I have been thinking about what that really means. Two years is a small milestone in the life of an organisation, especially one working towards something as ambitious as transforming the legal status of animals. But it is long enough to ask whether an idea has survived contact with reality and whether it is becoming genuinely useful to the people and animals it was created to serve.

When I founded ICARE, it grew from a gap I had encountered repeatedly. Across the world, very committed animal advocates are doing difficult and often under-resourced work. Yet many cannot readily access specialised animal rights legal education, practical training, relevant resources or a community with whom to test ideas and build solutions. Opportunities remain concentrated in a relatively small number of countries, can be prohibitively expensive and are not always compatible with the realities of work, advocacy and our lives or responsibilities.

The problem has never been a lack of passion, talent, hard work or commitment. It is that commitment too often has to operate without equitable access to the knowledge, skills, opportunities and connections that can help turn it into effective legal and policy work.

ICARE was created to help close that gap.

During our anniversary month, we hope to welcome 15 Advocatalysts: monthly supporters who will help us sustain the programmes we have built, and build what comes next. You can become one here.

Become an Advocatalyst

What we have built together

Since our first course in early 2025, ICARE has supported more than 250 animal and food systems transition advocates and reached people in 100 countries through our programmes.

Together, we have:

• developed two live editions of our flagship Contemporary Issues in Animal Rights Law (CIARL) course, as well as an on-demand version that people can follow from anywhere and at their own pace;

• created specialised programmes bridging animal rights theory and practice, exploring constitutional animal rights law and equipping advocates to support fair transitions towards food systems free from animal exploitation;

• organised 11 free online seminars and lectures, attended live by more than 1,000 people;

• made more than 150 resources freely available through our growing Resource Library, website, and blog;

• published our first e-book, Key Concepts for Animal Rights Law, which has been downloaded more than 1,000 times;

• awarded more than €15,000 in scholarship support, helping ensure that cost and geography do not decide who can participate;

• connected more than 100 course alums through ARVAN, our mentoring and collaboration network, so that learning and relationships can continue after a course ends, including via our mentee calls and 1:1 mentorship; and

• presented our first research findings at several major conferences.

The quality of that experience matters as much as its reach. Participants notably rated our latest CIARL live course 4.94 out of 5.

I am proud of these figures. I am even more interested, however, in what happens next: whether people can use what they have learned in their research, organisations, campaigns, and communities, and how they apply it to achieve legal and policy wins for animals, transform food systems, and secure lasting change.

Our earliest tracking in early 2026 already identified 10 CIARL live alums from our first edition (out of 30) who entered or deepened roles or volunteering in animal advocacy, while 9 had produced publications. Alums had also contributed to campaigns, legal reform work, litigation, education and research.

Isaac Aarón de Santiago Peña Lobato, a lawyer in Peru and co-founder of Derecho Animal en Perú, who took part in the second edition of the CIARL live course, told us:

“As a lawyer, the knowledge acquired at CIARL has significantly broadened my perspective on legal advocacy opportunities, improving the quality of my legal drafting for animal defense and my production of academic material.”

Bárbara Gaetani, a veterinary medicine and forensic investigator in Brazil, told us that the CIARL on-demand course gave her greater conceptual clarity and confidence and encouraged her to begin an academic article connecting animal rights law, green criminology and environmental law.

And for Nduta Muhindi, a lawyer in Kenya who took our summer course in 2025, accessing the course itself was transformative:

“ICARE’s virtual classes made participation possible, and their need-based scholarship removed a significant barrier.”

The work behind the work

There is another part of these first two years that is harder to capture in numbers.

A course is not only the time we spend together online. It is months of curriculum design, research, speaker coordination, scholarship assessment, practical assignments, individual feedback on tasks, and follow-up after the course ends.

A free resource is not only a carousel or PDF, e-book, database entry or policy paper that people eventually see. It requires identifying what advocates need, verifying legal and academic sources, translating technical material into accessible language, reviewing it carefully and keeping it useful over time.

And an international community does not emerge simply because people have entered the same virtual room. It requires facilitation, mentoring, introductions, consistent follow-up and the infrastructure that allows relationships to continue.

Much of this has been made possible by a small team of volunteers and collaborators who have given ICARE extraordinary amounts of time and expertise. Project funding has also enabled vital programmes and outputs. But grants for specific projects do not always cover the continuous organisational work that connects those projects, keeps resources free and allows us to respond when advocates need support.

There are limits to what can responsibly be sustained through restricted project funding and voluntary work alone. If ICARE is to remain rigorous and accessible, we need a stronger base of flexible, recurring support.

That is why we are launching Advocatalysts.

Become a Founding Advocatalyst

Advocatalysts are ICARE’s monthly supporters: people who help sustain the advocates, knowledge and infrastructure that can turn commitment into lasting change for animals.

Our goal is to welcome 15 Advocatalysts by 31 August.

Our suggested gift is €10 per month — €120 in dependable support over a year — but any amount that is sustainable for you is meaningful. If 15 people joined at €10 per month, together they would create €1,800 in reliable annual support that ICARE could plan around.

Become an Advocatalyst

Monthly support helps us:

• widen access to rigorous animal rights law and food systems transition education;

• sustain free educational resources and publications;

• support advocates beyond the end of a course through mentoring and collaboration;

• develop research and practical tools for legal and policy advocacy; and

• invest in the organisational capacity that keeps our work accessible, responsive and reliable.

Advocatalysts will receive concise quarterly updates about the work they are helping to sustain. Our substantive educational and research resources will always remain publicly accessible.

Become an Advocatalyst

If monthly giving is not right for you, a one-time anniversary gift will also help us build the next chapter. And if donating is not possible, sharing this letter with someone who believes in strengthening the animal rights movement is a meaningful way to help.

Share

Thank you for being part of ICARE

ICARE’s first two years were built by every participant who trusted a new organisation enough to learn with us; every lecturer, contributor and mentor who shared their expertise; every volunteer who gave their time and skills; every partner who opened a door or made a connection; every funder and donor who believed this work and our community were worth investing in; and every person who read, used, improved or shared one of our resources.

Some of you gave time. Some gave knowledge, introductions, feedback, funding or encouragement. Many of you gave more than one of these things. I do not take any of that trust for granted.

There is still an extraordinary amount of work ahead if animals are to be recognised as individuals with dignity and enforceable legal rights and freed from exploitation worldwide. Two years have not changed that reality. But we have laid solid foundations, and they have shown us what we can start moving when rigorous knowledge, practical support, individual guidance and committed, talented people are brought together.

Thank you for supporting this vision. Now, let us build what comes next.

Their experiences arise from different legal systems, but converge on one conclusion: the violence farmed animals are exposed to inside slaughterhouses is sustained by weak legal rules, inadequate equipment, production pressure, deficient supervision and poor enforcement from institutions that may know about animal rights violations without stopping them.3 For animal advocates, that diagnosis changes what evidence we need to gather, whom we hold responsible and what we understand as a meaningful remedy.

It often starts with ineffective stunning

Sabina identified ineffective stunning as one of the most serious and recurrent violations of animal rights found in Animal Law Focus’s work. Caroline described the same pattern in L214 investigations: animals showing signs of consciousness after stunning, recovering before or during bleeding, or being killed without effective intervention.4

This is not a marginal technical irregularity. Stunning is intended to render an animal unconscious and insensible to pain until death. EU law requires animals—subject to a derogation for particular methods of religious slaughter—to be killed only after stunning and to remain unconscious and insensible until death. Operators must check stunning regularly and act immediately when it fails.5 Chile’s Decree No. 28 likewise requires corrective action when an animal has not been properly stunned, periodic verification of equipment, a back-up system or suspension of operations when equipment fails, verification through reflexes or other indicators, and maintenance of unconsciousness until death.6

The scientific basis is equally clear. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) identifies breathing, blinking and other species- and process-specific responses as possible indicators of consciousness. The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) warns that incorrect electrical parameters, poor positioning, equipment failures and delays before bleeding can cause ineffective stunning or recovery of consciousness.7

Yet stunning must not become our only lens. Animals may arrive after hunger, thirst, heat exposure, overcrowding or injurious transport. They may be beaten or subjected to painful handling and restraint. Animals who are injured, sick, exhausted or in advanced pregnancy may be transported and slaughtered despite being unfit. The killing line is the final stage of a much longer institutional process.8

An enforcement gap—and a design problem

Caroline and Sabina distinguished two problems that are often collapsed into one. The first is an enforcement gap. Rules exist, but inspections may be infrequent, predictable or superficial. Authorities may lack staff, resources, specialist training or political support. Sanctions may vary between regions or individual officials. Inspectors can become accustomed to practices that should trigger intervention. Caroline recalled footage from L214 showing serious violations while veterinary officials were present on the line.9

However, official controls are not optional. Under the EU Official Controls Regulation, Member States’ competent authorities must monitor and verify compliance with animal welfare requirements across the agri-food chain.10

The second problem is structural. Even perfect compliance with minimum standards would not make slaughter harmless. Law regulates a process organised around killing animals at scale, often at high speed and under intense economic pressure. Facilities, staffing, maintenance and training are shaped by throughput and cost. EFSA repeatedly connects slaughter hazards with inadequate skills, fatigue and poorly designed facilities; in its cattle assessment, 39 of 40 identified hazards were attributed to inadequate staff skills or fatigue.11

It would therefore be inaccurate—and also, strategically limiting—to reduce abuse to a few ‘bad workers’. Individual conduct may be unlawful, but responsibility also lies with operators who set production conditions, companies that benefit from them, authorities that fail to intervene, and governments that tolerate weak systems of control.12

Turning images into legal evidence

L214’s investigations have made visible what slaughterhouses are designed to keep outside public view. But as Caroline emphasised, distressing footage does not automatically become a legal case.

Strategic investigations begin before publication. Advocates must establish when and where footage was recorded, preserve original files and metadata, document how materials were obtained, and connect each sequence to a specific legal obligation. Lawyers must be able to explain what the image shows, which stage of the process is involved, which indicators suggest consciousness or distress, who was responsible and what corrective action should have followed. L214 also considers scale, severity and repetition; whether the facility can be reliably identified; the materials’ authenticity and recency; the applicable law; and the likelihood of meaningful legal and public consequences.13

In France, Article 427 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that, unless otherwise specified, offences may be proved by any form of evidence. Article 521-1-2 of the Penal Code criminalises certain knowing recordings and online dissemination of animal cruelty, but expressly excludes material whose purpose is to contribute to a public interest debate or serve as evidence in court.14

Investigators nevertheless face growing risks. Since the seminar, the French Parliament has definitively adopted an agricultural bill containing an aggravated offence for unlawful entry into premises used for farming, slaughter, meat cutting or preparation, punishable by two years’ imprisonment and a €45,000 fine. As of 25 July 2026, the bill had been referred to the Constitutional Council and had therefore not yet entered into force. On its face, the provision concerns unlawful entry, rather than filming as such, but it illustrates why investigations require jurisdiction-specific legal risk assessments.15

Follow responsibility upwards

One of the strongest lessons from Caroline’s and L214’s work is that animal advocates should not stop at the person captured on camera. The operator’s responsibility, the role of official veterinarians and the State’s failure to supervise may be equally important.16

On 5 March 2026, the Bordeaux Administrative Tribunal held the French State liable for a culpable failure in supervising the Bazas slaughterhouse. It found violence against animals, inappropriate restraint, lack of clean drinking water, and animals being killed while still conscious because too much time elapsed between stunning and bleeding. The court found fault in the veterinary services’ inspection during the filmed period and awarded L214 €3,000 for the harm caused to the interests it exists to defend.17 This form of litigation changes the narrative. It asks what authorities knew, what they inspected, which measures they ordered, whether those measures worked and why operations continued. It creates public records, exposes patterns and affirms that authorities’ duties are legally reviewable.18

Sabina described a complementary method in Chile. Animal Law Focus analyses administrative infraction files, identifies repeat offenders and obtains complete records through access-to-information requests. Chile’s Transparency Law provides a general right to request and receive information held by State bodies, subject to statutory exceptions. Such files may reveal inspection histories, veterinary findings, photographs, prior sanctions and recurring non-compliance that no single investigation could establish alone.19

The transferable lesson is simple: build cases not only from what advocates can film, but also from what the State already knows.

Use the whole legal toolbox

Animal protection law is only one entry point. Slaughterhouses are also regulated through food hygiene, occupational safety, licensing, planning, water, waste, air pollution and public health law.20

Connecting animal suffering with these other failures does not subordinate animals’ interests to human concerns. It recognises that the same organisational negligence may manifest in several legally actionable ways. A facility that fails to maintain stunning equipment may also disregard sanitation, wastewater or worker safety requirements. Slaughterhouse effluent can contain high organic loads and nutrients that deplete oxygen and contribute to eutrophication in receiving waters.21

Strategies may therefore combine criminal complaints, administrative enforcement, information requests, challenges to permits or official inaction, civil claims where available, corporate engagement and public advocacy. They can bring animal advocates into alliance with environmental, labour, public health and community organisations.22 However, those alliances require much care. As Sabina warned, closing or constraining one facility may shift harmful activity to places where regulation is weaker, and where communities already carry disproportionate environmental burdens. Animal advocates should therefore be mindful of where production will move, who will be affected, and whether a remedy changes the system or merely relocates its harms.23

A practical framework for animal advocates

Map the law before gathering evidence. Identify rules governing transport fitness, unloading, handling, restraint, stunning, bleeding, official controls, records, licensing, pollution and access to information. Note who must monitor compliance and which remedies are available.

Build an evidence protocol. Preserve originals, dates, locations, metadata and chains of custody. Record the species, process stage, equipment and observable indicators involved. Pair each image, document or testimony with the legal provision it may establish.24

Investigate patterns, not only incidents. Request inspection reports, veterinary records, sanctions, operating procedures and prior complaints. Track repeat offenders and authorities that repeatedly accept nominal corrections.

Pursue parallel responsibility. Consider individual conduct, but also management decisions, corporate policies, professional duties, regulatory omissions and State liability. Ask who controlled line speed, staffing, equipment, training and the decision to continue operations.25

Protect investigators and whistleblowers. Analyse trespass, surveillance, confidentiality, employment, publication and evidence rules before an investigation. Plan secure storage, redaction, informed consent and legal representation.26

Define the remedy in advance. Decide whether the immediate objective is suspension, equipment correction, prosecution, disclosure, independent monitoring, reduced throughput, licence withdrawal, reform or structural reduction in animal exploitation. Anticipate displacement and unintended effects.

Enforcement is essential, but it is not the endpoint

Investigations and litigation can stop immediate animal suffering. They can close a facility, compel corrective action, expose official failures, establish precedent and force institutions to respond. For every animal who would otherwise remain conscious during killing, enforcement matters urgently.27 But neither of our guests considered better enforcement as an endpoint. Violations recur because the legal and economic system continues to treat sentient individuals as units moving through a production line. Minimum standards may reduce some extreme suffering while leaving the institution intact.28

Animal advocates therefore carry a dual responsibility. We must use existing law rigorously and strategically because animals cannot wait for a transformed legal order. At the same time, we must resist allowing compliance with minimum welfare rules to become our moral horizon.

Investigations open the slaughterhouse door. Legal advocacy determines whether what is revealed produces accountability. Structural advocacy asks the question that law too often avoids: why should a system organised around the large-scale killing of sentient beings continue at all?

For animal advocates, this is not a minor policy development. These documents may shape the next phase of EU animal welfare reform, CAP priorities, public procurement, protein policy and agricultural transition. They tell us something more fundamental: where animals stand in the future of European food systems.

Some opening should be taken seriously. After years of delay, the Livestock Strategy refers to targeted proposals on laying hens and broilers by the end of 2026, including cage phase-out and the systematic killing of male chicks. It also refers to a proposal on pigs in Q2 2027, including the move from crates to pens.2 These commitments concern animals whose lives are currently shaped by confinement, genetic selection, production demands, transport, and premature death. If they become strong, binding and enforceable rules, they could reduce real suffering.

But the announcement itself is obviously not enough. The question is what kind of reform is now being built, and whether animals appear in it as sentient beings whose lives and interests matter, or mainly as part of a sector to be stabilised and optimised.

The Commission’s own list of key actions confirms this concern. The Annex sets out thirty-two actions, many of which concern financial instruments, insurance, disease management, permitting, circularity, simplification, methodologies, nitrates, marketing standards, origin information, promotion policy and ‘European excellence’. The concrete animal welfare law reform is essentially limited to two targeted actions: one on laying hens and broilers, and one on pigs.3 This imbalance is significant.

A welfare reform that now looks much narrower

The Commission did not promise an animal rights strategy; it promised animal welfare law reform. That distinction is important. Still, even judged on its own terms, the current direction raises several concerns.

The earlier revision process, launched under the Farm to Fork Strategy, was much broader. The preparatory work concerned the general rules on animals kept for farming purposes; the species-specific rules on laying hens, broilers, pigs and calves; the rules on transport and killing; and possible animal welfare labelling.4 It also drew on EFSA scientific opinions on a wider range of animals and practices, including broilers, pigs, calves, dairy cows, laying hens, ducks, geese, and quail, as well as transport-related opinions for several species.5 The End the Cage Age European Citizens’ Initiative had also placed a broader cage phase-out demand before the Commission, covering laying hens and pigs, but also rabbits, pullets, broiler breeders, layer breeders, quail, ducks and geese, farrowing crates, sow stalls and individual calf pens. The Commission responded positively in 2021 and set out plans for a legislative proposal to prohibit the use of cages for the species and categories covered by the ECI.6

Public concern has not disappeared. In 2025, the Commission consultation on on-farm animal welfare for certain animals received more than 190,000 contributions and, according to the Commission, showed strong support for cage-free farming and equivalent welfare standards for imported food.7 The Staff Working Document also records that the large majority of respondents, including a majority of companies and business organisations, considered cage phase-out very important or important for certain species.8 In addition, in the Livestock Strategy consultation, animal welfare, sustainable farming and farmer livelihoods were the three dominant themes across stakeholder groups.9

Against that background, the new Livestock Strategy reads as a more limited political re-entry point. It brings cages, crates, male chick killing, broiler welfare and pig welfare back into the policy conversation. That is important, but it does not yet amount to a comprehensive reform package for all farmed animals, nor does it provide firm phase-out dates, detailed transition periods, or guarantees against loopholes.

Many animals and issues also remain without clear new commitments in these documents: dairy cows and calves, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, geese, quail, fish, stocking densities, fast-growing breeds, mutilations, outdoor access, enrichment, transport, slaughter, penalties, enforcement and transparent animal-based indicators. These are not side issues. A (promised) welfare reform should not be assessed solely by the practices it names; it must also be assessed by who is left outside its protection, how precise the legal commitments are, and whether the final rules can, in practice, change animals’ lives.

EU law already recognises animals as sentient beings under Article 13 TFEU.10 The problem is that sentience is acknowledged in principle but too often disappears from the policy architecture. And this is exactly the concern here: animal welfare risks being folded into a wider project of making livestock production more competitive, resilient, and marketable.

A livestock strategy before an animal welfare strategy

The Livestock Strategy is not primarily written around animals. It focuses on the future of the EU livestock sector.

Its opening frame is economic and strategic. The Commission describes livestock as contributing to food security by providing ‘high quality protein’, carrying the flag of ‘European excellence’ globally, and forming a ‘key strategic sector’ for EU competitiveness and open strategic autonomy.11 It also states that, in some rural areas, Europe ‘need[s] livestock for their survival’, and that the ‘Union of 2040 must be a place where sustainable livestock farming not only survives but thrives’.12

This is not neutral language. It places the preservation of livestock farming almost beyond question. The sector is presented as something to be protected, financed, strengthened and made more attractive to consumers. Animal welfare appears within that project, but not as its starting point. Animals themselves are very hard to see.

Article 13 TFEU, however, does not treat animal welfare as a branding condition for agricultural competitiveness. It requires the Union and Member States to pay full regard to animal welfare requirements when formulating and implementing Union policies in agriculture, fisheries, transport, the internal market, research and technological development, and space.13 Other EU principles also matter here. Environmental protection must be integrated into Union policies; EU environmental policy is meant to pursue a high level of protection and is based on precaution, prevention, rectification of environmental damage at source, and the polluter-pays principle; and human health protection must be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies.14

A livestock strategy cannot therefore be assessed only by whether it helps the sector adapt or compete. It should also be assessed by whether it reduces preventable harm: to animals, ecosystems, climate, public health, and future food security.

The Strategy does acknowledge negative impacts, but often in language that softens their political force. It speaks of the sector needing to ‘turn its environmental footprint into positive externalities’.15 In the Staff Working Document, the problem is at times framed as ‘public perception’ focusing on the ‘negative aspects of livestock production’, or as environmental, climate and animal welfare requirements creating complexity and administrative burden for farmers.16 Farmers do face real economic pressure. A serious transition must support them. But pollution, emissions, confinement, disease risk and animal suffering are not merely problems of perception or administrative complexity. They are material harms. They fall on animals, communities, ecosystems and future generations.

The Commission’s own evidence makes that clear. Agriculture accounts for around 12.6% of the EU’s total direct greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock contributes approximately 66% of agricultural emissions. Livestock production also accounts for around 81% of agricultural nitrogen input into aquatic systems, while nutrient pollution significantly affects both surface water and groundwater bodies. Agriculture is the predominant source of ammonia emissions in the EU, contributing around 90% of the total, with livestock farming and fertilisers identified as major sources.17

These are not marginal externalities waiting to be converted into a more positive story. They are structural features of the current system.

The Commission further states that the sector represents around 40% of EU agricultural added value, around EUR 400 billion in turnover, 7 million jobs and 4 million farms involved in livestock farming. In 2025, the EU had around 132 million pigs, 72 million bovine animals, 54 million sheep, 10 million goats and 1.6 billion poultry birds.18 Animal welfare is placed within a strategy designed to secure, modernise, and legitimise animal agriculture.

The Commission’s own data show why this matters. In poultry and pig production, outdoor access remains marginal in terms of animal numbers: around 2.2% for poultry and generally below 5% for pigs. Cage systems still account for about 36% of laying hens. Among pigs, 85% of sows are kept in farrowing crates during farrowing, and 65% are kept in gestation crates during gestation.19 These figures show why cage and crate reform is urgent. They also show why reform cannot stop at improving the sector's image.

