Category: Animal Rights

Do we treat animal cruelty offenders too harshly?

Defense lawyers, cruelty prosecutions

Some defence lawyers believe we do.

Some UK lawyers appear on a crusade to curtail animal cruelty prosecutions in the UK. The rights and interests of the abused animals to get protection seem to get lost in attempts to make us feel sorry for the offenders. Some lawyers advertise themselves as specialist defence lawyers against the RSPCA and arguably publish a lot of misinformation to muddy the waters.

By advertising themselves as specialist defence lawyers it obviously provides them with clients and publicity in this niche market. The situation is similar in other countries such as Australia and the USA. They declare that they are there to defend you against the dastardly RSPCA, who they ironically accuse of using ‘specialist animal welfare prosecution lawyers’, when of course they are acting in the same way.

Extreme and lurid viewpoints.

At least one firm posts quite extreme and lurid viewpoints about the charity on their websites. One goes as far as to show an RSPCA sign dripping with blood stating the charity has ‘increasingly taken over the investigation and prosecution’ of animal cruelty in the UK and accuses their inspectors of being “sheep in wolves clothing“ by dressing in police style uniforms to dupe the public.

Website sign, RSPCA, blood
Some sections of the legal profession are obviously not fans of the R.S.P.C.A – from a law firms’ website.

They also cite the RSPCA of slaughtering 1000 healthy dogs and cats annually and state that ‘there are few prosecutions that cause more anxiety and trauma than RSPCA prosecutions’. 

Their advice to owners being investigated by the RSPCA is to rush their pet to a vet to get a report on its good condition, but of course this is mostly nonsensical as most neglect results from not visiting a vet in the first place. RSPCA Inspectors are hardly likely to waste their time chasing owners of healthy and well looked after pets as there is obviously no point.

Unfair to brand people who ill treat animals as criminals.

Some defence lawyers seem to feel the use of the Animal Welfare Act is too severe and  its application often controversial believing that it would be better to warn or educate owners rather than prosecute them. But this is mostly the line the RSPCA takes and prosecution is only used for severe cases. It also has to be remembered that they are not driving around looking for owners to pick on but responding to concerns by the public. The consensus among some is that offenders cannot be treated fairly in court due to emotive public reaction and media interest. There also seems an attitude that people who ill-treat animals to the point that they break the law, should not be branded as criminals, but rather as misguided souls only guilty of a misdemeanor at most and deserving of lenient treatment.

I obviously uphold everyone’s right to have a legal defence but not at the cost of removing the right to prosecute those that have committed an illegal act. The message at the moment seems that it is better to ignore acts of animal cruelty in respect of the law because at the end of the day animals do not really matter.

The point that appears overlooked by many is that the RSPCA cannot pursue a prosecution unless a vet confirms an animal has been cruelly treated beyond what is defensible, so realistically it is the veterinary surgeon who is instigating the prosecution and for good reason.

Another comment by certain sections of the legal profession is that ‘the RSPCA use their own vets and docile police officers’ to aid them. In fact they are mostly independent veterinary surgeons.

There are thankfully other Lawyers who feel different.

Luckily there are other groups to help counter these legal attitudes within the profession. The UK Association of Lawyers for Animal Welfare (ALAW) has commendable ideals in trying to make more of their colleagues interested in animal protection and use a range of law-related techniques to secure better enforcement of existing protection laws, but many accuse them of furthering RSPCA goals.

There are similar groups elsewhere such as the Animal Legal Defense Fund in the USA operated by lawyers to ‘protect the lives and advance the interests of them [animals] through the legal system’ by filing high-impact lawsuits, providing free legal help, training prosecutors and pushing for stronger enforcement of State anti-cruelty laws and more humane treatment of animals in every corner of American lives.

Many suggest that the UK government prosecuting authority, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), should only pursue such cases, knowing full well that this would be the death knell of prosecuting people for animal cruelty in the UK. The CPS of course, like all other government authorities, has more pressing concerns and financial constraints and as the Police know well, it is a battle to get any case through them. So what chance a case of animal cruelty.

