesn't matter what individuals think on all sides of the House, if the H of C voted against it that would be that, unlike some EU countries who allow horrendous cruelty with no attempts at legislation, - state sponsored cruelty from veal crates to bull fighting is the order of the day, in some cases in the name of tradition. How appalling is that.

Are you vegan?

www.viva.org.uk/resources/video-library/milk

Milk and cheese = veal calves.

Are you as concerned about the way we keep pigs?

www.viva.org.uk/pig-farming-report