A cage phase-out can be necessary and still insufficient. A move from crates to pens can reduce one severe form of confinement while leaving the wider structure of exploitation intact. Import standards can help prevent lower-welfare products from undermining EU rules, but only if the EU rules themselves are precise and enforced.

The Strategy also gives considerable space to ‘European excellence’, origin information, optional reserved terms, high-welfare criteria, local slaughter capacity, promotion policy and environmental performance.20 Some of these tools may support better practices in specific cases. But they can also become a language of reassurance—a way of presenting animal agriculture as ethically and environmentally resolved while animals remain confined, controlled, transported and killed. Words like ‘local’, ‘circular’, or ‘sustainable’ should not obscure the reality of animals still being confined, made to suffer, transported and killed.

Certainty for the sector, caution for animals

The difference in language is revealing. When the Strategy speaks about animal welfare, the wording is often cautious and procedural: rules are ‘being reviewed’; the Commission ‘intends to propose’ targeted revisions; and further steps on live exports depend on future exchanges, while the market position of European livestock producers is to be maintained.21

When it speaks about the sector itself, the language is more confident. The CAP ‘will continue’ to be the key pillar of support. That asymmetry is not accidental. It shows where certainty lies. The future of the livestock sector is something to secure; stronger protection for animals is something still to be reviewed, balanced and negotiated.

Legal language does political work. It can make one objective appear settled and another optional. In this Strategy, sectoral continuity is written as the baseline, while animal welfare reform remains conditional. That is why the next stage cannot be left to vague assurances. If the EU is serious about animals as sentient beings, welfare commitments need the same legal clarity and political force as the commitments made to preserve and finance the sector that uses them.

The same asymmetry appears in the Strategy’s language of simplification. Modernisation of animal welfare law should mean stronger, clearer and more enforceable protection for animals. Yet parts of the Strategy speak less about strengthening standards than about making existing rules more agile, more flexible and more operationally practical for the sector. The Commission describes simplification as ‘an essential component of competitiveness’, calls for EU hygiene legislation to be made ‘more agile’, and refers to adapting low-capacity slaughterhouses while respecting food safety and animal welfare standards and combining them with ‘operational practicality’. It also says that animal by-product rules should be adjusted to facilitate circular economy ‘without jeopardising’ animal health, food and feed safety standards.22

The repeated use of this kind of language matters. ‘Without jeopardising’ is not the same as improving. ‘Respecting’ standards is not the same as raising them. ‘Flexibility’ is not the same as protection. In these passages, welfare and safety sound like constraints around a competitiveness and simplification agenda, rather than as objectives with their own legal and ethical force.

This does not mean every flexibility measure should be rejected. Smaller or mobile slaughterhouses may reduce transport and waiting times if they are properly designed, staffed, inspected and enforced. But simplification must not become a route around protection. If EU animal welfare law is being modernised, the test should not be how much regulatory flexibility the livestock sector can obtain while formally ‘respecting’ animal welfare. The test should be whether the law gives animals stronger protection in practice.

The same concern extends beyond animal welfare law. The Strategy refers to ‘simplification potential’ in the implementation of the Nitrates Directive, the stress-testing of the Birds and Habitats Directives, faster environmental assessments and facilitated permitting procedures.23 Some administrative improvements may be justified. But in this context, the language is worrying. Environmental law is not presented primarily as the legal expression of precaution, prevention, biodiversity protection, water protection or the polluter-pays principle. It is presented as something that may need to be made more workable for the livestock sector.

That is why the Strategy raises a broader concern. It is not only that animal welfare reform risks being narrowed. It is that the wider legal architecture protecting animals, water, habitats, climate and public health may be pulled into a simplification agenda whose purpose is to help livestock farming ‘survive and thrive’. If EU law is to be modernised, simplification must not become a softer word for weakening protection.

Animal welfare as business case, not animal interest

The Strategy’s animal welfare section is especially revealing. It states that ‘animal welfare is at the heart of citizens’ concerns’, but it does not then ask what animals themselves need, or what follows legally from recognising them (and protecting them) as sentient beings. Instead, citizens’ concern is translated into a market opportunity: the expected global increase in animal protein consumption is presented as a chance for the EU to become a leader in ‘climate- and animal-friendly agriculture’. The follow-up to the End the Cage Age is a question of feasibility, evidence, transition periods and financial support for farmers.24

This shows where the centre of gravity lies. Animals appear briefly, only to disappear again behind market positioning, investment needs and sectoral adaptation. The clearest example is the claim that higher welfare standards can improve ‘resource efficiency’ by reducing mortality, extending animals’ ‘productive lifespans’ and improving feed conversion.25 This is a troubling way to speak about animal welfare. Animals are not inanimated resources to be made more efficient. They are sentient beings whose welfare the EU is legally required to take into account. Yet here, welfare is framed as valuable because it can reduce losses, extend productivity and improve conversion rates. The animal’s life is not considered from their own point of view; it is measured by how efficiently that life can be used.

The Strategy comes closest to revealing its underlying logic when it states that higher animal welfare standards can deliver improved economic results, reduced disease risk and broader support, ‘provided that’ welfare gains translate into measurable health, productivity or premium price benefits.26 Animal welfare is neither framed as a legal or ethical requirement flowing from animals’ sentience, but as a business case: valuable when it improves productivity, reduces risk, attracts consumer confidence or creates market premiums.

And this is problematic where the changes that animals would need would not necessarily improve productivity. Lower stocking densities, slower-growing breeds, meaningful outdoor access, an end to mutilations, limits on transport, or a move away from high-throughput systems may improve animals’ lives while reducing the efficiencies on which the current model depends. If welfare only counts when it improves resource efficiency, premium pricing or consumer confidence, then the reform will remain structurally biased towards measures that make animal agriculture more acceptable, rather than measures that take animals’ interests seriously.

Food security should not be used to avoid the transition question

The Strategy presents livestock as central to food security because it provides ‘high-quality protein’ and supports a positive trade balance in animal products.27 But food security cannot be reduced to the continued production and export of animal products. It should be assessed by asking which food systems can provide healthy, affordable, resilient and sustainable diets with the least avoidable harm.

The Commission’s own Protein Action Plan complicates the Strategy’s food security narrative. The EU livestock sector uses 74 million tonnes of protein as feed every year. Around 26% is imported, and the EU remains particularly dependent on imports for high-protein feed: 74% of oilseeds and protein crops used in feed are imported, including 94% of soya protein.28

The Plan also records very different protein conversion efficiencies across livestock sectors. Producing one kilogram of animal protein requires 3.6 kilograms of feed protein in the egg sector, 5.5 in pigs, 5.8 in dairy, and 15.9 in meat cattle.29 At the same time, 64% of protein consumed by humans in the EU is already animal-based, and the share of animal protein in European diets increased between 2010 and 2023 while plant-protein consumption decreased.30

If the Commission is concerned with feed conversion and protein efficiency, the more obvious question is not how to make animals convert feed more efficiently, but why so much protein is being routed through animals in the first place. A food systems transition would prioritise protein crops, pulses and plant-based foods for direct human consumption, rather than treating feed efficiency as the horizon of ambition.

This is not an argument against supporting farmers. It is an argument against treating livestock preservation as synonymous with food security. A serious food security strategy would ask how to reduce dependency, improve nutrition, protect vulnerable consumers, support farmers, and shift protein production towards systems that are less resource-intensive and less harmful to animals. It would not assume that the future of protein security lies primarily in making livestock feed more local.

This is where the Protein Action Plan is useful, but also limited. It speaks about scaling plant-based protein production, strengthening protein-crop value chains, supporting demand, using public procurement and school food, promoting pulses, and investing in plant-based and alternative proteins.31 These are real policy openings. They should be used.

But the Plan’s clearest numerical benchmark is still a feed-autonomy target: increasing the share of EU-origin protein from oilseeds and protein crops used as feed in the EU from 25.8% in 2025 to 35% in 2035.32 That is not the same as setting a target to shift European diets towards plant-based foods for people.

‘Protein diversification’ can mean two very different things. It can mean supporting pulses, legumes, plant-based foods and alternative proteins for direct human consumption. It can also mean making livestock production less dependent on imported soya and more resilient as a business model. The same words can carry very different political projects. They do not mean the same thing for animals.

Sustainability language should not become a way to preserve the status quo

The environmental case for food system transition is not separate from the animal case; nor does it replace the animal case. But the broader evidence challenges the idea that animal agriculture can be treated as a narrow welfare issue.

Food systems research has repeatedly shown that production-side measures alone are not enough to bring food systems within environmental limits. Demand-side measures, including shifts towards balanced and sustainable healthy diets, can contribute significant mitigation, reduce pressure on land and ecosystems, and support health co-benefits when designed in context-sensitive ways.33 More recent food-systems evidence points in the same direction. The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission similarly points to plant-rich diets, changes in food environments, equity, and the need to transform both production and consumption patterns.34

The Strategy rightly recognises that some grazing systems can support certain landscapes and habitats. But that argument also needs precision. The Commission’s Staff Working Document cites an EEA estimate that only around 10–15% of the current EU ruminant population would be sufficient to preserve Annex I habitats that depend on grazing, if suitably distributed.35 That does not support a blanket defence of current livestock numbers. It suggests a more honest question: where is grazing genuinely ecologically needed, in what numbers, under what welfare conditions for animals, and with what alternatives?

Nor should ‘circularity’ be allowed to do too much ethical work. The Strategy repeatedly presents circularity, by-products, manure, biomass valorisation, carbon farming and nature credits as ways to make livestock more sustainable.36 Some of these tools may reduce specific harms. But circularity can also become a lock-in narrative. Once manure, animal by-products and livestock-related emissions are reframed as resources or credit-generating opportunities, the continued throughput of animal bodies can begin to look like a condition of sustainability rather than a practice to be questioned. A system can valorise by-products and still be built on confinement, reproductive control, mutilations, transport and killing.

The same caution applies to efficiency. The Strategy describes certain animal breeding techniques as a ‘win-win’ for economic and environmental outcomes because they can lower feed use and emissions.37 But animal welfare history should make advocates cautious about any unqualified appeal to productivity. Selection for faster growth, higher yields or greater reproductive output has repeatedly shifted costs onto animals’ bodies. EFSA’s recent welfare opinions on broilers and pigs make clear that welfare cannot be reduced to housing alone: genetics, stocking density, enrichment, mutilations, pain, behavioural restriction and the ability to express species-specific behaviour all matter.38

This is why the language of ‘European excellence’ is so politically important. If excellence means binding phase-out dates, animal-based indicators, enforceable welfare standards, strong import rules, reduced stocking densities, an end to mutilations, better breeding priorities, meaningful enrichment and support for farmers to move out of harmful systems, it could carry substance. But if ‘excellence’ becomes a label for more marketable animal products, it risks turning animal welfare into a branding device.

Health, welfare and disease: the missing One Welfare connection

The Commission is right to take animal diseases seriously. It identifies zoonoses as serious threats to livestock resilience, biodiversity and potentially human health, and it proposes stronger biosecurity, preventive vaccination, surveillance, early detection and early warning systems.39 These tools matter. But they are not enough. The animals themselves are almost not considered, even though they are the ones whose health and welfare are harmed by disease.

What is missing is not only a stronger One Health approach, but a One Welfare approach. The official One Health definition adopted by FAO, WOAH, UNEP and WHO describes One Health as an integrated approach that seeks to balance and optimise the health of people, animals and ecosystems, recognising that the health of humans, domesticated and wild animals, plants and the wider environment are closely linked and interdependent.40 The Quadripartite One Health Joint Plan of Action also calls for upstream prevention, including understanding the drivers of zoonotic emergence and spillover, and strengthening One Health surveillance, early warning and response systems.41 That is already broader than the Livestock Strategy’s largely sectoral framing. The Strategy speaks about disease mainly as a risk to livestock resilience, trade, rural activity and farmers’ livelihoods. It does not ask enough about whether the conditions in which many animals are bred, confined, transported and killed are themselves part of the disease-risk landscape.

This is where One Welfare is especially important. One Welfare highlights the interconnections between animal welfare, human well-being and the environment, and extends the One Health approach by focusing on the direct and indirect links between animal welfare, human welfare and environmentally responsible animal keeping systems.42 WOAH defines animal welfare as the physical and mental state of an animal in relation to the conditions in which they live and die, and states that animal welfare is closely linked to animal health, human well-being, and the sustainability of socio-economic and ecological systems.43

A One Welfare lens would therefore ask different questions, and consider what high-density confinement, stress, poor environments, genetic selection, mutilations, long transport and high-throughput production do to animals’ physical and mental welfare. It would also ask how those same conditions affect disease vulnerability, farmers working under pressure, rural communities exposed to pollution and disease risks, and ecosystems affected by manure, emissions, land use and biodiversity loss.

The Commission briefly acknowledges that higher welfare standards can reduce disease risk. But even that point is reframed mainly as a sectoral benefit: welfare matters when it improves health, productivity, market support or premium pricing.44 That is too limited. A One Welfare approach would start from a different premise: animals should not be kept in conditions that undermine their physical and mental health in the first place, and the social, environmental and health costs of those conditions should not be externalised onto everyone else.

This is also why the Strategy’s treatment of disease cannot be separated from its wider commitment to help livestock farming ‘survive and thrive’. A policy genuinely informed by One Health and One Welfare would not only focus on how to detect outbreaks earlier, vaccinate more effectively, or protect trade flows. It would examine how far current livestock systems—high densities, genetic uniformity, confinement, long transport chains, high throughput, weak welfare enforcement and large-scale killing during outbreaks—are themselves producing health, welfare and environmental vulnerability.

Biosecurity, vaccination and early warning are necessary. But they cannot be the whole prevention strategy. A One Health and One Welfare approach worthy of the name must address the conditions that make animals vulnerable in the first place, and must regard animals not as disease vectors, production units or economic risks, but treat them as sentient beings whose own well-being matters.

Climate adaptation for whom?

The Strategy’s approach to climate adaptation raises a similar concern. The Commission speaks of investing in climate adaptation, mitigation and innovation for the livestock sector. It refers to reducing emissions intensity, improving nutrient management, strengthening circular economy approaches, improving housing and ventilation, and developing ‘genomic and animal breeding techniques’ for traits such as drought tolerance and heat resistance, which it describes as a ‘win-win’ for economic and environmental outcomes.45 But this ‘win-win’ language leaves the animals’ own interests largely unexamined.

The climate crisis is not simply an ‘external shock’ to which livestock production must adapt. Animal agriculture is itself a significant contributor to climate change, including within the EU agricultural sector. Yet the Strategy’s main question remains how to make livestock farming more resilient, rather than how to reduce dependence on the very systems that are part of the problem.

Recent heatwaves make this painfully concrete. During the June 2026 heatwave in France, Le Monde reported that millions of broiler chickens died, especially in Brittany, overwhelming rendering plants and prompting emergency farm burials; pigs and cattle, including young calves, also died, and milk production was expected to fall sharply in western regions.46 These are not only ‘production losses’. They are mass animal suffering events. They also show how climate impacts, animal welfare failures, carcass management and disease risks can converge.

This is why the Strategy’s adaptation language feels so inadequate. Some adaptation measures will be necessary for animals already trapped in production systems. But the answer cannot be only more ventilation, more insurance, more technological monitoring, or more genetic selection of animals who can better withstand heat, drought or intensified production. If ‘win-win’ means that animals are further bred, selected or managed to tolerate harsher conditions so that the same model can continue, then the costs are once again shifted onto their bodies. And humans and animals will continue to suffer.

An animal welfare law perspective should resist that logic. Sentient beings should not be adapted to a failing system so that the system can survive. The deeper question is not how to climate-proof animal agriculture at its current scale. It is how to build food systems that reduce the need to breed, confine, transport and kill animals at this scale.

The risk is not only delay. It is rebranding.

Animal advocates know the cost of delay. The EU animal welfare reform has already been years in the making. The Commission began the modernisation process in 2020, responded positively to the End the Cage Age initiative in 2021, received EFSA scientific opinions in 2022 and 2023, and put forward only selected proposals in 2023, notably on animal transport and on the welfare and traceability of dogs and cats, while the wider on-farm reform remained delayed.47

Delay remains a serious risk. But another risk is now just as important: that reform becomes part of a new legitimacy framework for animal agriculture.

The future of animal production in Europe may increasingly be defended through the language of welfare, locality, circularity, feed autonomy, carbon performance, resilience, European quality and ‘excellence’. This language sounds constructive. It suggests improvement and responsibility. It may reassure consumers and policy-makers that the system is changing enough.

But changing enough for whom?

A system can be more ‘efficient’ and still harm billions of animals. It can be ‘circular’ and still confine them. It can be labelled ‘excellent’ while animals continue to be bred for productivity, deprived of basic freedoms, transported under stress and killed long before the end of their natural lives.

The Annex confirms this risk. It proposes to strengthen origin information in livestock marketing standards, develop a ‘European Excellence’ scheme for livestock production, explore ways to recognise and communicate livestock quality attributes, and consider a special promotion-policy window to highlight the quality, sustainability, high welfare standards and territorial anchoring of EU livestock products in internal and external markets.48

Reporting on the 2026 Stop Financing Factory Farming analysis makes this risk concrete at global level. Farmed mammal and poultry numbers have risen sharply since 2006, while cropland used for animal feed has expanded, and overall livestock emissions have continued to grow despite improvements in emissions intensity.49 This is a useful warning for EU policy too: efficiency gains can be overwhelmed if they help sustain or expand the scale of animal production. A system can become more ‘efficient’ per unit while still harming billions of animals and deepening its overall climate, biodiversity and land-use impacts.

Public money is also part of this picture. The Staff Working Document states that, between 2023 and 2025, an average of 47% of the total amount granted to EU agri-food promotion programmes financed programmes promoting meat or dairy products.50 If the EU is serious about the protein transition, it should not continue to use public resources to make animal products more desirable while plant-based foods, pulses, and direct human consumption of protein crops remain underdeveloped.

What animal advocates should push for now

The announcement is only the beginning. The legal and political work begins now.

On animal welfare, advocates should push for proposals that are precise and enforceable: binding phase-out dates, no loopholes, short and justified transition periods, strong animal-based welfare indicators, transparent monitoring, robust enforcement, and meaningful penalties.

The reform should not stop with cages, crates, broilers and pigs. It should address the animals and practices still at risk of being left behind: dairy cows and calves, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, geese, quail, fish, stocking densities, fast-growing breeds, mutilations, outdoor access, enrichment, transport and slaughter. EFSA’s work on broilers and pigs confirms that welfare cannot be reduced to housing alone. Genetic selection, stocking density, enrichment, tail docking, space allowance, pain, fear, behavioural needs and the ability to express species-specific behaviour all matter.51

Import standards should strengthen EU animal welfare rules, not delay them. Public funding should be tied to genuine welfare and transition outcomes. It should not finance the expansion or rebranding of systems built on severe confinement, high stocking densities, fast-growing breeds, mutilations, long transport or routine killing.

The Protein Action Plan should also be used strategically. Its references to public procurement, school schemes, pulses, plant-based foods, taxation and alternative proteins should be turned into stronger food policy. The evidence is clear: production-side improvements are not enough without shifts in consumption, especially in high-consuming regions.52 The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission similarly points towards plant-rich dietary patterns, changes in food environments and policies that make healthy and sustainable foods more accessible.53

The Plan’s demand-side measures should therefore be used, but also strengthened. The Annex refers to public procurement, school-scheme awareness, pulse promotion, taxation, research and innovation, and alternative proteins.54 Recent research on plant-based products also suggests that consumer acceptance cannot be assumed: sensory parity is improving in some categories but remains uneven, making public procurement, food-environment design, research funding, and product development important.55 These measures should become part of a genuine food transition agenda: plant-based public procurement, support for farmers growing crops for human consumption, accessible plant-based meals in public institutions, and investment in plant-based and animal-free value chains.

This does not mean abandoning farmers. It means taking the transition seriously. Farmers should be supported to diversify, grow protein crops for human consumption, enter plant-based and animal-free value chains, and move away from systems that depend on confinement, high throughput and low margins. A just transition cannot mean preserving every existing production model. It must mean helping people leave harmful models behind.

A better food system is possible: one that protects animals, supports farmers, nourishes people and restores the planet by moving beyond animal exploitation, not by making it appear more ‘sustainable’.

Measuring progress by what changes for animals

There is room for progress in these documents. Animal advocates should not dismiss reforms that could reduce suffering for animals now. The animals currently trapped in cages, crates, high-density systems, long transport chains and slaughter lines cannot wait for perfect policy conditions.

But progress cannot be measured by the elegance of a strategy, the reassurance of a label, or the ability of existing systems to present themselves as sustainable. It must be measured by what changes for animals.

Who is protected? Who is left out? Are the timelines binding? Are the standards precise? Are the indicators animal-based? Are the rules enforced? Does public money support genuine change, or does it help repackage the same systems?

These are the questions animal advocates should bring into the next stage of EU policy debate.

The EU has opened some important doors. It should now ensure they lead to real protection for animals and to fairer food systems for animals, people, and the planet.

Dr Anna Caramuru P. Aubert was joined by Camille Labchuk, Executive Director of Animal Justice in Canada, and Berit Ertmann, Chief Communications Officer at the Vegetarian Society of Denmark, to discuss the ‘nuts and bolts’ of recent cases that are redefining how the law views ethical veganism. Their insights from the frontlines of Canadian and Danish courts offer a roadmap for advocates everywhere.

Is Veganism a ‘Creed’?