 

 

The animal compassion test.

Dog meat trade, dogs

Be honest: which of these two photographs arouses more or all of your compassion.

Both photographs are of overcrowded animals heading for slaughter to be eaten for their meat. As genuine ‘animal lovers’ we should have an equal reaction to both photographs, but most of us will be more concerned at the plight of the dogs because we are more familiar with them. The general rule is that our conscience is more aroused when we see images of companion pets, but accept cruelty to many other animals, particularly livestock as less of a concern or even inconsequential. We are guilty of having preferences when it involves animal suffering and unconsciously grade our level of empathy and compassion towards an animal’s well-being depending on the type of animal and the circumstances involved.

We manage to compartmentalise our compassion.

Our behaviours are rather perverse and hypocritical in the way we view animal suffering and cruelty.We have this peculiar in-built capacity to group certain sections of the animal world into being less worthy of our compassion. This makes it easy for us to use them without being racked with guilt at the way we treat them.

This ranking goes along the lines of dogs and cute baby animals first, followed by cats and horses and then spirals down to those we have little consideration for such a fish and insects, and those we hate like spiders and rats.

We see no problem in confining intelligent free flying birds in small cages.

Battery farm battery chickens, cruelty to chickens, hens
Many of us get upset about chickens and hens being confined…………………..
but see no problem in confining intelligent free flying birds in small cages for our entertainment.

For instance, there are no campaigns against  keeping intelligent, social, free flying birds like parrots and macaws in solitary confinement in small cages, but we consistently argue against battery farmed birds which are unable to fly.

We make it worse in the case of parrots by often taking away their ability to fly by clipping their wings and ignoring their mental suffering. Such is our bizarre attitude of feeling sorry for certain animals in one situation but not in others.

Many children adore keeping rats and mice as pets and they become part of the family, but if a wild one should have the cheek to invade our home we exterminate it by any means possible, whether humane or not. Our lives are full of these contradictory attitudes.

“we have this capacity to unconsciously distance ourselves from any mental discomfort or anxiety certain animals might suffer”

Farm animals are another case in point as we appear unconcerned about the conditions they are kept under but make a great display of emotion when a dog is treated in the same way.

mouse, human hand
Pet or a pest?

Worse still we label farmed food animals with the unflattering title of livestock, ‘stock’ being defined as a ‘commodity for use or sale’ which when combined with ‘live’ becomes ‘farm animals regarded as assets’. This further distances ourselves from looking upon them as animals with personality or individuality. It re-enforces the conditioning that we receive during childhood that they are just meat producing machines, voraciously eating in the fields to fatten up for us to consume.

Scientific research uses huge numbers of animals and yet again we have this capacity to unconsciously distance ourselves from any mental discomfort or anxiety about the way we use them. This is because most animals used are mice, rats and fish which we have little interest in, but what about dogs and cats?

dog, cage

Our irrational attitude kicks in once again because we even view their suffering as essential to our well-being and so we allow ourselves to condone the use of our beloved dogs, cats and horses, which under other circumstances we would never contemplate and vehemently protest against even though 1,079 of the dogs used in the UK in 2016 suffered moderate to severe pain.

Number of Dogs and Cats used for experiments in 2016
2016               U.K            U.S.A     AUSTRALIA
DOGS             4,607           60,979             7,698
CATS                143           18,898             2,015

What makes these poor dogs and cats any different?

The answer is that we may not want them tortured and sacrificed on our behalf, but we cannot contemplate putting their welfare before ours. We believe that the research might help or even save our lives at some stage and so they become beyond our capacity to feel any sympathy towards. They are out of sight and mind and their use doesn’t impact on our lives.

We are all guilty of viewing and treating animals in a different way dependent on the type of animal involved, what we intend to use them for, the circumstances we meet them under and the many influences of our lifestyles, upbringing and attitudes. For all these reasons animal abuse continues unabated and must be inevitable.

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Updated February 2020