To protect vegans from discrimination, lawyers often have to fit ethical veganism into existing legal categories such as ‘creed’ or ‘freedom of conscience’. In Ontario, Canada, the Human Rights Code prevents discrimination based on creed in employment, housing, and services.2 Historically, this meant religion, but modern guidance now includes secular belief systems.3

The most famous test of this is the case of Adam Knauff, a vegan firefighter.4 During a forest fire deployment, Knauff was left in the field for nine days without adequate food. He was offered protein-deficient meals, such as hamburger buns and plain salads, and when he advocated for himself, he faced retaliation and had his pay docked. In his case, the court had to decide if his lifestyle met the legal definition of a creed. To count as a ‘creed’, a belief must meet five markers:

1. It must be sincerely, freely, and deeply held.

2. It must be integrally linked to the person’s identity.

3. It must be a comprehensive system of belief that governs how they live.

4. It must have a connection to a community with shared beliefs.

5. It must address ‘ultimate questions of human existence’, such as the purpose of life, death, and whether there is a creator.

Camille Labchuk explained that while the first four are easy for vegans to meet, the Tribunal ruled against him on the fifth, claiming his beliefs didn’t address questions like the existence of a ‘creator’. Camille argued this logic is flawed:

‘If you’re only ever requiring that there must be some … consideration of a creator ... then you’ve really defeated the purpose of that progressive move away from it being religious’.

The case is now being appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Lessons from Denmark

In Denmark, the legal strategy has focused on equality and freedom of choice.5 Berit Ertmann shared two contrasting stories that highlight how difficult—and how rewarding—this litigation can be.

• The Daycare Win (2024): A family in rural Jutland was told their daughter could not bring a vegan lunch to her daycare and was instead told to drive an hour away to a different institution. A court ruled this was unacceptable.6 This win forced the Danish food authorities to change their official wording from saying a vegan diet ‘cannot be recommended’ for children, to providing vitamin guidelines.7 This happened because ‘the authorities identified that you cannot say that something cannot be recommended about a human right’. This was a massive win for normalising veganism at a government level.

• The Hospital Loss: Conversely, a woman who was denied vegan food during two hospital stays in 2020—including while giving birth—lost her case at the first instance.8 In May 2024, the Hillerød District Court ruled against her, claiming she could have just eaten ‘potatoes and vegetables’ or had food delivered. Berit pointed out how dangerous this is: nutritious food is essential for recovery from illness or surgery. This case is now under appeal to the High Court, set for September 2026.

Strategic Takeaways: A Playbook for Vegan and Animal Advocates

If you are a lawyer or an advocate looking to advance these rights, our guests shared several ‘golden rules’ for success:

1. The ‘Professional’ Edge: Avoid Self-Representation.

A sobering lesson from Canada is that many vegan rights cases never move forward or fail because individuals represent themselves. Camille pointed out a case involving a social work student whose claim failed because it wasn’t ‘properly characterised’ by a lawyer. To get through the door, you need counsel who knows how to frame a human rights claim. Without an experienced lawyer to ‘characterise the claim in the right way’, these cases are often dismissed before they ever reach a hearing.

2. Choose a ‘Resilient Victim’.

Litigation is a marathon, not a sprint. It is exhausting. You need plaintiffs who can withstand public mockery and media pressure. Berit stressed that

‘it’s not necessarily the best case that actually ends up going to court, but rather the case with the most resilient victims’.

The ‘best’ case to take to court is often simply the one where the person is tough enough to see it through years of media scrutiny and institutional pushback.

3. Always Get ‘The Receipts’.

Success in court depends on evidence. If you are being discriminated against, you must document it immediately:

• Visual Evidence: Take pictures of menu cards and the ‘meals’ you are served. A photo of ‘literally two carrots and a bowl of rice’ is more persuasive than any written testimony to prove nutritional inadequacy, ideally backed up by expert testimony.

• The Paper Trail: If you have a verbal conversation about your needs, follow up verbal requests with an email: ‘After our talk today, I understand you are refusing to provide X. Is that correct?’. Without this paper trail, you have no proof in court of what was actually said.

4. Assessing the ‘Real Politics’ of the Court.

Advocates must consider the political climate of the institution they are entering. For instance, the Ontario Tribunal has been ‘starved of decision-makers’ by a conservative government, making it notoriously slow. Knauff’s case took years just to be heard. A case that sits for three years without a response can drain the momentum of a movement.

5. Frame it as ‘Freedom,’ Not ‘Special Treatment’.

In countries like Denmark, for instance, people have a strong sense of justice regarding personal freedom. Advocates found success by arguing that families should have the ‘freedom to choose’ for themselves without government interference, rather than demanding ‘special’ rights. As Berit noted:

‘We’re not talking about veganism anymore. We’re just talking about common sense’.

6. Connect to Broader Goals.

Make veganism part of the solution to other problems. In Denmark, institutions have carbon (CO2) quotas. Arguing that vegan options help a hospital meet its climate targets or save money is an argument that ‘everyone can get behind’. Similarly, Canada’s official Food Guide now recommends eating mostly plant-based proteins, which gives advocates a powerful government document to cite in court.9

The Ripple Effect: Why a ‘Loss’ Can Still Be a Win

This is something we often note: how we do not always need to ‘win’ a case for it to produce positive effects. One of the most encouraging takeaways, again, was that even when we lose in court, the conversation changes. When Adam Knauff’s case went public, employment law firms across Canada began writing about it. They started advising their corporate clients to proactively accommodate vegans to avoid being the next headline. Camille Labchuk noted that she has been ‘hearing about far fewer cases of discrimination since this case became real and since it was publicised’. The impact of these cases often extends far beyond the courtroom.

Moving Forward: From Litigation to Legislation

While courts are a ‘last resort,’ Denmark is showing us a better way: the National Action Plan for Plant-Based Foods.10 This is a ‘farm to fork’ structural blueprint that makes plant-based food a national strategic interest. By making vegan options the default through research and chef training, the need for litigation eventually disappears.

Conclusion

Vegan rights litigation is also about protecting those who defend animals: ensuring that animal advocates are not subjected to discrimination or exclusion for living in accordance with their ethical commitments. Whether it is a firefighter in Ontario or a child and their family in a Danish daycare, the right to live compassionately and free from animal exploitation is a principle worth defending across jurisdictions. As we work to build a more just and compassionate legal landscape, these cases help lay its foundations.

Watch the seminar

Subscribe now

In ICARE’s latest seminar on the right to rescue & voluntary prosecution in animal advocacy, moderated by Dr Anna Caramuru P. Aubert, Professor Matthew Liebman, Professor Justin Marceau, and animal rights lawyer and activist Wayne Hsiung mapped the legal and strategic terrain of open rescue prosecutions with remarkable clarity.

This post summarises the seminar’s lessons for animal advocates.

1) Defining the right to rescue and voluntary prosecution

The conversation opens on an uncomfortable paradox. Rescue is normally framed as the most intuitive moral response to urgent harm. Prosecution is normally framed as what you try to avoid.

The ‘right to rescue’: a definition with three layers

Liebman presents the ‘right to rescue’ as the right of ordinary individuals (not state officials) to intervene to remove animals from harm’s way, especially where the animals are victims of criminal animal cruelty. He emphasises that the concept operates in three registers:

1. Descriptive: what positive law already permits in some contexts. Liebman cites the familiar example of state laws allowing people to rescue dogs in ‘hot cars’.In other words, at least in some limited contexts, positive law already recognises that rescue can be lawful even when it involves entering someone else’s property or interfering with someone else’s ‘possession’ of an animal.1

2. Normative: the ethical claim that people should be able (or even obliged) to intervene to help suffering animals, when institutions fail to act.

3. Prefigurative: the idea that rescue can ‘live’ a multispecies future in the present, mediating between what law is and what it should be, acting now in ways that anticipate a different legal and political order, as if animals’ interests already command practical and legal respect. Put simply, rescue can be a way of practising the world that advocates argue for, treating animals’ interests as commanding practical respect even before the law consistently does.2
   
   Hsiung concurs with Liebman’s framing and offers a movement perspective: advocates have 'borrowed' the idea from existing ‘right to rescue’ laws for companion animals. As he puts the challenge: ‘[I]f you can rescue a dog from a car, why not a chicken from a slaughterhouse?’ This question underpins much of the seminar: if legally and culturally permissible to rescue a companion animal from a hot car, then why shouldn’t rescuing a farmed animal from an industrial facility also be acceptable?

Voluntary prosecution: choosing the risk to change the frame

Marceau then provides a parallel definition that clarifies the seminar’s core strategy. Marceau defines voluntary prosecution as activists intentionally placing themselves in situations where criminal prosecution is likely, something he invites the audience to pause over because, in his words, ‘it’s a very strange use of the law’.

Marceau describes the criminal courtroom as ‘a very powerful stage’ because it does not merely decide liability; it structures attention. It can make practices that usually stay hidden feel real to a lay audience precisely because, as he notes, when harms are filtered through more technocratic forms of dispute, ‘their eyes glaze over.’ By contrast, criminal adjudication can sharpen the question into something jurors and observers recognise immediately: who is doing wrong here, and why?3

Hsiung, for his part, describes open rescue in the language of direct action: ‘We’re just gonna take them out.’ He then links that directness to the courtroom decision: the legal system draws its legitimacy from claiming to oppose cruelty and injustice, yet it often protects the institutions that generate mass suffering. Voluntary prosecution is presented as a way to bring that contradiction to the forefront of the record, so that jurors, observers, and the wider public must confront what the state is choosing to regard as normal.

Open rescue and voluntary prosecution, according to Hsiung, are not merely acts of communication; they represent a form of follow-through. He emphasises that the strategy is ‘not just about’ attracting attention; its real aim is that ‘you put your money where your mouth is by going on trial.’ The trial is not an incidental event. It is the stage where the movement compels a legal system that routinely normalises industrial violence to justify itself publicly.

In this seminar, ‘right to rescue’ and ‘voluntary prosecution’ are presented as frameworks for linking (i) an act of care, (ii) a theory of legal change, and (iii) a decision to enter the space where the state most authoritatively decides who counts as a victim and who counts as a criminal.

The strategy is an effort to reorient the machinery of criminal law so that it exposes the underlying violence it often renders normal, invisible, and/or economically necessary.

2) Why criminal trials, and why these trials?

A practical question runs through the seminar: why choose criminal court at all, given the risks, the resource demands, and the likelihood that legal doctrine will be hostile to activist defendants?

Marceau’s answer primarily concerns the audience and visibility. He compares the public clarity of criminal proceedings with the complexity of many civil cases: when disputes become procedural or ‘technocratic,’ he notes, ‘their eyes glaze over.’ Criminal trials, by design, are different. They pose the system’s blunt questions: who harmed whom; what counts as justification; what counts as necessity; what does the community condemn?, and they do so in a forum that tends to focus attention.

More importantly, a criminal trial puts someone on the stand. It compels testimony, evidence, storytelling, and (at times) confrontation with facts that an industry, regulator, or prosecutor might prefer to keep out of the public eye.

He also identifies the core asymmetry that makes voluntary prosecution impactful: the ‘spectacle’ of the activist being prosecuted while the industry actor is not, especially around industrial practices that are legally protected, socially normalised, and insufficiently enforced institutionally. That asymmetry is not just a talking point for the movement; it underpins a key argument in the scholarship Marceau co-authored with Hsiung and Seitz: open rescue defendants can become targets for aggressive criminal enforcement in a system where the underlying cruelty often remains legally protected or practically unchecked.4

Two cautions:

1. The strategy is inherently high-risk. During the seminar, Hsiung mentions movement actors who have served time (or faced, or are currently facing, the prospect of incarceration) as the price of ‘going on trial’. The panel does not romanticise that risk; it considers it a key strategic constraint.

2. ‘Visibility’ is not the same as ‘victory.’ Even when defendants lose, a trial can still produce movement value by changing what is sayable, forcing disclosures, or exposing—through the state’s own arguments—how animals are positioned within the law (including, at times, through startling dehumanising analogies that jurors may find morally repellent). That is why the strategy can make the system’s asymmetry legible, precisely because the state’s response is so disproportionate.

3) When anti-carceral critique meets ‘voluntary prosecution’

One of the seminar’s enlightening exchanges begins with a candid question from Anna Caramuru Aubert, our moderator: how can advocates oppose ‘overcriminalisation and punitive systems’ while also ‘strategically embracing criminal trials through voluntary prosecution’? And how does this differ from attempting to prosecute companies or industries that harm animals directly?

Marceau’s answer clearly states his position. ‘I am extremely critical of the prosecution of individuals,’ he says, adding that his empirical work tends to show that there’s a backfiring effect of prosecuting individuals.5 He does not present voluntary prosecution as an endorsement of expanding the carceral or punitive state. He frames it as a challenging, sometimes paradoxical tactic that utilises the existing machinery of criminal law to reveal what that machinery does—and does not do—when animals are harmed. In other words, the fact that the forum is a criminal court does not mean the goal is ‘more criminal law.’ It can mean making the state’s priorities visible.

Marceau’s response separates two questions: (1) whether criminal law is the appropriate means to regulate violence against animals, and (2) what occurs when the state enforces criminal law against those who attempt to expose that violence.

What makes this tension especially sharp in animal advocacy is that the same state that often regards industrial animal suffering as normal or politically untouchable can respond forcefully when advocates intervene, particularly through open rescue or similar direct actions. The prosecution of rescuers can therefore serve to protect property and uphold ‘business as usual,’ while largely avoiding addressing the fundamentally ingrained harm to animals.

Voluntary prosecution is thus best understood as a way of exposing an asymmetry by inviting the state to publicly demonstrate what it is willing to punish and what it is willing to ignore. That framing also helps distinguish voluntary prosecution from the (often frustrated) aspiration to prosecute corporate or industry actors: the point is not simply who the defendant is, but what the criminal forum reveals about selective enforcement.

4) Open rescue and the necessity defence: what counts as a ‘significant evil’?

Open rescue is a fundamental practice behind the seminar. Hsiung describes it as a strategy he has employed for over a decade, and he claims it has become ‘extraordinarily successful’ compared to 10–20 years ago, while recognising that the strategy’s costs have been borne by individuals, including his friend Zoe Rosenberg, who was going to jail on the day of the seminar.6

In many jurisdictions, necessity is a defence based on justification—a legal argument that a person should not be found guilty of breaking the law to prevent a greater and more urgent harm—under strict conditions that differ by jurisdiction. In California, the standard criminal jury instruction describes necessity as acting ‘in an emergency to prevent a significant bodily harm or evil’ to oneself or someone else, among other requirements. The legal debate, powerfully articulated by both Liebman and Hsiung, concerns what that ‘someone else’ can mean when the harm is inflicted on a chicken rather than a human.

Doctrinally, open rescue cases often focus on a single issue: can rescuing an animal ever be legally justified as ‘necessary’?

Hsiung illustrates how jury-instruction language can act as a gatekeeping barrier for animal status. He explains that during his trial, ‘the judge actually literally read the instruction … and they never deviate from it.’ The jury instruction, he notes, refers to preventing harm to ‘the defendant themselves or someone else.’ Hsiung then recalls the judge commenting: ‘animals aren’t someone.’ He also mentions an escalation intended to make the claim sound absurd:

The struggle is therefore not just about whether animals should be protected; it involves how legal language is regulated to ensure that animal suffering remains outside the scope of harms that can warrant action. The opposition to recognising animals as ‘someone’ centres on maintaining a fundamental assumption that farmed animals are not the sort of beings whose suffering can justify legal intervention.

5) ‘Winning through losing’ as a movement strategy

One of the seminar’s themes is that legal outcomes are not the only considerations.

According to Liebman, ‘this idea of winning through losing is a really important one.’ The point is to understand that even adverse rulings can generate movement value—through narrative, attention, coalition-building, and the gradual redefinition of what counts as ‘reasonable’ in public morality and, later, in law.7

Hsiung makes a similar point by placing open rescue prosecutions within a longer history of dissidents who did not avoid trial, because trial can become a site of moral confrontation. He invokes figures whose legal cases were linked to political legitimacy rather than merely technical legality: ‘Socrates, Jesus Christ, Susan B. Anthony, obviously Rosa Parks…’ The argument is not that animal advocacy is identical to these struggles, but that prosecution can sometimes be used strategically to expose an underlying injustice and compel a public account.

Hsiung notes that those movements were often highly selective. He recalls the civil rights movement’s careful choice of plaintiffs and case details, citing, for example, how organisations considered reputational risk and public opinion when deciding which cases to highlight. This includes the well-known decision not to focus on the earlier bus case involving Claudette Colvin, partly because her pregnancy could be used against her. If animal advocates pursue voluntary prosecution, they should do so with the same careful attention to case selection, support systems, and potential consequences.

This aligns with socio-legal scholarship that views courts as just one arena in a broader competition over norms. Litigation can influence what becomes open for discussion well before it changes doctrine. At the same time, scholarship also warns that courts may resist legal challenges for extended periods, and that ‘wins’ are often contingent, partial, and shaped by institutional factors.8

That contingency is not abstract. Marceau makes the realism clear in the seminar’s discussion of judges and evidentiary rulings: outcomes can depend on human variability, that is, ‘how they feel that day’ or even ‘what they had for breakfast.’ The humour underscores the point, but the analytical message is sharp: voluntary prosecution is inherently high-variance. Even strong moral facts can be neutralised by pre-trial rulings that prevent juries from hearing them, by charging decisions that escalate the stakes, or by judicial instincts about ‘relevance’ that follow prevailing assumptions about animals’ legal status.

6) Case studies

The seminar’s case examples are instructive because they show where the legal system bends (sometimes unexpectedly) and where it hardens (often predictably).

(a) The Utah piglet rescue trial: acquittal even without ‘necessity’

Hsiung highlights a key example from open rescue litigation: ‘in our open rescue case in Utah, the judge denied the necessity defence, and we won that case.’ Sometimes, juries decide the moral question even when formal legal channels are limited.

The aftermath is equally important. The panel emphasises the value of learning from jurors as a movement strategy. Publicly available juror interviews on the Utah piglet rescue trial illustrate how jurors processed competing narratives of harm, property, and moral responsibility, and how the defence can shift what jurors perceive as the actual injury at stake.9

Hsiung recounts a juror clash in moral framing that stayed with him. He recalls a prosecutor ‘comparing this injured piglet to [a] dented can’, a piece of rhetoric that reduces an animal to the logic of minor property damage. In contrast, Hsiung describes the juror’s personal response to the animal: ‘I saw this piglet hobbling around, and I decided I liked her alive more than I liked her dead.’ The point is not that every juror will respond this way, but that voluntary prosecution can force jurors to choose between conflicting valuations of animals: as inventory versus as beings whose suffering matters.10

b) Zoe Rosenberg’s prosecution

The panel is equally clear about the costs involved. Hsiung mentions that his friend and fellow animal rights advocate Zoe Rosenberg was ‘about to go into jail today’ as the seminar was happening. The issue is not just the hardship for one defendant; it is the wider pattern that animal rights advocates fear: when advocacy threatens industry legitimacy, punishment can serve as an example, intended to deter, isolate, and exhaust.

The seminar does not seek to aestheticise that sacrifice. Instead, it regards escalation as a planning element: if movements pursue voluntary prosecution, they must also have the infrastructure—legal defence capacity, fundraising, community care, long-term support during and after incarceration, and strategies to prevent individual defendants from shouldering collective risk alone.

Voluntary prosecution can produce compelling public narratives, but it can also subject individuals to harsh sanctions, and movements must be ready to meet these sanctions with solidarity, resources, and care.

(c) Sunrise Farms and the failure to enforce legal reforms

A final pressure point is the accountability gap that drives the move towards voluntary prosecution. Hsiung illustrates how even strong-looking legal reforms can be undermined by poor enforcement. He cites, for instance, California’s massively supported ballot measure11 and an industrial actor, Sunrise Farms, described as linked to ‘certified humane’/Whole Foods supply chains, while (in his account) still maintaining large-scale confinement: Sunrise Farms ‘had hundreds of thousands of birds in battery cages.’

When advocates observe persistent under-enforcement or see the state treating routine industrial suffering as normal while swiftly applying criminal law against rescuers, voluntary prosecution is offered as a way to make that imbalance publicly contestable. Even if the outcome is unfavourable, the process can compel institutions to explain (or reveal) why certain harms are police-ised, and others are not.

7) Strategic takeaways for animal advocates

The seminar proposes several lessons for animal advocates considering (or responding to) open rescue / voluntary prosecutions:

1. Start with the ‘why’

Marceau’s main point is that a criminal trial can serve as a ‘powerful stage’ for public meaning-making—especially because criminal law is culturally understandable. The strategic question, then, is not only how to minimise legal risk but also what the trial can reveal about enforcement priorities and institutional discretion.

2. Treat case selection as a movement decision, with movement-level duties.

Hsiung and Liebman emphasise that ‘winning through losing’ is not a licence to be reckless; it raises the standards for planning. In the seminar, Hsiung explicitly extracts a lesson from civil rights-era strategic thinking: movements have historically made deliberate choices about which cases to highlight and which defendants to bear the costs. In this context, voluntary prosecution is ethically intertwined with considerations of representation, vulnerability, foreseeable backlash, and how the movement will support a defendant through a lengthy and uncertain process.

3. Assume the first fight will be over what the jury is allowed to hear.

Judges can reject necessity claims, limit admissible evidence, or prevent defendants from fully illustrating the animals’ suffering as the main ‘evil’ they aimed to prevent. The panel’s key message is not just ‘prepare a necessity defence,’ but rather: prepare for the chance that courts will try to keep the animals offstage, then plan accordingly (including through appellate strategies, amici, and public-facing narratives that do not rely solely on the courtroom).

4. Build a jury-facing moral narrative that does not concede the ‘property’ frame.

The Utah piglet case serves as a specific lesson: even when necessity is denied, jurors may still resist the prosecution’s attempt to reduce an animal to minor property loss. The panellists emphasise how jurors can respond viscerally to suffering—and how prosecutorial overreach can backfire—when the trial presents a stark choice between viewing animals as ‘inventory’ or as beings whose lives matter. Advocates should therefore prepare to communicate the animal-centred story in plain moral terms, without relying on jurors to ‘translate’ legal abstractions into empathy.

5. Plan for escalation as a predictable response to momentum.

The seminar consistently highlights backlash dynamics: when rescue strategies start to resonate publicly, prosecutors may respond by escalating charges, expanding theories (including conspiracy), and seeking harsher financial penalties. This is not presented as a hypothetical—Rosenberg’s case is discussed as a real example of how punishment can be increased to deter and isolate. The movement message is clear but demanding: view escalation as a foreseeable risk, not an unexpected mishap, and develop strategies that do not abandon defendants when the state overreacts.

6. Match high-risk tactics with high-capacity infrastructure.

If voluntary prosecution is employed, the panel’s message is clear: the legal process can be lengthy, unpredictable, and personally challenging. Therefore, an effective strategy requires robust infrastructure: legal defence coordination, fundraising for restitution risks, communication capacity, and long-term support and solidarity, including during periods of incarceration or restrictive probation. Movement credibility relies on refusing to turn individual defendants into expendable symbols.

7. Keep the long-term, normative goal in view: the fight over animals’ status

Across the seminar runs a more fundamental question: can animals be regarded, in legal reasoning, as beings whose rescue can be justified, rather than merely as property whose ‘loss’ must be punished? Hsiung’s account of prosecutors pushing the reductio (‘cellular matter’) and of judicial resistance to treating animals as ‘someone’ is used to highlight what is truly at stake: the boundaries of legal personhood language in practice, and the system’s tendency to exclude animals from the class of beings whose suffering can ground justification. Keeping that status contest visible—rather than allowing the case to be reduced to ‘activists broke the rules’—is presented as central to the integrity of the strategy.

8) Conclusion: rescue as doctrine, rescue as narrative, rescue as future-making

This seminar neither celebrates prosecution nor relies on naive faith in criminal law. What Professors Matthew Liebman and Justin Marceau, along with animal rights lawyer and activist Wayne Hsiung, present is more rigorous: criminal courts can sometimes reveal selective enforcement and challenge the underlying assumptions that normalise, legitimise, and often render animal suffering off-limits to legal concern. However, this can entail a high human cost and occurs within institutional frameworks that remain structurally resistant to animal-centred reasoning.

Liebman’s ‘right to rescue’ framework navigates between (i) what positive law already allows in some limited situations, (ii) what justice demands as a normative matter when animals face serious harm, and (iii) what activists enact now as a ‘prefigurative’ practice, where rescue functions as a present-tense practice of the multispecies future advocates are trying to build, as if animals already count as beings whose interests impose real duties on us.12 Marceau’s strategic account of ‘voluntary prosecution’ complements this by explaining why, in a culture that grants trials unusual public authority, some advocates intentionally accept the risks of prosecution and enter the criminal process to challenge what the state chooses to punish and what it tolerates.13

If prosecution is used strategically, movements inherit duties—careful case selection, realistic expectations about judicial gatekeeping, and serious investment in long-term defence and community support. The point is not that the court is ‘pure,’ but that it can sometimes be made useful—provided we refuse to let individual defendants bear the entire risk alone. Hsiung frames this as a collective responsibility: ‘What is gonna be the next story for the animal rights movement? And that’s up to us to tell collectively.’

That responsibility includes solidarity with those who are being sentenced for trying to bring animals’ suffering into view. That is why any honest conclusion must also be a statement of support.

We stand with advocates criminalised for acts framed as rescue. In the United States, Zoe Rosenberg began serving a 90-day jail sentence on 10 December 2025 following her Petaluma case; she and her supporters have also raised urgent concerns about her serious health conditions and medical care while incarcerated.14 In the United Kingdom, Animal Rising reports that five defendants were convicted of burglary in the first Crown Court trial arising from the ‘beagle puppy rescue’ earlier this December, with further trials scheduled to begin in January 2026, and February 2026, meaning additional defendants remain in active criminal proceedings and may face the risk of custody depending on outcomes and sentencing decisions.15

The seminar ultimately urges advocates to uphold two commitments: to consistently argue that animals’ suffering constitutes a legally significant harm, and to foster the solidarity, resources, and care that enable people to take principled risks without being left vulnerable to the system’s backlash.

Subscribe now

Hanukkah, Christmas, and other end-of-year celebrations are often associated with warmth, generosity, and togetherness. Yet for those of us working for animals, this time of year can also bring a quiet heaviness. Family gatherings often revolve around food traditions deeply entangled with animal suffering. Conversations may reopen ethical disagreements we navigate all year long. And the emotional weight of advocacy work does not pause simply because the calendar tells us it is time to celebrate.

If this feels familiar, you are not alone. Research and lived experience consistently show that animal advocates are particularly exposed to moral distress, emotional fatigue, and burnout—especially when personal relationships, cultural traditions, and ethical commitments collide.1 This piece is not about ‘doing the holidays right.’ It is about finding ways to move through them with more care: for ourselves, for our relationships, and for the sustainability of our advocacy.

This piece is part of ICARE’s Mental Health and Animal Advocacy blog series. We write this as animal advocates, for animal advocates. It is not prescriptive, and it does not assume a single way of experiencing the holidays. Rather, it offers reflections and tools grounded in research, lived advocacy experience, and care for long-term sustainability. We hope we can protect our mental health, reduce unnecessary conflict, and allow ourselves to rest.

Why the Holidays Can Feel Especially Heavy

Animal advocacy is grounded in empathy. That same sensitivity that allows us to recognise and respond to animal suffering can also make us more vulnerable in contexts where that suffering is normalised, celebrated, or rendered invisible.

Holiday meals centred on animal products can be deeply distressing—not only because of what is on the table, but because of what often cannot be said. Being surrounded by people we love, while feeling ethically out of place, can create a painful sense of isolation. Psychologists working with vegans and animal advocates have long noted that ethical conflict within close relationships can generate sustained stress and emotional strain.2

Unlike public advocacy spaces, family settings are emotionally charged and governed by expectations of harmony. There is often pressure to ‘not make waves,’ to be grateful, to stay silent. Naming this tension matters. Feeling unsettled or distressed during the holidays is not a personal failure. It reflects the genuine difficulty of holding ethical commitments in spaces that were not designed to accommodate them.

Setting Intentions and Boundaries (Without Apologising for Them)

One of the most protective things we can do is to approach the holidays intentionally rather than reactively. This means thinking ahead about what we need in order to feel safe, grounded, and respected.

Boundaries are not confrontations. They are not punishments. They are ways of taking responsibility for our own well-being. For some of us, that may mean limiting time at certain gatherings, arriving after meals, or choosing different ways to connect with family that do not revolve around food. For others, it may mean deciding in advance which conversations we are open to having—and which we are not.

Research on activist well-being consistently shows that boundary-setting is essential to preventing burnout.3 And boundaries do not require elaborate explanations. ‘I’m not comfortable discussing this today’, or ‘I’d rather focus on being together’ is enough.

Practical steps can also ease the emotional load. Bringing plant-based dishes, informing hosts in advance, or offering to help with food preparation can reduce stress and awkwardness. These strategies are not about making ourselves smaller or more acceptable. They are about removing avoidable points of friction in already intense situations.

Conversations, Conflict, and the Pressure to Educate

Many animal advocates carry a quiet sense of obligation during family gatherings: If not now, then when? But while conversations can sometimes be meaningful, they are rarely productive when everyone is emotionally invested and on edge.

Research on moral communication shows that people are far more receptive when they do not feel judged or attacked.4 This aligns with guidance from psychologists working specifically with vegans and animal advocates: sharing personal experiences and values tends to open more space than accusation or confrontation.5

Speaking from our own perspective—why we made certain choices, what we struggled with—can shift conversations away from defensiveness. At the same time, it is entirely legitimate to opt out of these discussions altogether. Not every family gathering has to double as an advocacy forum.

Staying calm does not mean staying passive. Assertive communication—clear, respectful, and firm—allows us to uphold our values without escalating conflict.6 And when conversations become overwhelming, stepping away is not weakness; it is self-preservation.

We also need to say this plainly: choosing not to engage does not make you a less committed advocate. There is no moral obligation to educate at the dinner table.

Looking After Our Mental Health During the Holidays

Animal advocacy is emotionally demanding work. Research on burnout makes clear that sustained exposure to suffering, combined with high personal investment, can take a serious toll if not balanced with rest and care.7 The holiday season often amplifies this vulnerability.

Basic routines matter more than we sometimes admit. Sleep, regular meals, and movement all play a role in emotional regulation. So do practices that help us process what we are feeling—journaling, meditation, prayer, or simply sitting quietly with ourselves.

Just as important is giving ourselves permission to step back from advocacy content. Taking breaks from distressing news, social media, or graphic material is not abandonment. Multiple studies and practitioner accounts emphasise that rest is essential for long-term engagement and effectiveness.8 The work will still be there when we return.

Connection is another protective factor. Spending time with people who understand—whether friends, fellow advocates, or supportive professionals—can counter the loneliness many feel at this time of year. Seeking therapy, especially with someone familiar with moral distress or vegan ethics, is not indulgent. It is a form of care.

And then there is self-compassion. Many advocates hold themselves to impossible standards, expecting resilience without rest. Yet compassion for animals cannot exclude compassion for ourselves. Feeling tired, sad, or overwhelmed during the holidays does not mean we are failing. It means we are human.

Rest, Meaning, and Allowing Ourselves to Pause

For some, religious or spiritual traditions offer resources for reflection and renewal during this season. For others, secular practices—gratitude, quiet, connection—serve a similar purpose. Either way, the end of the year can be an invitation to pause.

Burnout does not help animals. Sustainable advocacy requires rest, joy, and moments of beauty alongside struggle. Choosing to unplug, even briefly, is not indifference. It is a way of protecting the capacity to keep going.

Closing Thoughts

Navigating the holidays as an animal advocate is rarely straightforward. It asks us to hold ethics and relationships, grief and gratitude, commitment and care—all at once.

There is no single right way to do this. What matters is that we allow ourselves flexibility, kindness, and rest. By setting boundaries, tending to our mental health, and letting go of the pressure to fight every battle, we strengthen our advocacy rather than weaken it.

As we move through this season, we hope we can extend compassion not only to other animals and others but also to ourselves. Our work is long-term. So must be our care.

Share

This conversation offered a clear (and at times unsettling) message: legal change is rarely a single dramatic moment. It is often incremental, psychologically mediated, and already happening in ways we may fail to notice — even while courts insist they are not recognising animal ‘personhood’.

What follows are the most useful takeaways for advocates, litigators, scholars, and organisers, with an emphasis on practical lessons you can carry into your own strategies.

1) Is this really a ‘paradigm shift’? It depends on the frame

A central move in Berry’s intervention was to question the premise that recognising fundamental rights for some non-human animals is necessarily a paradigm shift at all.

In NhRP’s habeas litigation, the core claim is straightforward: habeas corpus exists to protect individuals from unlawful confinement; if a chimpanzee is an individual unjustly confined, courts have both the power and the duty to respond. From this perspective, the ‘shift’ is not in the logic of habeas, but in whether judges are willing to treat the animal as an individual whose confinement can be unjustified in law.

Berry described this as a psychological problem as much as a doctrinal one. What feels radical to many judges and lawyers may simply be the legal system catching up with what we already know about animals — in a ‘post–Jane Goodall world,’ rather than a Descartes-era picture of animals as unthinking automatons.2

So, how you characterise the ask matters. If the judge experiences your claim as ‘revolution,’ you may trigger defensive formalism. If the judge experiences it as ‘law doing what it already claims to do — in light of better knowledge,’ you lower the perceived risk.

2) Courts often hide status quo bias behind ‘neutral’ tools

One of the seminar’s most concrete illustrations compared two opinions with eerily similar structures:

• a 1971 Minnesota marriage equality decision, and

• the 2025 Colorado Supreme Court decision rejecting NhRP’s case against the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

In both, the court began by ‘opening a dictionary,’ treating that move as dispositive, and ending with the familiar refrain: if you want change, go to the legislature.3

This matters because dictionaries can operate as a mask for status quo bias — a way to present a culturally and politically loaded boundary (‘marriage/person = X’) as if it were merely linguistic common sense. But language often rationalises justice.

Dictionary reasoning is a warning sign that the court is avoiding the normative and institutional questions your case is forcing to the fore. Your task is not only to rebut the dictionary, but it is also to name the avoidance and re-centre the court’s role in protecting rights.

3) ‘Exposure therapy’: why losing can still be strategically valuable

Anna and Christopher framed the NhRP’s long arc of litigation as a kind of exposure therapy for the judiciary: repeated, escalating encounters with the idea of animal personhood and rights can reduce the ‘knee-jerk’ reaction that many judges display when the claim is first introduced.

Berry was careful not to present this as a simple blueprint, but he did emphasise the strategic value of sustained challenge — even when courts initially rule against you. Losses force judges to write opinions, commit themselves to premises, and (sometimes) reveal weak reasoning that can later become the target of critique and internal judicial reconsideration.4

He also suggested that change may take time to ‘percolate’: judicial exposure is not instantaneous persuasion. It can involve years of living with a problem — until a judge (or a court culture) becomes willing to move.

So, impact is not limited to the holding. Briefing, dissents, concurrences, and the sheer fact of adjudication can shift the centre of gravity over time, especially when later advocates can point to the internal tensions and evasions in earlier opinions.

4) The ‘circularity’ problem: when courts refuse to meet the evidence

A striking moment of the seminar focused on how courts sometimes respond to extensive expert evidence with what, in substance, amounts to circular reasoning.

Berry singled out the Happy decision: after the NhRP marshalled substantial expert material to press the question of why elephants’ intelligence, experience, and suffering do not ground a legally cognisable liberty interest, the court answered (in effect): habeas protects humans because humans have rights — and that is why it does not protect Happy.5

This kind of reasoning is devastating not only because it denies relief, but also because it refuses to address the moral and legal question that the case is designed to surface. It flattens personhood into species membership and treats the conclusion (‘humans only’) as its own justification.

What we can learn from this is not to treat these passages as merely frustrating, but to treat them as diagnostic. They reveal where the psychological and institutional resistance sits. They can serve as teaching tools, including in judicial education, legal writing, and public-facing legal commentary, precisely because they make bias visible.

5) ‘Shadow personhood’: courts already treat animals like legal persons (while denying it)

If the paradigm shift is hard to see, Berry suggested, it may be because courts are already treating animals as having person-like legal relevance in multiple contexts while refusing to say the ‘P word’.

He described this as ‘shadow personhood’ (or ‘shadow standing’): doctrinal moves that effectively treat animals as more than property, even while courts insist they are not recognising personhood. Examples discussed included:

• animals benefiting from legal mechanisms (e.g., trust arrangements, representation-like structures),

• animals treated as the real beneficiaries of injunctive remedies even when the formal plaintiff is human, and

• procedural doctrines adapted to protect animals’ interests while avoiding explicit recognition.6

This is a real strategic insight. If courts are already making these moves, then animal personhood arguments can sometimes be framed not as a rupture but as a request for doctrinal coherence.

Anna connected this to Visa Kurki’s work on ‘incidents’ of legal personhood — how personhood can be distributed across capacities (eg, owning property, appearing as a plaintiff, holding rights) rather than treated as a single on/off switch.7

6) Judicial education should treat speciesism as a bias problem — and test interventions empirically

A particularly actionable part of the seminar concerned judicial education.

Berry strongly endorsed the idea that legal education and continuing judicial training should address psychological factors explicitly, including prejudice and bias in law. He argued that what we often see in animal cases is not merely doctrinal caution, but ‘literal prejudice’ against non-human animals — a bias that conflicts with the legal profession’s commitment (at least in principle) to minimising prejudice in decision-making.8

Importantly, he proposed an empirical mindset: measure bias before and after an intervention; accept that the effects might take years to emerge; and build case-study-based curricula that confront judicial reasoning patterns (including circularity) head-on.

This is a space for serious movement-building. If your work includes capacity-building, consider building (or partnering to build) training modules for lawyers and judges that:

• use real opinions as case studies,

• surface the psychological ‘avoidance moves’, and

• test what actually shifts attitudes and reasoning over time.

7) Strategy is not only legal: it is cultural, political, and jurisdictional

Finally, the seminar underscored a point that is easy to say but hard to operationalise: strong legal arguments are necessary but rarely sufficient.

Berry emphasised that once the legal foundation is solid, advocates must still think carefully about what is morally, emotionally, and politically resonant in a given jurisdiction, including public support and legal culture. He noted feedback loops between culture and law: certain legal outcomes become more likely when background conditions have already shifted (even partially), and those legal outcomes can then accelerate cultural change.

The transnational dimension is real but uneven. Some judges (especially in more nationalistic legal cultures) may resist foreign reasoning; others may draw courage from cross-jurisdictional trends and citations.

So, when choosing a legal system and timing, think of it as a strategy. Pay attention to cultural and legal signs that indicate when it’s the right time to act. Share knowledge across borders, but also be realistic about which legal systems are open to other viewpoints.

Practical takeaways for your own work

If you are working on strategic litigation, legislative advocacy, or movement-building around animals’ legal status, consider these immediate applications:

• Reframe the ‘ask’ as continuity with existing legal principles (e.g., habeas protecting individuals from unjust confinement), not as metaphysical reinvention.

• Identify and name avoidance tools (dictionary formalism, ‘go to the legislature’, definitional circularity) and prepare your response strategy in advance.

• Treat ‘losses’ as outputs: opinions can reveal bias, generate dissents/concurrences, and create future leverage.

• Mine ‘shadow personhood’ across legal domains (remedies, trusts, representation, victimhood) to build doctrinal coherence arguments.

• Invest in judicial/legal education that treats speciesism as a bias issue, and test interventions empirically rather than relying on intuition.

Plan transnationally but strategically: comparative trends can help — but only where legal culture allows them to do so.

Resources recommended by Christopher Berry:

• Cass R. Sunstein, How Change Happens (MIT Press 2019).

• Richard A. Posner, How Judges Think (Harvard Univ. Press 2008).

• Paola Cavalieri & Peter Singer eds., The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (St. Martin’s Press 1993).

• David Cole, Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law (Basic Books 2016).

We began with no staff, a small group of dedicated volunteers, and an ambition that was — and remains — unapologetically transformative. ICARE was designed to shift the moral and legal paradigm, to accelerate the transition from reactive animal welfare to proactive, structural animal rights.

In the year since, 150 advocates from more than 50 countries have joined our courses. Our resources have travelled widely and are being used by NGOs, students, and lawyers. And each week, as we teach, learn, and collaborate with advocates around the world, we are reminded that the future of animal protection depends on global legal capacity, conceptual clarity, and the courage to imagine a post-exploitation world, for and with animals.

This post is a reflection on what we have built so far, what we have learned, and why your support at this stage matters so deeply for the world we are building.

TL;DR

• Welfare laws allow animal exploitation; rights-based frameworks question whether harmful practices should exist at all and affirm animals’ inherent value.

• ICARE builds the legal infrastructure needed for this shift across education, research, advocacy, and community.

• In just over a year, with a small volunteer team and a lean budget, we have trained nearly 150 advocates from 50+ countries; produced ~100 open-access resources; launched multi-country research; held 5+ seminars and public lectures; and built a global community of rights-based advocates.

• Demand for ICARE’s work is growing quickly, especially in Majority World regions where access to specialised legal education is limited.

• Support now helps us strengthen this foundation and reach more advocates in 2026.

• If you share our vision of a world beyond exploitation — where animals’ lives are protected through enforceable rights — we warmly invite you to support ICARE. Donations made before 31 December will be matched up to €1,000.

1. Why we do what we do: animals need fundamental rights, not just welfare standards

Our legal systems have changed in symbolic ways — sentience is now recognised in EU primary law1; constitutions, eg in Germany2 and Switzerland3, include references to animal protection or dignity; civil codes in France4 and Québec5 recognise animals as sentient beings. Yet, none of these changes dismantle the underlying structure.

Animals remain property. Their use and killing are lawful. Welfare requirements regulate how exploitation may occur, not whether it is justified.

A rights-based approach begins from a fundamentally different premise:

Animals have interests that matter to them, and those interests must be protected through enforceable legal rights — not left to the discretion of exploitative industries.

It repositions animals within our communities, our institutions, and our collective imagination. It asks us to build a future where animals’ agency, survival, and well-being are protected as a matter of justice, not charity.

ICARE exists to help build this future.

Recognising the limits of animal welfare law does not mean dismissing the work of welfare organisations, advocates, or practitioners who secure tangible improvements in the lives of animals within existing frameworks. On the contrary, many animals would be worse off without even imperfect welfare rules. For as long as trillions of animals are used and killed, enforcement of and improvements to welfare standards remain crucial to reducing animal suffering.

At the same time, if we accept that animals are sentient individuals with lives that matter to them, then the long-term horizon cannot be simply ‘better conditions’ for farmed, experimented-on, or exploited beings. It must be the end of their institutionalised exploitation and the redesign of legal systems so that all sentient animals are recognised as more than property.

Welfare alone cannot answer the fundamental question: Is animal exploitation itself legitimate?

A realistic rights-based trajectory is likely to involve:

• Strengthening welfare and enforcement in the short term, to reduce suffering and create legal tools for future rights-based interpretation.

• Achieving incremental rights and status shifts—legal personhood, guardianship mechanisms, or standing for animal organisations in court.

• Embedding animals in constitutional and human rights frameworks so their interests are not easily overridden by ordinary legislation.

• Challenging structural drivers of exploitation, such as subsidies for industrial animal agriculture, weak labour protections that fuel reliance on cheap animal products, and a global trade regime that externalises animal suffering.

Rights and welfare are not mutually exclusive; they are different normative projects. Welfare makes exploitation ‘less bad’. Rights ask which practices should be stopped altogether and how institutions must change.

2. What we’ve built this year

ICARE was founded precisely because our current legal systems remain overwhelmingly welfarist, anthropocentric, and structurally permissive of animal exploitation.

Our mission is to help shift this paradigm by building capacity, conducting rigorous research, and supporting advocates who work to recognise and enforce animals’ rights worldwide.

2.1. Education: forming a global community of rights-based advocates

ICARE’s flagship programme, Contemporary Issues in Animal Rights Law (CIARL), is now in its second live edition. We launched an on-demand version to broaden access, and in 2025, we held our first summer course, Bridging Animal Rights Theory and Practice.

In just over a year, ICARE has trained or is currently training nearly 150 advocates from 50+ countries across 6 continents— including lawyers, NGO staff, grassroots organisers, journalists, researchers, veterinarians, students, and more. Almost half received scholarships, particularly those based in the Majority World or identifying as members of underrepresented or marginalised communities.

Our students frequently tell us that ICARE’s courses were the first time they encountered:

• a rigorous and academic treatment of animal rights, not just welfare,

• tools to connect legal doctrine with advocacy,

• a global community of peers committed to ending animal exploitation.

Advocates are already applying what they learn in litigation, policy, academia, and grassroots organising — demonstrating that rights-based education is a crucial catalyst for change.

In 2026, we are scaling up further by developing:

• additional regional editions of CIARL,

• new specialist courses, including on food systems transitions and plant-based policy.

These programmes equip advocates not only with theory but also with practical skills and tools, including drafting legal memos and policy briefs, analysing jurisprudence, designing campaigns and communications, and engaging with international and regional mechanisms, and more, all from a rights-based perspective and with animals’ fundamental interests in mind.

2.2. Open-access resources: building global legal infrastructure

Our Resource Library brings together a growing collection of original educational and research-based materials designed to make complex legal and ethical ideas accessible while connecting theory with practice. It currently features 4 series, now systematically organised in the Resource Library so that advocates worldwide can rely on ICARE as a point of reference:

• Key Concepts for Animal Rights Law: concise explainers on foundational and emerging ideas that shape the recognition and protection of animals’ interests and rights in law;

• Legal News About Animals: global updates and commentary on legal and policy developments affecting animals, from landmark rulings to new reforms;
  AI and Animals: reflections at the intersection of technology, artificial intelligence, animal ethics, and animal welfare and animal law, exploring how innovation is reshaping the treatment and legal status of animals; and

• Bibliography Recommendations: curated readings and open-access references to support learning, research, and advocacy in animal rights law and related fields.

With around 100 open-access resources produced across our 4 weekly series, ICARE has begun building a shared intellectual foundation for rights-based legal thinking. These explainers, legal updates, bibliographies, and reflections are:

• academically rigorous,

• ethically grounded,

• accessible,

• globally relevant.

We are also publishing our first open-access e-book, compiling our initial Key Concepts into a structured, 100-page volume that can serve as a reference for students, teachers, researchers, and advocates.

These materials form part of our broader vision:

a world where everyone — from students to lawyers to researchers to policymakers — has free access to the tools needed to defend animals as rights-holders, everywhere.

2.3. Seminar series and public lectures

Beyond formal courses, ICARE hosts an ongoing seminar series that features discussions on legal reform and strategic litigation across jurisdictions.

Since its launch, we have held 3 seminars, with a 4th taking place on 10 December 2025, addressing topics such as:

• the ‘right to rescue’ and voluntary prosecution,

• judicial psychology behind animal rights cases,

• strategic litigation for chickens and hens,

• preventive bans on octopus farming.

Recordings, written takeaways, and transcripts are made available with open access through our platforms, extending their reach beyond the live audience.

ICARE also hosts public virtual lectures exploring the intersection of animal rights theory and legal practice, with 2 held in 2025, on ending animal experimentation and political rights for animals. These sessions are similarly online and free, documented, and shared, contributing to a growing archive of freely accessible materials.

We design these sessions to highlight why animal rights matter, how systems change, what advocacy lessons we can learn from each other and from leaders in the field across the world, and to inspire each other to take action and to envision and build together a future beyond exploitation.

2.4. Community and mentorship

Through ARVAN (Animal Rights & Vegan Advocacy Network), ICARE connects alums via Slack (hosted by Hive), shares resources, and hosts regular mentee check-ins via ‘mentee calls’. ICARE is building infrastructure for sustained, long-term collaboration across the movement.

Advocacy and research are often difficult, especially when confronting deeply embedded exploitation, competition over collaboration, lack of resources or opportunities. A supportive and safe community helps sustain impactful animal advocacy initiatives and provides useful resources and connections.

In 2026, we will pilot a mentorship programme — connecting advocates and emerging leaders with seasoned advocates committed to building a rights-based future.

2.5. Research and advocacy: bridging doctrine with real-world advocacy

ICARE also conducts and disseminates research (and engages in advocacy) to analyse how existing legal frameworks treat animals, to identify opportunities for rights-based arguments and reform, and to support organisations and communities seeking legal change.

Our work to date includes:

• Animals in disasters – leading comparative legal research across multiple countries, reviewing disaster-related legislation to assess animal protection in disasters. This research aims to inform future reforms so that animals are no longer ‘left behind’ in disaster governance.

• Political representation of animals and direct democracy for animals – examining how direct democracy mechanisms might advance animal rights and welfare worldwide.

• Enforcement of wildlife trafficking laws, and the rights and status of confiscated wild animals.

• Rights-oriented public legal analysis – producing accessible commentary on key judicial, legislative, and policy developments in Europe and globally.

This year, ICARE presented at major international conferences, including twice at the Animal Law Conference organised by the ALDF and at the Animal Law and Advocacy Conference organised by Animal Justice in Toronto. We also attended several major animal law and advocacy conferences and summits, both virtually and in person, making valuable connections and learning a lot from others in the movement.

Across all projects, ICARE’s distinctive contribution is to bridge doctrine and practice: we combine rigorous legal analysis with a rights-based, anti-anthropocentric perspective, and translate that work into formats advocates can actually use.

Our aim is to become a global reference point and training centre for the animal rights and advocacy movement, especially in regions where access to specialised legal education and materials remains limited.

3. What this first year taught us

The past year reaffirmed our founding vision:

• rights-based animal law education, research, and advocacy are severely absent worldwide,

• many advocates lack access to specialised training and research,

• open-access materials are essential for capacity-building,

• Majority World advocates face the steepest structural inequalities,

• ICARE’s contributions fill a genuine global gap.

Most importantly, we learned that legal imagination must be supported by legal infrastructure — education, research, community, and advocacy that reinforce one another.

4. Why your support matters now to support our goals for 2026

ICARE is entering a new phase. The foundations are strong; the vision is clear; the demand is real. What we need now is organisational capacity to sustain and expand our work.

To continue building a global legal infrastructure for animal rights, ICARE aims to raise an additional 40,000 USD for 2026.

This will allow us to:

1. Bring on our first full-time legal researcher

To develop comparative research, produce rights-based analyses, and support NGOs and advocates worldwide.

2. Support a part-time communications role

Ensuring our resources reach the advocates and regions where they can have the greatest impact, and freeing legal capacity.

3. Maintain and expand course delivery, and accessible course fees and scholarships

Particularly for Majority World advocates, whose work is crucial to building a global rights-based movement and whose access is limited.

Supporting ICARE now means investing in:

1. The long-term development of animal rights law

Not short-term welfare improvements, but long-term structural change for animal rights.

2. Global equity and access

Ensuring advocates everywhere — especially in Majority World regions — have access to rights-based legal training and research to multiply ICARE’s work at their own level and, in the long run, end animal exploitation worldwide.

3. The next generation of thinkers and practitioners

From scholars to litigators to policy advocates, we need to build legal capacity and infrastructure now and offer access to high-quality education in animal rights law.

4. The legal infrastructure of a post-exploitation future

Research, education, resources, and institutional memory.

To move forward sustainably, we aim to secure:

• our first full-time legal researcher,

• a part-time communications role,

• continued scholarships and accessible course delivery.

These are the pillars that will carry ICARE into its next phase.

5. How you can support ICARE

If you share our commitment to a world where animals’ lives are protected through rights rather than regulated as resources, we warmly invite you to support ICARE.

You can:

• Support ICARE financially to help us build capacity for long-term impact.

• Share our courses, seminars, and resources (and this blog post!).

• Join ARVAN and offer to mentor advocates.

• Collaborate with us on research, education, or advocacy.

At ICARE, our work begins from a belief in the intrinsic worth of every sentient being. With your support, we can continue building the legal, educational, and conceptual foundations of a world where animals are recognised as rights-holders.

To help ICARE enter its second year with strengthened capacity, our founder and executive director will personally match all donations up to €1,000 made before 31 December.

This means that every contribution during this period will have twice the impact.

double your impact

Thank you for being part of this future.

On 16 October 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is expected to issue its interpretation of whether the loss of a companion animal in the course of international air carriage falls within the notion of ‘baggage’ under Article 17(2) of the Montreal Convention (1999). The referring court’s question arises from a familiar yet deeply troubling scenario: a companion dog, Mona, entrusted to an airline as part of a family’s journey, is lost. The carrier, Iberia, invokes the Montreal Convention’s baggage regime, with capped liability framed for inanimate objects, while the guardian seeks recognition of the moral damage caused by the disappearance of a sentient, irreplaceable member of their family.

Our independent legal analysis urges the Court to interpret Article 17(2) in a manner consistent with EU primary law, modern treaty-interpretation principles, and a clear comparative trend: companion animals are not fungible objects, and the legal consequences of their loss cannot be assimilated to a suitcase. The Convention’s text, structure, context, and purpose—read through the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT)—support this conclusion, as do the Treaties, the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR), and the EU’s constitutional commitment to animal welfare in Article 13 TFEU.1

This case is not only about animals; it is also about people and families—the human guardians whose private and family life and legitimate consumer expectations are directly at stake.2

Reducing their harm to a baggage calculation, devised for replaceable, inanimate objects, undermines the Convention’s legitimacy, consumer confidence, and the Union’s fundamental rights framework.

Access the full analysis here

I. The Legal Question Before the CJEU

The Montreal Convention forms part of EU law via Council Decision 2001/539/EC; international agreements concluded by the EU bind its institutions and Member States under Article 216(2) TFEU and must be interpreted harmoniously with the Treaties, the CFR, and general principles.3 The CJEU’s case law confirms that, once incorporated, international instruments are read through the EU’s constitutional lens and in line with customary international law as codified in the VCLT.4

The Convention does not define ‘baggage.’ Article 17(2) addresses ‘destruction, loss or damage to checked baggage,’ while Article 22(2) imposes monetary limits on liability for such loss. If ‘baggage’ is read to include living, sentient beings, the legal system risks an absurd result: treating the loss of a companion dog (or cat) as equivalent to the loss of a suitcase. The question, therefore, is whether—within the EU legal order—Article 17(2) can or should be construed to encompass companion animals. Our answer is no.

II. The Ordinary Meaning, Context, Object and Purpose—Under the VCLT

A. The Ordinary Meaning of ‘Baggage’

Under Article 31(1) VCLT, terms must be interpreted in good faith according to their ordinary meaning, in context, and in light of a treaty’s object and purpose. Contemporary English dictionaries consistently define ‘baggage/luggage’ as inanimate travel objects—bags, cases, and personal effects—not sentient beings.5 A good-faith reading of ‘baggage,’ therefore, does not naturally extend to animals with welfare interests and physiological needs.

B. Context, Object and Purpose

The Montreal liability regime harmonises rules for inanimate property and passenger injury/death. Its travaux reveal no deliberation about companion animals or the moral harm arising from their loss—an omission best explained by history: in 1999, mass transport of companion animals and legal recognition of multispecies families were far less developed.6 The Convention’s object and purpose do not require, and its silence does not compel, the assimilation of sentient beings to luggage—especially in a legal order where animal welfare and fundamental rights carry constitutional weight.

C. Intertemporality and Evolutive Interpretation

Treaties are to be interpreted in light of present-day conditions.7 The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have long endorsed an evolutive approach, and the CJEU has interpreted international agreements teleologically and in harmony with the EU’s current constitutional framework.8 Freezing ‘baggage’ in a 1999 mindset would disregard twenty-five years of legal, scientific, and social change concerning animal sentience and family life.

III. The EU Constitutional Frame: Animal Sentience, Human Fundamental Rights, and Consumer Protection

A. Article 13 TFEU: Animals as Sentient Beings

Article 13 TFEU recognises animals as sentient beings and instructs the Union and the Member States to pay full regard to animal welfare when formulating and implementing transport and related policies. This constitutional commitment shapes the interpretive environment in which the Montreal Convention operates in EU law.9

B. The Charter: Articles 7, 17, and 38

Article 7 (private and family life). For millions of households across Europe, companion animals are integral to family life. Their loss is not merely financial; it is relational and emotional, directly engaging Article 7’s protections.

Article 17 (property). While aspects of property law apply, Member States increasingly tailor those rules to the unique, non-fungible status of companion animals.

Article 38 (consumer protection). Airlines market ‘pet-friendly’ services and accept animals on board, reinforcing travellers’ legitimate expectations of humane handling and meaningful redress when things go wrong.10

Read together, the Treaties and the Charter support an interpretation that rejects assimilating a sentient companion animal to inanimate baggage.

IV. The Social and Legal Reality: Multispecies Families

The transportation of companion animals has surged in step with their social recognition as family members.11 Across Europe, nearly half of households live with companion animals; public support for strong animal welfare protections is overwhelming.12 In Spain—whose 2021 civil-code reform expressly recognises animals as sentient beings—surveys show that a large majority consider their animals family and want humane, proximate travel options.13 Airlines (including Iberia) publicly echo this reality, presenting ‘pets’ as ‘part of the family’.14

These contemporary social realities matter. Interpreting ‘baggage’ to include living, sentient animals is not just linguistically strained; it is socially unrealistic and legally out of step with current EU values.

V. The Montreal Convention’s Normative Gap: Moral Harm and Effective Protection

The Convention’s baggage regime caps compensation in pecuniary terms and is silent on the moral damage human guardians foreseeably suffer when a companion animal is lost or killed.15 Treating Mona’s loss as a baggage incident would leave guardians with symbolic compensation at best, eroding consumer confidence and the uniform system’s legitimacy. The gap is not about inventing animal rights within the Convention; it is about ensuring effective protection of human rights and interests (Articles 7, 17, 38 CFR) in light of sentience and modern family life.

An interpretation that excludes companion animals from ‘baggage’ keeps the Convention fair, purposive, and coherent in today’s legal order—without expanding it beyond its scope.

VI. Comparative Law: Europe, the Americas, China

A. Europe: A Converging Consensus

European courts and legislatures now widely acknowledge that companion animals are not fungible goods and that their loss can ground moral damages:

• France. As early as Lunus (1962), the Cour de cassation recognised préjudice moral for the wrongful killing of a horse. Later, in Delgado (2015), it held that a dog is a ‘living being, unique and irreplaceable […] intended to receive [the guardian’s] affection, without any economic purpose,’ rejecting replacement as a consumer-goods remedy.16

• Spain. Law 17/2021 recognised animals as sentient beings and introduced custody-style solutions considering the animal’s welfare;17 courts have granted shared care and moral damages in veterinary negligence.18

• Italy. Courts have crafted custody arrangements by analogy and awarded non-economic damages for the death of a family dog, grounding protection in the owner’s integrità affettiva and even constitutional personality rights.19

• Portugal. Law 8/2017 amended the Civil Code to recognise animals’ sentience and expressly permit non-pecuniary damages when an irreplaceable companion animal is killed, a position affirmed by the Lisbon Court of Appeal.20

• Germany. § 90a BGB states that animals are “not things,” a foundation increasingly read to reflect animals’ individual, non-fungible status in private law.21

These developments are not isolated. They reflect a pan-European trajectory toward recognising the familial and irreplaceable character of companion animals, and awarding moral damages accordingly.

B. Latin America

Latin American courts have been at the forefront of recognising multispecies families and, in some instances, animals as subjects of rights (e.g., Sandra the orangutan; Cecilia the chimpanzee; Estrellita the woolly monkey).22 Courts have ordered visitation regimes for dogs, recognised a pig’s role within a family, and required life-saving medication for a companion animal, directly acknowledging family status and welfare interests of companion animals.23

C. United States

In 2025, a New York court recognised that, in certain legal contexts, dogs should be considered immediate family members and allowed emotional-distress damages after a dog was killed.24 Even courts declining such damages acknowledge the obvious: a companion dog is not a sofa; ‘property’ is an inadequate description of the human–dog bond.25

D. China

Chinese jurisprudence has admitted the possibility of compensation for emotional distress in ‘transported-pet’ cases, holding that such relief does not violate the Montreal Convention because it does not address moral damages—illustrating a pragmatic judicial response to modern realities.26

Comparative law thus confirms the direction of travel. Treating companion animals as baggage is anachronistic and increasingly incoherent.

VII. Rights-Consistent Interpretation

To maintain coherence with EU law and the Convention’s purpose, the CJEU should hold that Article 17(2) excludes living, sentient companion animals. This reading:

1. Aligns with EU primary law (Article 13 TFEU; Articles 7, 17, 38 CFR), acknowledging animal sentience, protecting family life and consumer expectations, and avoiding illusory remedies;

2. Implements the VCLT method (ordinary meaning; context; object and purpose; intertemporality), preventing absurd results;

3. Reflects comparative consensus, ensuring the EU liability regime remains legitimate, proportionate, and effective.

Excluding companion animals from ‘baggage’ does not rewrite the Convention. It prevents its misapplication to situations it was never designed to govern, leaving room for proportionate and meaningful remedies that reflect contemporary family life.

Conclusion

The loss of Mona is not a baggage claim. It is the loss of a sentient, non-human family member. Within the EU legal order, the Montreal Convention must be interpreted in harmony with the Treaties, the Charter, and contemporary legal and social realities. The ordinary meaning of ‘baggage,’ the Convention’s purpose, the principle of intertemporality, and a strong comparative consensus all point in one direction: Article 17(2) excludes companion animals.

A judgment to that effect will not only safeguard EU constitutional values; it will also restore fairness and legitimacy to international air transport law in cases where families travel together—human and non-human members alike.

Read the full legal analysis

Share

On a planet once bursting with vegetation, human interference has made green spaces a sought-after luxury. The forests and grasslands that were previously a regular part of life are now not so simple to access. Urban areas, especially, find it difficult to interact with animals or find a grassy park to laze in.

Green spaces can either simply mean ‘nature’ or urban areas of greenery, many being man-made. They do not need to be green in colour; rivers and coastal areas are just as important natural spaces. While nature has diminished, its impenetrable connection to human health remains. Physical and mental health show improvement after interaction with nature. Individuals living in areas with fewer green spaces exhibit higher rates of depression and anxiety than their counterparts.1 On the other hand, exposure to nature can reduce stress, lower cortisol, and boost mood.

For animal advocates, the constant fight towards animal rights and welfare can be exhausting. The emotional demands of advocacy can leave little time or energy for the self. It is necessary to support our mental health to avoid compassion fatigue and activist burnout. Self-care is a top priority for maintaining resilience and healthy and effective advocacy. To encourage well-being for animal advocates, ICARE is beginning a series to highlight the intersection of mental health and animal advocacy.

How do green spaces impact mental health?

Many studies analyse the rate of mental health conditions in a neighbourhood versus the number of trees or square footage of grassy areas. Those with the best access to clean green spaces often portray the best mental health outcomes.2 A combination of air quality, natural noises, and biodiversity are some of the relaxing factors of the outdoors. Psychologists theorise that the colour green in itself is soothing to humans. Its inherent connection to nature prompts calmness and positive emotions.3

A main function of vegetation is its ability to cleanse the air and release oxygen. When living farther from vegetation, air quality tends to be worse as less greenery consumes atmospheric toxins.4 Increased oxygen to the brain improves neurological functioning and decreases the chances of mental illnesses, whereas acute or chronic exposure to poor air quality can worsen mental and physical health, increasing the risks of disease.5 Not only are trees beneficial air purifiers, but they can also release antioxidants, vitamins, and essential oils.

With the hustle and bustle of human life, it can be difficult to find a quiet moment. Cars whooshing by muffle the natural sounds of the world around us. The constant sound of vehicles, machines, and human activity creates noise pollution that is known to worsen human health.6 Soundscapes are becoming increasingly popular with people listening to ocean waves or birds chirping to relax or sleep. Studies show that wildlife noises prove beneficial for mental health and well-being.7 They can actually decrease heart rate and anxiety, whereas human-related noises can promote hearing loss, hypertension, and irritation. In some cases, the sound of nature can even ease pain.8 While in green spaces, access to these sounds can provide a relaxing escape from anthropogenic environments and promote a bond to the other beings around us.

Benefits for animal advocates

For animal advocates, a key benefit of spending time in green spaces is the opportunity to appreciate and observe animals in their natural habitats. Engaging with animals from other species promotes positive connections to the larger ecosystems around us and creates a deeper appreciation for wild and liminal animals in their spaces. While those who share their lives with companion animals have daily interactions with animals, observing different animals in your area is an effective way of learning more about your community.

As an advocate, exploring green spaces provides an opportunity to be reminded of why we work so hard to protect the rights of animals. While going into green spaces is a great way to improve human health, animal health must be top priority when entering their spaces. You should always be cautious not to touch or disturb wild animals, as it can cause them harm. Visiting ethical animal sanctuaries creates the possibility to connect with rescued animals in a respectful and non-exploitative setting, under the guidance of experienced caregivers.

A goat grazes on lush grass in a pasture at Farm Sanctuary while visitors converse in the background during the sanctuary's annual Hoedown celebration. Watkins Glen, New York, USA, 2024. Jo-Anne McArthur / Farm Sanctuary / We Animals

As green spaces have become more disconnected from daily life, they have transformed into recreational community areas. Scholars theorise that the social and physiological aspects of the outdoors add to its positive benefits.9 Green spaces encourage physical activity, often used for sports or cardio. Not only does the space itself promote exercise, it increases the effects of physical activity with its influence on mental health, creating a cyclical positive impact on an individual’s well-being.

Community hubs are at the heart of green spaces. For animal advocates, connecting with like-minded people often happens through shared efforts to protect and restore natural habitats. Socialisation between value-aligned people significantly boosts someone’s sense of belonging, self, and support system, incredibly important factors for mental health.

Green Spaces in Daily Life

Green space access is not equal. Historically, communities of colour have faced many barriers preventing their closeness to neighbourhoods with clean parks and sufficient tree coverage.10 Meanwhile, wealthier areas experience higher rates of greenery. These inequities mean that taking a long walk through a park is not always a possibility for everyone. Therefore, varying strategies exist for increasing one’s connection to green spaces.

Forest Bathing

The Japanese mindfulness exercise shinrin-yoku encourages meaningful reflection of the natural environment.11 It can range from an intentional walk through a green space to a guided meditation excursion. Forest bathing is known as a form of ‘ecotherapy’ where individuals recognise the interconnectedness of humans and nature. As in the name, this activity consists of embracing the natural world and ‘bathing’ in it, letting its beauty amplify emotions. It encourages meditators to slow down and appreciate the world around them. While most effective in a traditional forest, any green space is beneficial.

Grounding, or earthing, is a meditative method of reducing stress by physically connecting with the earth.12 Similar to forest bathing, it allows for active reflection on the planet we stand on. Scientists theorise that interaction with natural elements taps into the earth’s energy current and subsequently promotes healing of physical and mental ailments.13 Studies found it reduces inflammation, stress, pain, and improves blood flow.14 Try frequently lying in the grass or taking a walk barefoot and see if it improves your mood!

A rescued chimpanzee resident at Sanaga-Yong sanctuary. The residents have been rescued from the pet and bushmeat trades. Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Centre Sanctuary, Yaounde, Cameroon, 2009. Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals

Green Activities

Hobbies are incredibly important in supporting cognitive functioning, community, and focus. Therefore, green activities’ emphasis on green spaces brings together the positive impact of hobbies with the power of nature. Birdwatching, gardening, hiking, beach cleaning, and biking are only a few of the many ways to find your niche in the outdoors. Engaging with nature can be as simple as going outside and counting how many different insects you spot! The point is to develop a deeper understanding of the world around you, while reaping the benefits of green spaces.

Alongside personal activities, most animal advocacy organisations rely on volunteers to do all of their great work. As an advocate, direct participation in pro-animal activities reaffirms values and connects you with like-minded individuals. Give back to your community by trying out a habitat clean-up or volunteering at your local animal shelter. This tangible engagement can be very grounding for animal advocates and provide a sense of purpose. Gather a group of friends to spend the day taking care of your minds and community!

Bringing the Outdoors Indoors

Take a moment to reflect on how you connect with animals in your daily life. Do you enjoy watching deer roam in your garden? Do you read a book about whales or octopuses in the evening? For most of us, it is difficult to squeeze a trip to an animal sanctuary into our daily schedules. Luckily, there are lots of ways to implement the natural world into day-to-day activities, starting right at home or the workplace. The ever-present distinction between inside and outside can make the indoors less supportive of connecting with animals and the natural world. Our household environments make an astounding impact on mental health, so combining our most comfortable spaces with the power of nature can improve one’s mood without fully going outside.

Houseplants

Houseplants are a great way to bring the outdoors indoors. As most occupational and academic environments require the majority of time to be spent inside, plants provide a small dose of the stress-relieving effects found outdoors. They brighten up a space, improve air purity, and overall support emotional well-being.15 Houseplants also offer an opportunity to take up a new hobby and provide the purpose found in taking care of another being. There are plenty of options for beginners to those with the greenest of thumbs. For animal advocates, plants can be a way to bridge the gap between nature and anthropogenic life. Take it a step further and research how your plants’ species interact with animals in the wild!

Natural Decor

Houseplants are not the only way to brighten a space with elements of nature. Incorporating images and scents from the outdoors creates a connection between an indoor space and a green space.16 Botanical smells foster appreciation for green spaces from the comfort of your home. Perhaps the smell of cedarwood reminds you of the deer you spotted on your favourite trail. Many nature-based scents have calming, focusing, or energising effects often found in essential oils or flowers.

Additionally, decorating with nature, such as botanical drawings and animal images, sparks similar feelings that green spaces do.

Open Windows

Depending on the air quality and noise pollution in the area, opening windows is an efficient way to integrate a space with the outside world. They allow you to see and hear the world outside, often buzzing with life. Whether it is completely open or simply pulled aside curtains, natural light regulates humans’ circadian rhythm, which supports better sleep and reduces depression.17 In northern regions that experience long periods of little to no sunlight, light therapy has proven effective in treating seasonal affective disorder (SAD).18 The vitamin D in sunlight directly improves mental health, as well as increases emotional recovery time. Similar to houseplants, an open window literally and figuratively deconstructs the barriers between humans and nature.

Conclusion

The insurmountable benefits of green spaces by promoting calmness, decreasing anxiety, and preventing depression should not be overlooked. Their impact on mental health should not be overlooked. The fight for animal rights can be discouraging, but nature can help us to become more resilient advocates for animals.

What you can do to support green spaces:

• Leave it better than you found it: Clean up a few extra pieces of trash every time you are outside! It keeps the environment safer for your fellow humans and animals.

• Support animal and environmental advocacy: Animalists and environmentalists are constantly running campaigns to preserve green spaces from destruction and running petitions. Look into local groups to see if they need signatures for a petition or volunteers.

• Raise awareness for the importance of green spaces on human and animal health by sharing this post and engaging your community for a healthier and greener future.

• Contact your local policy-makers: Express support for nature conservation to your representatives. Inform them that the community needs their green spaces to be a priority. Urge them to support legislation for animal and environmental protection!

Share

Moderated by Dr Paulina Siemieniec, the conversation brought together Edie Bowles, solicitor and Managing Director of Advocates for Animals | Solicitors and Founder and Executive Director of the Animal Law Foundation (UK), and Kathryn Evans, Staff Attorney at Legal Impact for Chickens (US).

The discussion provided a transatlantic view of how strategic litigation can be used to enforce — and sometimes expand — protections for these animals.

You can access the full transcript here.

Why Chickens and Hens Are Left Behind

Kathryn began by outlining the stark statistics from the US:

About 95% of the land animals killed for human consumption in the US are chickens raised for meat. If you add in ‘egg-laying’ hens, ducks, turkeys, other birds, it's 98% of land animals slaughtered in the US.1

Despite this overwhelming proportion, US federal protections only regulate how farmed animals are treated at slaughter, and for farmed birds, the protections are minimal.2 Kathryn explained:

…basically, you can’t handle birds in a way that causes excessive bruising, and you have to kill the bird by…a knife cut to the throat…

Outside of slaughter, most protections come from state laws — and those vary widely.3 Some states ban cages for laying hens, others do not. Crucially, most state anti-cruelty statutes contain exemptions for “customary farming practices” or “common animal husbandry practices”.4

Edie noted similar patterns in the UK, notably that chickens are also the most farmed animals in the UK, but while legislation like the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations provides some welfare standards on the farm, enforcement is weak, and their suffering is hidden from sight:

The Animal Law Foundation’s “The Enforcement Problem” joint report found that between 2022 and 2023, only 2.5% of more than 300,000 farms across England, Scotland, and Wales were inspected at least once, and although 22% of those inspections identified non-compliance with animal welfare law, fewer than 1% resulted in prosecutions.5 This systemic under-enforcement undermines legal safeguards intended to prevent ‘unnecessary suffering’ among farmed animals.

Litigation as a Tool: UK Case Studies

Edie discussed how UK litigation often targets government failures to enforce existing law, citing the Frankenchicken judicial review.6 This high-profile case challenged the legality of keeping fast-growing chicken breeds — commonly known as “Frankenchickens” — bred to reach slaughter weight in just 34–36 days, and which are associated with severe welfare problems. The case turned on the interpretation of the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007, specifically the provision that prohibits keeping animals whose genotype or phenotype makes it unlikely they can be reared without detriment to health or welfare.7

Frankenchickens are fast-growing chickens, chickens that have been selectively bred to reach slaughter weight, which is around 2.2 kilograms, within five to six weeks. And as a result of this fast growth…they suffer from a range of health and welfare issues, from organ failure, broken legs, as a result of broken legs sitting within their own kind of waste and getting burns over their body…it's a really detrimental breeding practice.

Edie explained:

The case…was a challenge against the government over the, essentially, the keeping of these animals, arguing that it's unlawful to keep them. There is no specific legal provision that says that a Frankenchicken a fast-growing chicken, is illegal. However, there is a legal provision that says you can't keep an animal for farming purposes if, on the basis of their genetics, they're prone to detriment to their health or welfare…our client…The Humane League argued essentially that, of course, this applies to fast-growing chickens.

She commented about the results:

The case was a kind of a mixed bag in terms of the results. So we were unsuccessful arguing against the government for the keeping of these animals,…largely on a technicality,…there wasn't a hook really for the court to say…the government's behaved unlawfully. However, the court did provide a legal interpretation for…what this provision means…about keeping animals prone to detriment for their health and welfare. And it's our client's position that this would…render fast-growing chickens illegal…however, if we wanted to be successful in that, we would have to go to the criminal courts and argue against an individual keeper of these birds.

Thirty-three thousand chickens raised for meat live tightly packed together, cramped inside a massive shed on an industrial broiler chicken farm. The farm has slated these 33-day-old chickens to be rounded up for slaughter that evening. Sub-Saharan Africa, 2022. Jo-Anne McArthur / Sibanye Trust / We Animals

Edie commented about extending this logic to other animals:

…the provision that I'm referring to is in the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations. So it applies to any farmed animal kept for various things, food, wool, and I think ‘other products’ is the definition…if another animal is being kept that has genes that mean that they're prone to detriment, then absolutely this provision could apply…There's still work to be done…we do have a provision that is favourable to protect animals from this problematic breeding.

Alongside the Frankenchicken judicial review, she highlighted an ongoing High Court judicial review brought by the Animal Law Foundation challenging recent government changes to chicken handling rules.8 The Animal Law Foundation has been granted permission by the High Court to pursue a judicial review, challenging both the process by which this change was consulted upon and the substance of the amendment itself.

Historically, UK law — aligned with retained EU Regulation 1/2005 on the protection of animals during transport, transposed in The Welfare of Animals (Transport) (England) Order 2006 — prohibited lifting chickens by both legs, a practice associated with high stress, injury, and mortality rates.9 In July 2025, however, the government introduced a statutory amendment to permit the catching of chickens by both legs.10 This change, set to take effect on 22 July 2025, effectively legalises a handling method long criticised by veterinarians and welfare organisations for its very detrimental impact on bird welfare.

As Edie explained, the case raises fundamental questions about the adequacy of government consultation, the weight given to independent animal welfare science, and the broader post-Brexit trajectory of UK farmed animal protections.

These cases demonstrate that strategic litigation can have an impact even without delivering a complete legal victory. As with Frankenchicken, Edie noted, court proceedings can elevate an issue to the political agenda, attract media attention, and mobilise public debate — outcomes that can be as important for animal advocacy as the judgment itself.

US Approaches: Private Enforcement and Corporate Accountability

Kathryn outlined Legal Impact for Chickens’ strategy of using existing cruelty laws against large corporations. One prominent example is Smith v. Vachris, a shareholder derivative lawsuit filed by Legal Impact for Chickens on behalf of two Costco shareholders. The suit alleges Costco executives violated Nebraska and Iowa livestock neglect laws by knowingly raising chickens so large they couldn’t stand, leading to suffering, injury, and abandonment—claims that breach fiduciary duty and underscore systemic corporate cruelty.11

A derivative shareholder lawsuit, she explained, is a legal action brought by shareholders on behalf of a corporation against its executives or board members for failing in their duties to the company. In this case, the claim was that Costco’s executives had breached their fiduciary duties by permitting animal cruelty that could expose the company to legal and reputational risks.

Kathryn also explained:

Shareholder litigation is really just another tool to try to make companies follow the law…it is really focusing on the company and the leadership and the systems that are in place, and that are allowing these abuses to happen instead of focusing on like one farm or particular workers who are kind of caught up in this system and really forced within the system that if they want to keep their jobs, they have to sort of perpetuate the abuses.

Private enforcement is often necessary in the US, where political and economic pressures can stifle regulatory action. Civil litigation can compel change through settlements, court orders, and the reputational pressure of discovery and trial.

Challenges in Court

Both addressed the hurdles inherent in litigating for chickens and hens. Kathryn highlighted procedural barriers, such as standing:

…animal law is always a tough area of law because animals themselves don't have standing. They can't bring a lawsuit on their own behalf. And so animal law cases are often framed in terms of how humans are injured by abuse to animals, and LIC is always looking for ways to…centre what's actually happening to animals.

Evidence gathering is also a major challenge:

…we see a lot of people who are just afraid to speak up or who want to report to us, but they want to remain anonymous…unfortunately, in the U.S. legal system, it's very hard to keep your sources of information anonymous because the defendant has rights to know where your information is coming from and to also question those people.

Kathryn added:

As far as ag-gag laws, there are a few that still remain in the U.S., so these say it's illegal to film on a farm or to otherwise collect information from farms without the owner's permission. A lot of them have been struck down as unconstitutional because we have free speech rights that protect things like making videos and speaking about what you see on farms.

Maximising Advocacy Impact

The conversation repeatedly returned to the idea that litigation is not just about the court ruling. Kathryn described media work as an essential parallel track:

Edie emphasised coalition-building and aligning legal actions with broader campaigns:

Key Lessons for Advocates and Practitioners

From their combined experience, Edie and Kathryn offered several takeaways for those considering strategic litigation for chickens and hens:

• Know Your Legal Landscape – Understand the gaps, exemptions, and procedural rules before filing.

• Use Multiple Angles – Pair litigation with media advocacy, campaigns, and public education.

• Be Prepared for Partial Wins – Even an unfavourable ruling can be a platform for change and raising awareness.

• Build Strong Evidence Files – The credibility and impact of a case often hinge on robust, admissible evidence.

• Collaborate Across Sectors – NGOs, lawyers, investigators, and campaigners each bring essential strengths.

Confined laying hens curiously peer out from a cage in a battery system stretching dozens of metres long on an industrial farm. The hens share each cage with several others, each bird allocated a space roughly the size of an A4 sheet of paper. Portugal, 2023. Andrew Skowron / We Animals

Conclusion

Strategic litigation for chickens and hens is both challenging and vital. While the legal systems in the UK and US differ, this seminar revealed striking commonalities: entrenched exemptions, limited enforcement, and the need for creative, multi-pronged approaches.

Litigation is one tool in the toolbox. Used well, it can be a powerful catalyst for change. These animals need us to use every lawful avenue to make their lives better and end their suffering — and to hold those responsible for cruelty accountable.

📺 The full recording of this seminar is available on ICARE’s YouTube channel to learn more from both our invitees, their strategies, case studies, the legal landscape, and insights shared.

Thank you very much once again to Edie Bowles and Kathryn Evans for their kind participation and generously sharing their expertise and experiences with us — we learned so much from them! We hope you enjoyed this conversation and the seminar series, and appreciate reading these takeaways. You can watch the past episodes in this series in our playlist on ICARE’s YouTube channel or find them on the seminar series page on ICARE’s website.

Thank you also to all of you who attended or will watch the recording. We look forward to your feedback and to welcoming you to the next seminar! If you like it, you can support our work with a donation.

Share

Watch the recording on ICARE’s Youtube channel.

Understanding the Legal Framework Governing Animals Use in Research in the US: Rebecca Critser

Dr. Rebecca Critser, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University, opened with an exploration of United States federal laws regulating the use of animals in research. She highlighted two central regimes: the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and the Public Health Service (PHS) policy, noting critical differences and gaps.

The AWA, enacted in 1966 following public outcry over cases such as the theft of the dog Pepper, requires research facilities to register with the USDA, undergo annual inspections, and submit annual reports on animal use. However, the AWA’s scope excludes birds, rats, and mice bred for research—species estimated to number approximately 110 million annually in US laboratories.1 This exclusion significantly reduces transparency and leaves the vast majority of animals used in research unaccounted for under federal law.

Conversely, the PHS policy applies to federally funded institutions and covers all live vertebrates, including mice and rats, but excludes invertebrates such as octopuses. PHS oversight is contractual rather than regulatory, relying on institutional assurances to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW). Unlike the AWA, it does not require annual reporting of animal numbers, limiting public accountability.

Both laws focus on animal welfare standards—adequate food, water, shelter, and veterinary care—but do not confer animal rights or seek to challenge the legitimacy of animal use in research. This welfare-centric approach allows the continuation of animal experimentation, albeit with mandated standards to reduce animal suffering.

Central to ethical oversight are the ‘3 Rs’ developed by Russell and Burch: Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement.2 Replacement urges using non-animal methods fully or partially (e.g., substituting primates with fish); Reduction focuses on using the fewest animals needed; Refinement seeks to minimise pain and distress. Dr. Critser noted a frequent ethical tension between Reduction and Refinement—reusing animals may reduce total numbers but increase individual suffering—requiring nuanced decision-making.

A ‘fourth R’ was also introduced—rehoming animals after research ends.3 One of the most high-profile examples of rehoming laboratory animals involved the rescue of beagles from the Envigo breeding facility in Virginia. Investigations revealed severe mistreatment of over 4,000 beagles, including inadequate veterinary care, unsanitary living conditions, and improper euthanasia practices, leading to the facility’s closure and a large-scale rescue operation coordinated by the Humane Society of the United States and 120 shelters and rescue organisations.4 These beagles were rehabilitated and placed into loving adoptive homes, exemplifying both the challenges and hopeful possibilities of giving animals used in research a second chance beyond experimentation.5 Critser cited this example as a hopeful but resource-intensive one. Rehoming primates and other species with complex care needs remains challenging due to high costs and limited sanctuary capacity.

Importantly, Critser argued the 3 Rs do not substitute for a formal harm-benefit analysis, which would systematically weigh the scientific benefits against animal harms. She advocated for adopting such evaluative frameworks in regulatory oversight to enhance ethical accountability.

Recent Developments: NIH’s Shift to Human-Based Research

The NIH declared it will no longer issue new funding opportunities focused exclusively on animal models of human disease, instead encouraging human-based research technologies and a broad range of alternative approaches.

To support this transition, the NIH is establishing the Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application (ORIVA), tasked with coordinating agency-wide efforts to develop, validate, and scale non-animal methodologies.6 Additionally, the Complement Animal Research In Experimentation (Complement-ARIE) program aims to accelerate the adoption and regulatory acceptance of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), which include advanced laboratory and computational techniques designed to better mimic human biology.7

According to Critser, this represents a historic and promising move toward reducing reliance on animal models, aligning ethical concerns with scientific innovation. However, she stressed the need for sustained funding, regulatory support, and researcher training to fully realise this vision.

Key Takeaways from Critser:

• The Animal Welfare Act excludes the majority of animals used in US labs, undermining transparency.

• The PHS policy offers broader coverage but lacks mandatory reporting and is less enforceable.

• Welfare laws regulate conditions but do not grant animals rights or question use.

• The 3 Rs guide ethical oversight but have limitations, including internal tensions.

• Rehoming is emerging but requires systemic support and funding.

Scientific and Ethical Imperatives to End Animal Experimentation: Savita Nutan

Savita Nutan, founder of Medicine Without Cruelty, framed the argument for ending animal testing as a moral necessity and a scientific imperative. Nutan criticised incremental ‘phase-out’ approaches as insufficient and harmful, prolonging animal suffering by delaying adoption of cruelty-free science. She urged immediate embrace of scientifically validated non-animal technologies that offer more reliable and ethical research alternatives.8

Among these are human organ-on-chip technologies that replicate human tissue behaviour, advanced in vitro cell cultures, computational toxicology models powered by AI, and increased use of human clinical and epidemiological data. These methods improve scientific relevance to humans, reduce costs, and eliminate the harms of testing on animals.

Nutan highlighted that reluctance within the scientific community is often rooted in institutional inertia and economic interests rather than scientific validity. To accelerate change, she emphasised advocacy targeting policymakers, funding bodies, regulatory agencies, and industries reliant on animal testing.

Examples of progress include the European Union Cosmetics Regulation banning animal testing for cosmetics9 and increased government support for alternative methods research, although implementation remains uneven.

Key Takeaways from Nutan:

• Millions of animals suffer annually worldwide, with underreporting masking scale.

• Incremental phase-outs prolong suffering.

• Validated cruelty-free technologies already exist and outperform animal models.

• Institutional inertia is a major barrier to adoption of alternatives.

NGOs Perspectives

Transforming the Latin American Cosmetic Industry: Te Protejo

Daniela Medina presented Te Protejo’s efforts to eliminate testing on animals in Latin America’s cosmetic sector. Te Protejo has pioneered a cruelty-free cosmetics certification program, ‘Beauty Without Animal Testing,’ which helps consumers identify and support brands that do not test on animals.

Their approach has unfolded in five key areas, starting with raising consumer awareness about animal testing in cosmetics, followed by certifying cruelty-free brands. Te Protejo has collaborated with both certified brands and companies not yet cruelty-free but willing to contribute to reform efforts.

Te Protejo’s advocacy culminated in a legislative success: Chile became one of the first countries in the region to ban animal testing for cosmetics.10 In December 2023, the Chilean Senate unanimously passed legislation prohibiting the use of animals for cosmetic testing, as well as the manufacture, import, and sale of cosmetics tested on animals abroad.11

This success was the result of a multi-pronged strategy combining consumer education, industry collaboration, and broad coalition-building beyond the typical animal advocacy community. Medina stressed the importance of engaging not only animal advocates but also consumers and civil society groups to create a broad support base for reform.

She also emphasised that education campaigns and industry collaboration remain vital to sustaining and expanding these reforms regionally.

Takeaways from Medina’s Presentation:

• Te Protejo’s cruelty-free certification guides consumer choices and incentivises brands to adopt humane practices.

• Chile’s ban on cosmetic animal testing was achieved through collaboration with industry and civil society.

• Building broad support beyond the animal advocacy community is crucial to passing impactful legislation.

• Public awareness and education campaigns remain foundational to sustaining and expanding these reforms in Latin America.

Driving Scientific Innovation and Policy Reform: Animal Free Research UK’s Approach

Isobel Martin presented an overview of Animal Free Research UK’s approach to advancing animal-free science in the UK. Since its founding in 1970, the charity has invested over £11.5 million into pioneering non-animal medical research, supporting cutting-edge technologies such as organ-on-a-chip platforms, 3D tissue cultures, and computational models that better replicate human biology.

Beyond funding, Animal Free Research UK plays a crucial role in empowering scientists to adopt these innovations. They offer specialised training workshops and maintain practical resources like an antibodies database.12 This database helps researchers replace animal-derived antibodies, which are commonly used but often avoidable, facilitating the broader uptake of humane alternatives.

They are actively engaged in advocacy to build political momentum for systemic reform. A key initiative they support is Herbie’s Law, which proposes a phased legal end to animal experimentation over the next decade.13 This phased approach aims to balance ethical urgency with pragmatic concerns, fostering consensus among scientists, policymakers, and the public.

Takeaways from Martin’s Presentation:

• Animal Free Research UK has invested significant funding into developing and promoting animal-free research technologies.

• Training and practical resources like the antibodies database are essential for empowering researchers to implement alternatives.

• Policy advocacy, including support for Herbie’s Law, focuses on securing legal frameworks for a phased end to animal experiments.

• Government support, regulatory reform, and public engagement are crucial for sustaining this transition.

PETA India: Advancing Cruelty-Free Science Through Legal Reform and Advocacy

Dr. Anjana Aggarwal highlighted PETA India’s multifaceted approach, engaging with policymakers, scientific institutions, and ethics committees to promote humane science.

Following sustained efforts, the Pharmacy Council of India issued a directive discouraging the use of forced swim tests in pharmacy schools.14 This test, which forces mice or rats to swim in inescapable containers to screen antidepressants, has been widely discredited on scientific and ethical grounds.15

PETA India also uncovered severe cruelty at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMA) in South India. Acting on a whistleblower's complaint in 2022, they revealed that rats and mice were overcrowded, malnourished, and subjected to unauthorised, painful experiments violating animal protection laws. Based on their complaint, the government issued a show-cause notice, resulting in the rescue of over 150 animals.16 PETA India took responsibility for relocating these animals to sanctuaries where they receive lifelong care and rehabilitation.

In 2021, following recommendations by PETA India, the Bureau of Indian Standards removed a cruel approval test where guinea pigs were injected with animal feed samples and left to suffer agonising deaths for over 48 hours.17 Moreover, PETA India supports modernising research through their ‘Research Modernisation Deal,’ promoting the development and uptake of non-animal human-relevant research methods.18

Aggarwal also shared how Maharashtra-based institutes have pledged to eliminate animals from classroom experiments, replacing cruel lab exercises with virtual software supplied free of charge.19

Conclusion

This 2025 World Laboratory Animals Day illuminated urgent challenges and promising pathways to end experimentation on animals. As the presentations revealed, current regulatory frameworks predominantly focus on animal welfare standards without fundamentally challenging the use of sentient beings as research subjects. This highlights a critical gap that ICARE aims to address: to promote the recognition and enforcement of animals’ fundamental rights through legal reform, education, and advocacy.

The seminar reaffirmed that ending experimentation on animals demands a multifaceted approach—one that advances robust legal protections rooted in animal rights, accelerates the adoption of scientifically superior and ethically sound alternatives, and builds broad coalitions uniting policymakers, scientists, lawyers, advocates, and the public.

ICARE is committed to bridging theory and practice by fostering comparative legal research, supporting strategic advocacy, and equipping animal advocates with cutting-edge knowledge. The examples shared—from the NIH’s funding shifts to innovative NGO campaigns and pioneering legislation and scientific advances—highlight both the challenges and tangible progress achievable when dedicated efforts align.

We invite scholars, advocates, and policymakers to join us in this endeavour—building a future where science and law no longer rely on animal exploitation but uphold the dignity and rights of all sentient beings.

Subscribe now

The seminars are held bi-monthly and bring together leading animal advocates in a conversation format to explore the role of litigation, legislative reform, and political advocacy in advancing animal rights, through knowledge and experience sharing, case studies, and real-world challenges.

Our conversation with Giulia Malerbi, this World Aquatic Animal Day, focused on the growing movement to preemptively ban octopus farming—before it becomes another entrenched system of animal suffering.

A full transcript and the recording of the seminar are available for those who wish to explore further.

Read the Full Transcript

Watch the Seminar

Introducing the Issue: Why Octopuses Matter

Our moderator, Dr Paulina Siemieniec, opened the seminar by highlighting the extraordinary nature of octopuses:

“Octopuses have three hearts, zero bones, blue blood, sophisticated nervous systems and large ring-shaped brains. [...] On the underside of each of their arms, they have highly sensitive suckers that are independent from their central brain but contain clusters of neurons that act as sort of small brains to execute certain functions.”

She further explained their behavioural richness, noting:

“Their intelligence is also demonstrated through their cognitive and behavioural complexity, including their ability to use tools, solve puzzles, recognise individual humans, play, change the colour and texture of their skin to match their surroundings and hunt in cooperation with fish."

Beyond their biological marvels, octopuses lead solitary, complex lives. Farming them would require removing them from their rich natural environments and confining them in barren, restrictive tanks.

As Giulia Malerbi explained:

“Farming these animals basically means removing them from the context that we just discussed, and placing them in small, barren tanks. And this could mean placing them either, like, alone, which in the case of octopuses, means chronic boredom and stress, or the opposite, which is, grouped together, which often can result in aggression and cannibalism.”

A Structural Ethical Concern: Why Octopus Farming Is Wrong

The ethical opposition to octopus farming goes deeper than the extraordinary traits of octopuses themselves. As Malerbi framed it:

“We believe octopus farming is unethical for the same reason that we oppose factory farming more broadly, because it causes immense suffering. It forces sentient, intelligent animals into systems that just deny these animals the ability to live and thrive in a way that reflects their nature.”

Importantly, she emphasised:

“I don't believe that their fascinating qualities make them somehow better than other animals.”

Rather, it is their sentience, and the suffering imposed by intensive farming, that grounds the moral and legal imperative to act.

Siemieniec drew an important connection between the octopus farming debate and broader critiques of factory farming:

“The arguments that octopuses are highly intelligent and would suffer so much in captivity for a number of reasons apply to many land animals that we’re factory farming, like pigs.”

However, as she noted—echoing experts such as Dr Elena Lara — unlike pigs, octopuses remain wild animals, and:

“[...] we do not have the same knowledge about octopuses, who are wild and thus we lack even the insight to know what it would mean to ‘improve their welfare’ in farming them.”

Thus, octopus farming raises not only welfare concerns but profound questions about human ignorance and the ethics of bringing wild species into captivity.

Why Octopus Farming Is a Bad Idea — For Animals and the Planet

Octopus farming is often framed as a solution to food security. But as Malerbi warned:

“In reality, it is really being driven by market forces.”

Wild octopus populations have been heavily overfished—their catch skyrocketing from 30,000 tons in 1950 to 350,000 tons today—but farming octopuses is no real solution. It compounds welfare, environmental, and sustainability problems:

• Animal Welfare: Octopuses fail across all five pillars of aquatic animal welfare developed by the Aquatic Life Institute—environmental enrichment, feed composition, stocking density and space, water quality, and slaughter method.

• Environmental Impact: Farming carnivorous species like octopuses requires feeding them wild-caught fish.

“In order to have one kilogram of octopus ‘meat,’ you need to invest or feed these animals three kilograms of marine life.”

• Public Health Risks: Octopus immune systems are poorly understood, and there are no veterinary protocols for disease prevention in farmed octopuses.

As Malerbi summed up:

“Honestly, the reason why we’re talking about octopus farming today is because the industry found some attractive characteristics of these animals. [...] But, of course, in our view, they really don’t offset the welfare harms.”

Methods of Killing: A Critical Welfare Crisis

One particularly disturbing aspect is the lack of ‘humane’ slaughter methods. Malerbi described the main technique being proposed:

“The default approach has been the use of ice slurry [...] where octopuses are submerged in a bath of ice and water until they die because of lack of oxygen.”

This method causes prolonged suffering:

“Several studies have demonstrated that octopuses that are subjected to ice slurry do remain conscious and can even stay responsive for several minutes.”

She noted that even the European Food Safety Authority has warned against using ice slurry for farmed fish—raising serious concerns about expanding such practices to octopuses.

The Myth of 'Sustainable' Octopus Farming

Industry narratives often claim that farming octopuses could be sustainable. Malerbi responded bluntly:

“I can answer very short. No! I don't believe that octopus farming can ever be made sustainable.”

Farmed octopuses would primarily supply luxury markets—not food-insecure populations. As Malerbi cited:

“Farmed octopus would not be destined for communities that are facing food insecurity. They would go to fancy restaurants [...] where octopus is really not a nutritional necessity.”

Moreover, farming octopuses would intensify pressure on wild fish stocks—precisely the opposite of what “sustainability” requires.

Legislative Momentum: Recognising Sentience and Preventing Harm

One of the most hopeful developments is the growing legal recognition of aquatic animal sentience. As Malerbi noted:

“Once the laws recognise that, an animal’s capacity to suffer, to experience emotions, to interact with the environment, it should become, at least, harder, you know, to justify systems that so clearly cause harm and that would be preventable.”

Siemieniec added an important legal insight:

“It seems like the legal recognition of sentience would essentially be meaningless if there was no practical effect of actually protecting animals like octopuses.”

Recognition of octopus sentience in places like the UK and New Zealand creates new opportunities—but it must be translated into tangible protections.

Despite the alarming developments, particularly in Spain, in the United States, legislative momentum is already building:

• Washington State was the first state to pass a ban, signed into law in March 2024, followed by California in October 2024.

• Other states including New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii (where the Kanaloa Octopus Farm was shut down for illegal wild captures), Oregon, and North Carolina (in March 2025), have introduced bills.

• At the federal level, the OCTOPUS Act was introduced in July 2024 to ban octopus farming nationwide.

Malerbi celebrated this trend:

“Many of these efforts are bipartisan. And they are rooted in the clear recognition that octopus farming is ethically indefensible, environmentally unsound, and simply unnecessary.”

As Malerbi explained, what makes this moment unique is the chance to act proactively:

“With octopuses, the difference is that we have, on the legal point of view, sort of the chance to reverse this timeline, so we can use legal recognition as a proactive tool to prevent the establishment of a new industry.”

Why Preemptive Action Matters

Some ask why to focus so much energy on octopuses when billions of land animals already suffer in factory farms. Malerbi offered a compelling strategic perspective:

“We still have time to stop it, right? There is a very rare moment where there’s no entrenched infrastructure. [...] Imagine if, at the time [70 years ago], we managed to successfully challenge the breeding of fast-growing chickens. Imagine today we would be in a very, very different place.”

Preventing octopus farming is a chance to do things differently—to avoid replicating past mistakes.

Building a Different Future: The Aquatic Life Institute’s Vision

Malerbi closed by sharing the Aquatic Life Institute’s broader framework for transforming aquatic food systems, known as the ‘4Rs’:

• Reduce the number of animals used in aquatic food systems.

• Refine existing practices to improve aquatic animal welfare.

• Replace animal-based aquatic products with plant-based or cultivated alternatives.

• Reject the introduction of new species into farming systems—such as octopuses.

As she eloquently stated:

“This campaign fits within Aquatic Life Institute, our broader theory of change. [...] Octopuses have helped us, like, ‘bridge the empathy gap.’ Once people really understand why farming octopuses is wrong, they are more open to questioning other accepted practices.”

Siemieniec concluded by framing the broader structural importance of the issue:

“The suffering of farmed octopus is exposing deeper structural problems in the way that aquatic food production is being approached generally.”

How You Can Help

Anyone can help prevent octopus farming:

• Get informed: Read and share resources.

• Raise awareness: Watch My Octopus Teacher or read The Soul of an Octopus to understand these animals better.

• Sign petitions: Such as the Avaaz petition, which has already gathered over a million signatures.

• Support legislative efforts: Advocate with your local representatives.

As Malerbi encouraged:

“Every action really does make a difference.”

Read the Full Transcript

🔗 Watch the Full Recording on ICARE’s YouTube channel (and subscribe!)

We are very grateful to Giulia Malerbi for this conversation and the Aquatic Life Institute and their allies for their important work on this issue, and to Dr Paulina Siemieniec for her questions, insights and excellent work in moderating this seminar. We’re already looking forward to the next one in June!

Thank you to all of you who attended or will watch the recording. We look forward to your feedback and to having you engage with the seminar series!

You can still make a donation!

The Story Behind ICARE

ICARE, the International Centre for Animal Rights and Ethics, was launched in October 2024 to advance the legal rights of animals worldwide.

ICARE didn’t start as an organisation. It started with a single, urgent idea: to create a course in animal rights law.

Marine, a legal researcher and educator, saw the enormous gap in legal education when it came to animals. Most legal systems address animals only through the lens of welfare—but not rights. Conversations with fellow researchers echoed what she already knew: the term animal rights law was practically missing from the legal landscape.

As she built that first course, it became clear that one programme wouldn’t be enough. There needed to be more—a space that could bridge theory and practice, that could educate, advocate, and support real legal transformation.

That’s how the International Centre for Animal Rights and Ethics (ICARE) was born. It emerged from the desire not just to teach, but to act. To offer practical solutions that translate research and theory into real-world legal rights for animals.

And ICARE’s name itself holds personal meaning. It’s not only an acronym—it’s also the name of Marine’s first dog, Icare. He’s one of many animals to whom she has made a lifelong promise: that their suffering will not remain invisible in the law.

In just a few months, we have built a strong centre for education, research, and advocacy in animal rights law—but we need your help to keep growing and making an impact for animal rights globally!

Here is how Marine describes the story behind ICARE:

What ICARE Has Achieved–In Just a Few Months

Since ICARE’s launch, the progress has been remarkable:

✅ 3 legal research projects already underway
✅ First live CIARL course completed, with students from 21 countries across 5 continents
✅ 18 scholarships awarded out of 30 students–most from the Majority World
✅ Launch of our free, bi-monthly seminar series: Litigating and Legislating for Animal Rights
✅ Registration opening soon for our on-demand CIARL course–flexible and affordable
✅ Upcoming free seminar for World Laboratory Animals Day
✅ More courses, lectures, and seminars offerings in animal rights law and ethics coming soon
✅ Beginning of our legal consulting programme to support real-world advocacy

All of this has been achieved thanks to the support of donors, volunteers, and an emerging global community determined to see animals recognised not just as beings in need of protection, but as rights-holders under the law.

Why Every Donation Matters

ICARE is still young, and every contribution makes a difference.

Marine is personally matching every donation up to €1,700–and together, we hope to reach the symbolic goal of €3,400, one euro for each year of her life (34) dedicated to the fight for animal rights.

Here’s how your donation can help:

💡 €25 = one month of essential software
🎥 €50 = editing for one course video
📚 €75 = funds one hour of teaching
🎓 €100 = funds students’ scholarships
🌍 €250 = supports legal research and global advocacy

Edit: Together, we have raised €675.85! Doubled by Marine, this represents a total of €1,351.74 for ICARE and the rights of animals worldwide!

We are extremely grateful for your generosity.

You can still make a donation!

Where ICARE Is Headed

When asked about her vision for ICARE in five years, Marine said:

7 Fun Facts About our Founder:

1. Icare was the name of Marine’s first dog.

2. Marine will be celebrating 10 years as a vegan in September this year.

3. In 2022, Marine ran for the Animalist Party in France's parliamentary elections. She has also contributed to revising their national political programme.

4. Marine is also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Animal Rights Law, a newly launched open-access, peer-reviewed legal journal (the first of its kind!) dedicated exclusively to publishing research and advancing animal rights law.

5. Marine’s doctoral research pioneers the concept of ‘Animal Labour Law’©, exploring avenues to grant labour rights to non-human animal workers. Using racehorses as a case study, she aims to address gaps in their protection and safeguard racehorses’ fundamental interests, including through a legal right to retirement beyond their racing careers.

6. Marine can advocate for animals in multiple languages: she’s a native French speaker, has full professional proficiency in English, professional working proficiency in Spanish, and elementary proficiency in German, Hebrew, and Italian.

7. Marine is extremely honoured to have just joined the prestigious board of the Culture and Animals Foundation, founded by the late Tom Regan and his wife Nancy.

Join the Movement

If you believe animals deserve more than charity—if you believe they deserve justice—then this is your chance to support a movement grounded in vision, credibility, and action.

Let’s make this birthday count—for Marine, for Icare, and for animals everywhere.

You can still make a donation!

Donate here.

Can’t donate? You can still support us by sharing this fundraiser within your network. Every share helps spread the message and grow our community.

Thank you for standing with ICARE—and with the animals. Let’s make this birthday one to remember.

You can still make a donation!

Marine’s Blog Posts:

Would you like to read more about Marine’s perspective on Animal Rights Law issues? Here are two recent blog posts that Marine has written or co-written:

And here is a recent webinar where Marine talks about ‘war crimes against animals’:

In solidarity,
The ICARE Team

Introduction

The grey wolf (Canis lupus), one of Europe’s most iconic and ecologically significant apex predators, has played a crucial role in maintaining the balance of European ecosystems for millennia. Beyond its intrinsic value as a keystone species, the grey wolf has become emblematic of successful wildlife conservation efforts across the continent. However, despite decades of legal protection and population recovery, the species continues to face persistent threats stemming from human activities, misconceptions, and political pressures.

In a troubling setback, the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats approved a proposal on 3 December 2024 to downgrade the protection status of the grey wolf. This decision represents not only a regression in European conservation policy but also a serious risk to the fragile progress made in ensuring the species’ survival. It opens the door to increased culling and weakens legal safeguards, potentially reversing hard-won conservation gains.

In this blog post, we examine why this decision is misguided, analyse its legal and ecological implications, and explore what it means for the future of wolves in Europe.

The Bern Convention’s Role in Grey Wolf Recovery and Protection

The Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, which entered into force in 1982, has played a pivotal role in facilitating the recovery of grey wolf populations across Europe. Under the Convention, wolves were listed in Appendix II, classifying them as a ‘strictly protected species.’1 This designation imposes binding obligations on signatory states to implement robust conservation measures, including prohibiting the deliberate capture, keeping, and killing of wolves, safeguarding their breeding and resting sites, and preventing disturbances, particularly during critical biological periods.2

The inclusion of the grey wolf in the Bern Convention’s framework, alongside sustained efforts from conservation organisations and local initiatives, contributed to one of Europe’s most significant wildlife recovery stories. Between 1960 and 2016, the grey wolf population witnessed an extraordinary resurgence, increasing by over 1,800% across the continent.3 According to the Living Planet Database and recent assessments, it is estimated that approximately 19,000 wolves currently inhabit the 27 EU member states.4 This recovery, however, remains fragile, as it depends heavily on continued legal protection, effective habitat management, and societal tolerance.

Downgrading Grey Wolves’ Protection

Despite significant conservation successes over recent decades, the legal protection afforded to the grey wolf in Europe has now been considerably weakened. On 3 December 2024, the Standing Committee of the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats approved the European Union’s proposal to downgrade the wolf’s status from Appendix II (‘strictly protected fauna species’) to Appendix III (‘protected fauna species’).5 This reclassification, which officially entered into force on 7 March 2025, signals a shift away from the stringent safeguards previously enjoyed by the species under the Convention’s framework.

The move was initiated by the European Commission and formalised in Council Decision (EU) 2024/2669, which authorised the Union to propose the downlisting at the 44th meeting of the Standing Committee.6 The rationale put forward centred on the wolf population recovery—estimated at approximately 20,300 individuals in 2023 within the EU—and the need to grant Member States greater flexibility in managing conflicts between wolves and rural activities.7 However, the implications of this downgrade are far-reaching. While Appendix II required prohibitions on the deliberate killing, capture, and disturbance of wolf populations, Appendix III permits signatory states to authorise population control measures, including culling to prevent serious damage to livestock, provided that such measures do not endanger the species’ survival.8

This decision has been met with widespread condemnation from conservationists, scientists, and animal protection organisations alike. It is seen as a regressive step that disregards the robust body of scientific evidence attesting to the ecological importance of wolves, as well as the effectiveness of non-lethal conflict mitigation strategies.9 Animal protection groups have also expressed grave concerns that the downgrade reflects political expediency and pressure from agricultural and hunting lobbies, rather than sound ecological or ethical reasoning.10

Further exacerbating these concerns, the European Commission, on the very day the Bern Convention amendment entered into force, tabled a proposal to amend the EU’s own Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) to align with the Convention’s downgrade.11 The Commission’s legislative proposal (COM(2025) 106 final) seeks to remove the grey wolf from Annex IV of the Directive, where it is currently listed as requiring strict protection, and instead include it in Annex V, where Member States are permitted to regulate its exploitation.12 Although the proposal maintains the obligation to preserve the species at a ‘favourable conservation status,’ its practical effect will be to grant national authorities increased leeway to authorise wolf hunting and lethal control measures, often at the expense of more humane, non-lethal alternatives.

From an animal rights perspective, the consequences of this shift are profound. It weakens not only legal protections for one of Europe’s most iconic predators but also signals a dangerous precedent in prioritising short-term political considerations over long-term ecological stewardship and ethical responsibility. By opening the door to expanded lethal management, the EU risks undoing decades of progress in coexistence policies and further entrenching anthropocentric decision-making that disregards the intrinsic rights and welfare of non-human animals.

A Political, Scientifically Unfounded Approach: The Case Against Lethal Control

The consequences of the downgrade in protection are likely to be severe, both for grey wolf populations and the broader ecosystems they inhabit. The shift from strict to less stringent protection under both the Bern Convention and the proposed amendments to the EU Habitats Directive exposes wolves to increased lethal management, including expanded culling and regulated hunting.13

Crucially, the claim that European wolf populations are fully recovered is misleading. While wolves have returned to large parts of their historic range, they remain endangered, vulnerable, or near threatened in many regions. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), six out of nine recognised European wolf populations are classified as either Near Threatened or Vulnerable.14 The fragmentation of habitats, illegal killing, human encroachment, and insufficient genetic exchange continue to threaten the long-term viability of several populations. Weakening legal protections at this critical juncture jeopardises decades of conservation progress and undermines the European Union’s own legal obligation to maintain species at a ‘favourable conservation status’ under the Habitats Directive.15

One of the primary justifications cited by proponents of the downgrade is the ongoing conflict between wolves and farmers, particularly regarding livestock predation. However, this argument fails to withstand scrutiny when placed in context. While wolf attacks on livestock do occur, the overall impact is minimal relative to the scale of animal agriculture within the EU. According to the European Commission’s own data, approximately 65,500 head of livestock are killed by wolves annually across the EU—a figure representing merely 0.065% of the total livestock population.16 By contrast, over 10 billion farmed animals are slaughtered each year within the EU for human consumption.17

This disparity underscores the disproportionate focus on wolves as a perceived threat to agricultural interests. Effective, non-lethal coexistence strategies have been successfully implemented in numerous regions, mitigating conflicts without resorting to widespread culling.18 Prioritising lethal control not only inflicts unnecessary suffering on a highly sentient species but also perpetuates anthropocentric management approaches that fail to respect the inherent value and rights of non-human animals.

Culling wolves is not only ethically indefensible but also scientifically unsound as a strategy for mitigating human-wolf conflicts. Such measures risk fragmenting and destabilising established wolf packs, leading to unpredictable territorial displacements. Wolves are highly social animals, living in structured packs where individuals cooperate in hunting, raising offspring, and defending territory.19 Disrupting these pack dynamics—particularly through lethal control—leads to social fragmentation, destabilising established territories and increasing the likelihood of conflict with human interests.20 Scientific studies consistently show that such disruptions—particularly through indiscriminate killing—often prove counterproductive, exacerbating conflicts with livestock farmers by leaving surviving individuals less capable of coordinated hunting and more reliant on accessible prey, such as domesticated animals, and dispersing younger, inexperienced individuals into new areas, often with reduced hunting efficiency, making them more prone to target livestock.21

Contrary to the arguments presented by proponents of culling, non-lethal conflict prevention measures have been shown to be far more effective and sustainable. Research consistently highlights the success of interventions such as employing livestock guardian dogs, erecting predator-proof fencing, deploying fladry (flagging deterrents), and implementing compensation schemes for livestock losses.22 Additionally, public education campaigns aimed at fostering coexistence and dispelling myths surrounding wolves play a crucial role in reducing tensions and promoting tolerance.23

The recent reclassification of wolves from ‘strictly protected’ to ‘protected’ status under the Bern Convention—and the European Commission’s subsequent proposal to amend the EU Habitats Directive—must therefore be viewed through a political lens rather than one grounded in science or ethical principle. This downgrade legitimises the expansion of lethal control measures under the guise of conflict mitigation, despite a growing body of research indicating that culling is not only ineffective but frequently counterproductive.

Ignoring Sentience, Ignoring Public Will: The Ethical Crisis Behind Downgrading Wolf Protection

Beyond the ecological and practical concerns, the decision to downgrade wolf protection raises an ethical question: why do we continue to legitimise the killing of wolves to prioritise human economic interests? Wolves, as sentient beings, possess inherent moral worth and the right to live free from human-inflicted harm. Yet, the downgrade reflects a deeply entrenched anthropocentric legal and political framework that systematically subordinates the lives and interests of wild animals to those of human industries, particularly agriculture and hunting.24

Policies sanctioning the killing of sentient non-human animals—particularly when non-lethal alternatives are available—perpetuate institutionalised violence and legitimise structural oppression. These policies not only perpetuate the subjugation of non-human animals but also impede the development of ethical frameworks that encourage genuine interspecies harmony. The decision to weaken protections for the grey wolf exemplifies this dynamic. Rather than fostering genuine coexistence, it reinforces a logic rooted in domination and exploitation, treating wolves as expendable obstacles to human economic interests rather than as sentient beings with intrinsic value.

Importantly, this policy shift does not reflect the values of the broader European population. Recent data underscore that the majority of EU citizens oppose the downgrade in wolf protection. A public consultation conducted by Eurogroup for Animals in 2023 revealed that approximately 70% of respondents favoured maintaining strict legal protections for wolves and expressed support for non-lethal preventive measures over lethal control.25

Conclusion

The decision by the European Union and the Bern Convention Standing Committee to downgrade the protection status of grey wolves marks a concerning shift away from the principles of evidence-based conservation, ecological responsibility, and respect for non-human animal rights. It threatens to destabilise fragile wolf populations, disregards decades of scientific research underscoring the benefits of non-lethal coexistence strategies, and sets a troubling precedent for the treatment of other vulnerable animal species. More fundamentally, it perpetuates an anthropocentric, utilitarian approach to wildlife governance—one that privileges short-term human economic interests over ethical and ecological considerations.

However, this outcome is not irreversible. Public opposition to the downgrade has been clear, and legal processes within the European Union remain ongoing.26 As citizens, advocates, and scholars, we have the responsibility—and the opportunity—to ensure that policymakers prioritise coexistence strategies grounded in scientific evidence, ethical principles, and the recognition of wild animals’ inherent worth.

What you can do to support wolves:

• Contact your Member of the European Parliament (MEP): Urge them to oppose the European Commission’s proposed amendments to the Habitats Directive and to uphold strict protections for wolves across the EU. The Directive can retain stricter safeguards despite the Bern Convention change.

• Contact your national parliamentarians: Ask them to maintain or strengthen national protections for wolves, even after the Bern Convention downgrade. National governments can still apply stricter rules.

• Support petitions and advocacy campaigns, and support future reversal efforts: Many animal protection and conservation organisations are actively campaigning to reverse the downgrade and promote humane, non-lethal conflict mitigation. Public pressure and scientific evidence will be key.

• Report violations: If you are aware of illegal killings or misuse of culling permissions, report them to national authorities and conservation organisations.

• Raise awareness: Share this post widely to help others understand the importance of ethical, science-based wolf conservation. Engage your community in the fight for ethical coexistence with wolves.

Together, we can promote a legal framework rooted in science, ethics, and respect for all sentient beings and ensure a future where wolves—and all wild animals—are protected.

After thoroughly examining this text, we have identified two major issues:

1. A conservative declaration that does not establish any actual rights for animals, despite its title.

2. A problematic legal approach that disregards scientific and legal advances.

These shortcomings not only risk limiting the declaration’s impact but could also hinder the progress of animal rights law by imposing scientifically questionable and legally inadequate concepts.

I. A declaration that defines no concrete rights for animals

One observation is clear upon reading the DEDA: it contains no (forward-looking) actionable rights for animals. Contrary to what its title suggests, it does not set out a catalogue of rights for animals but confines itself to general (and sometimes retrograde) statements, forming a set of vague and occasionally incoherent principles that guarantee no real normative or ‘effective’ progress.

A. A symbolic approach with no normative value

By definition, a declaration can have symbolic and educational significance, but it must also establish a solid foundation in order to advance the law. Yet, the DEDA does not include any fundamental rights applicable to animals and offers no tangible progress compared to existing and legally binding frameworks (European Union law, comparative European law).

Articles 13 and 14 are certainly very interesting proposals (an animal rights ombudsperson and education in animal sentience in schools), but they do not, strictly speaking, constitute rights for animals. Education in animal protection is essential, but it cannot be regarded as a fundamental right for animals. The training of staff working with animals is, in addition, already regulated in European Union law.

B. A lack of clarity and internal coherence

The text lacks a guiding vision. It blends principles of animal protection and respect for animals, references to the Rights of Nature, and anthropocentric notions of moral environmentalism, without ever articulating a coherent framework. This undermines the clarity of the Declaration.

Indeed, the Declaration adopts a rather conservative approach to animal protection, placing the ‘human species’ at the top of the hierarchy of living beings. The starting point of this reflection is the ‘moral characteristics’ (implicitly special) that humans would possess in comparison to all other non-human animals, thereby establishing an anthropocentric and speciesist barrier between us and them, for whom we, as the human species, would be responsible.1

It does not recognise any rights or intrinsic value for animals independently of the human perspective, and thus suffers from paternalism: we decide the fate of other living beings, and in doing so, we supposedly have the ‘obligation to prevent the extinction of animal species living in a state of natural freedom’ (Article 9, paragraph 1). Notably, it mentions ‘the resulting loss of biological wealth’, before animals are even granted fundamental animal rights, such as the right not to be exploited or hunted.

The Declaration aligns more closely with welfarism than with a genuine animal rights philosophical stance; it focuses more on improving the living conditions of animals than on fundamentally challenging their exploitation, which is not called into question, or is their instrumentalisation questioned. The emphasis is placed on ‘animal welfare’, which is, however, not defined (Article 4). Animal experimentation is also not questioned, although Article 5 mentions desensitisation. The text thus gives the impression of a catalogue of missed opportunities.

C. A problematic and reifying title

The use of the singular form in the title, ‘European Declaration of the Rights of the Animal’ (emphasis added), is particularly problematic, reducing from the outset the entire diversity of sentient beings that it is intended to protect to an abstract, distant, cold and almost lifeless concept: ‘the animal’, as if animals were one. Referring to ‘the Animal’ as a uniform entity reifies animals and erases their diversity. This approach, often criticised in animal ethics,2 runs counter to the idea of recognising animals as individuals with their own interests and denies their multiple existences, both as species and as the individuals that make them up. It is fundamentally at odds with the principles of animal rights, which aim to acknowledge animals as sentient beings with preferences and subjective experiences and to recognise their distinct identities and unique personalities.

Furthermore, a declaration that does not contain any concrete rights cannot legitimately be called a declaration of rights. Its content falls far short of the standards set by foundational declarations of fundamental rights, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948) or the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights (UDAR, 1978). The latter, though proclaimed over 45 years ago, contains more advanced protection principles than the DEDA, despite its lack of legal enforceability.

The DEDA primarily appears to set out principles aimed at encouraging the consolidation or enhancement of animal protection and respect (Article 10, Articles 13 and 14)—notably through their representation and the proposal of a sui generis legal personhood for animals (Articles 10 to 12)—, promoting the maintenance or improvement of their welfare (Articles 3 to 6), and combating cruelty and mistreatment to which animals may be subjected, while also ensuring their preservation (Articles 7 to 9). However, its scope of application remains ambiguous. In particular, although the DEDA condemns the suffering inflicted on animals and the suffering they endure in general terms, it does not explicitly clarify whether this protection should extend to all sentient animals, including those who are the most vulnerable and exploited by humans, such as animals used in intensive farming and production systems or scientific experimentation. This omission is highly significant and can only be the result of a deliberate choice, reflecting a welfarist approach that primarily seeks to mitigate animal suffering without fundamentally questioning their institutionalised exploitation.

Consequently, the choice of title could once again be scrutinised. Indeed, if the objective were to recognise rights for animals, it is clear that the DEDA does not contain any in the legal sense of the term, meaning no subjective prerogatives granted to animals themselves (and for their own sake), enforceable against humans and guaranteeing their protection independently of their utility or welfare. On the contrary, its content appears more aligned with an animal welfare approach, which is based on human duties towards animals rather than on inalienable rights belonging to them. From this perspective, it would have been more coherent to title this text the ‘European Declaration for Animal Welfare’, in order to more accurately reflect the nature of the principles set out and to avoid any confusion regarding its actual scope.

II. Retrograde and scientifically outdated legal foundations

Beyond the absence of concrete rights, the DEDA is based on legally questionable foundations and lags behind current developments in animal rights law. It is riddled with terminological inaccuracies and outdated references.

A. Confusion between sentience and cognition

For a declaration of rights to be efficient and effective, it must be based on the latest scientific and legal developments. One of the most problematic passages in the preamble is the following assertion:

The preamble of the declaration posits cognitive abilities as the basis of rights. This assertion is both scientifically inaccurate and legally dangerous.

In human rights law, rights are grounded not in cognitive abilities but in the intrinsic dignity of individuals.4 Employing cognitive abilities as a criterion for recognising rights paves the way for speciesist and intra-species discrimination among individuals.

Human rights are universal and do not depend on intelligence, mental capacities, or an individual’s specific abilities, in order to avoid any discriminatory hierarchy. The universality of human rights is not contingent on individual capacities—otherwise, this logic would justify discrimination against humans with cognitive disabilities, which is entirely condemnable and contrary to the very purpose and spirit of human rights protection.

Why, then, establish this criterion for animals? This choice is ableist and could have harmful effects: by emphasising cognition as a criterion for granting rights, the DEDA risks legitimising a hierarchy among animal species and excluding certain individuals deemed less ‘intelligent’ or having fewer ‘cognitive abilities,’ based on arbitrary standards.

In animal rights law, it is sentience—not cognition—that serves as the basis for recognising their interests. This inaccuracy demonstrates a lack of alignment with recent scientific and legal developments.

B. Outdated vocabulary and concepts

The text employs several inadequate terms that reflect a disconnect from recent progress in law and animal ethics.

First, the preamble uses the term ‘sensitivity’ instead of ‘sentience’,5 even though the latter is legally enshrined in Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and widely recognised in recent ethological research.6 The use of ‘sensitivity’ is a terminological regression that reveals a misunderstanding of the relevant scientific and legal concepts. Secondly, the preamble also seems to endorse certain forms of animal exploitation, since it makes a de facto distinction between animal exploitation and ‘abusive exploitation’ (paragraph 4), confirming a welfarist approach which does not call into question the use and exploitation of animals, but seeks, as paragraph 6 of the preamble concedes, to improve the condition of animals

Above all, the Declaration is infused with an anthropocentric tone, where humans set themselves as ‘stewards’ of animals and nature, by virtue of their position and supposedly special place and ‘capacities,’ rather than recognising the intrinsic value of animals.

The text emphasises human responsibility toward nature and animals, rather than the rights of the animals for themselves. This reflects a stewardship approach (responsible management of animals and nature), meaning that the protection of animals depends on human recognition of this responsibility, rather than a genuine recognition of animals as rights-bearing subjects. Yet, animal rights should not depend on a human moral duty to protect or respect ‘living things’.

A preferable formulation, genuinely rooted in animal rights and based on sentience, would shift the centre of gravity towards recognition of animals for their own sake rather than solely from a human perspective, along the lines of ‘Taking into account the intrinsic value of sentient animals and their own interests, independently of their relationship with the human species…’.

C. A focus on legal personhood

The text presents legal personhood as a sine qua non condition for animal rights (Article 11). However, this approach is not only doctrinally debatable but also politically risky, potentially making this a counterproductive choice.

Why is this problematic?

Do all animals need legal personhood to be granted rights? There is no evidence to support this claim. Quite the opposite, Bernet Kempers advocates an alternative approach in which recognising the legal personhood of animals is viewed as a potential consequence of gradually expanding their rights, rather than a prerequisite.7

Kurki proposes the bundle theory of legal personhood, arguing that legal personhood is a set of legal prerogatives that can be granted flexibly. Thus, animals can be granted certain rights without being recognised as full legal persons.8 Similarly, some so-called ‘simple’ rights can exist independently of this status, and some scholars argue that they already do (e.g., prohibition of cruelty, the right to pre-slaughter stunning). Stucki also argues that legal personhood is not a necessary condition for granting rights—whether simple or fundamental—to animals, distinguishing between legal personhood and holding rights.

Stucki proposes that animals can hold legal rights even without being recognised as full legal persons. She introduces the concepts of ‘simple rights’ and ‘fundamental rights’ to differentiate between the currently weak legal protections animals have and the stronger ones they should possess. This suggests that legal animal protection can be strengthened without requiring a complete reclassification of their status as legal persons.9

Stucki further develops the concept of ‘One Rights,’ which integrates human and animal rights into a unified framework. She examines how animal rights can be viewed as a new generation of human rights, relying on non-exceptionalist justifications, such as vulnerability.10 This perspective emphasises that granting rights to animals can be achieved by extending human rights protections to them without necessarily conferring distinct legal personhood.

These works suggest that animal rights can be granted progressively without requiring immediate and complete recognition of animal legal personhood.

There is also no proof that sui generis legal personhood (i.e., neither a natural nor a legal person) is the only way to grant animals fundamental rights, nor that granting animals legal personhood would automatically result in granting animals fundamental rights. In reality, this is just another proposition within a declaration that creates more confusion than clarity for European legislators and judges. The Toulon Declaration (2019) had already proposed non-human natural personhood for animals.

By imposing a single (sui generis) model of ‘legal personhood’ within a rights declaration that contains none, the DEDA stifles debate and hinders alternative developments. Given the diversity of national legal frameworks across Europe, a rigid approach could hinder the adoption of appropriate protections and rights for animals in different states by making them contingent on sui generis legal personhood before any progress is made on the fundamental rights plane.

The objectives of this approach are unclear. The Declaration’s supporting arguments do not demonstrate why a sui generis legal personhood would be a ‘privileged means’ of granting rights to animals. Worse, it conflates rights and personhood as if one could not exist without the other, without having defined clear and actionable rights for European legislators and judges to use to better protect animals.

III. Articles that bring no concrete advancements

Upon reviewing the articles of the declaration, several limitations emerge.

A. A lack of clear definitions

The first limitation that becomes apparent on reading the articles is that ‘animals’ are not defined, which makes the scope of DEDA ambiguous, as can be seen from the first articles on cruelty and mistreatment of animals. It would also have been appropriate to define ‘animal welfare’, for example, as this term is of vital importance in a rather animal welfare declaration.

Articles 1 and 2 provide an insufficient definition of acts of cruelty, which seem to exclude wild animals. Thus, ‘No animal shall be subjected or exposed to an act of cruelty’, an act which, according to article 1 of the DEDA, is characterised:

However, these articles seem to relate exclusively to domesticated animals and wild animals held in captivity, far from the idea of subjecting ‘No animal’ (emphasis added) to cruelty on the one hand or representing a step forward in the fight against cruelty to animals in Europe on the other.

However, it would have represented a major and much-needed step forward to explicitly include free-living wild animals, offering European policymakers a tool to eliminate the legal dichotomy in criminal law between domesticated/captive animals (who are protected) and free-living wild animals (who remain largely excluded from legal protection and unprotected from acts of cruelty, of which they are the invisibilised victims). Similarly, the acts of cruelty and mistreatment to which animals are subjected within production systems and scientific research are not scrutinised, nor is their legality called into question.

B. A declaration imbued with welfarism...

Mistreatment, too, is only addressed in relation to domesticated animals or wild animals held in captivity (Articles 3 to 5). Article 3 merely reiterates, more or less verbatim, the Five Freedoms, without introducing any significant legal advancement.11 Following the welfarist logic of the DEDA, this article reproduces—without innovation—the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, as formulated by the Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1965 in the Brambell Report.12

Indeed, it imposes minimum standards for the keeping of animals, based on their biological and behavioural needs, which directly correspond to the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, namely:

• Adequate food and water (freedom from hunger and thirst);

• A suitable environment (freedom from discomfort);

• Veterinary care ensuring the absence of physical suffering (freedom from pain, injury, and disease);

• Conditions that allow for the expression of so-called natural behaviours (freedom to express normal behaviour); and

• Protection from fear and distress (freedom from fear and distress).

However, this article does not establish any rights for animals; rather, it is limited to encouraging the regulation of their treatment with the aim of mitigating animal suffering, without questioning animal exploitation or the deprivation of liberty to which billions of animals are subjected. Article 3 merely sets out acceptable conditions for the use of animals, rather than recognising them as rights-bearing entities.

C. ... and of ecocentric inspiration

Articles 7 to 9 introduce an ecocentric approach with some biocentric elements, which appear to be more inspired by the Rights of Nature than by a genuine commitment to protecting animals as sentient individuals. These articles prioritise the preservation of biological cycles and processes (Article 8) rather than recognising the intrinsic value of individual animals, while nonetheless acknowledging that certain individuals may be protected for their own sake (in cases of transfer to a sanctuary, Article 7), albeit subject to ecosystemic imperatives. The principle set out in Article 8, paragraph 3, is laudable but legally and practically inapplicable:

The analysis of these articles highlights an inherent contradiction within the DEDA. Although it presents itself as a declaration of animal rights, some of its provisions align more closely with a conservationist and ecocentric approach, rooted in the protection of species and ecosystems (Article 9). The protection of animals is subordinated to functional and ecosystemic criteria, which reflects a managerial and regulatory perspective and directly contradicts the recognition of legal personhood for animals mentioned in Article 11.

While these objectives are undeniably important, their integration into the DEDA is problematic, as the protection of animals is then considered in terms of their ecological role and species membership, rather than as sentient individuals with their own interests. This stands in direct contradiction to the stated ambition of a declaration purportedly recognising rights for the animals themselves. Likewise, the very concept of rights is incompatible with a perspective that views animals merely as components of an ecological whole to be preserved, as reiterated in Article 12, which does not escape the broader contradictions of the text.

Article 10 refers to legal representation for animals (and for themselves), which is arguably the most compelling aspect of this declaration. However, this provision is limited to one paragraph (paragraph 2 of Article 10) and will likely go unnoticed within the broader text. Moreover, it remains underdeveloped and lacks the means to have any real effect, as emphasis is put on legal personhood for animals. Article 11 exemplifies this excessive focus on legal personhood, at the expense of substantive and concrete rights for animals.

Conclusion: A Declaration for Animal Welfare or a Missed Opportunity for Animal Rights in Europe?

If the objective of a declaration of animal rights is to encourage concrete legal progress, the DEDA fails to fulfill this mission. Not only is it incapable of granting any rights to animals or influencing their substantive recognition, but it also risks hindering legal developments by introducing questionable and legally tenuous concepts or slowing progress by ‘consolidating’ outdated principles that do not reflect the latest scientific and legal advancements (such as animal sentience, consciousness, and dignity).

The implicit distinction between protected animals and invisible ones is a major limitation of the DEDA, as it establishes a hierarchical approach to the protection that should be granted to animals, and lacks universality. Wild animals are at least indirectly and collectively protected when they live freely, benefiting from a recognition of their ecological importance and the protection of their habitat. By contrast, animals used by humans are only protected within a welfarist framework—that is, as beings whose suffering should be mitigated, but without necessarily challenging their exploitation.

An effective animal rights declaration should:

• Propose clear and enforceable rights.

• Define its scope of application.

• Be aligned with recent legal and scientific advancements.

• Adopt a coherent and non-reifying approach to animals as sentient beings.

In its current form, the DEDA does not adequately address these complex issues and, due to some of its limitations, may raise more questions at the European level than it provides concrete solutions. In the absence of a clear definition of the rights granted to animals and a conceptual coherence between animal welfare and animal rights, it will remain without genuine legal impact.

Furthermore, the text fails to account for the institutional and legal specificities of the European Union and is not sufficiently anchored at the European level, which limits both its scope and effectiveness. By failing to allow for national legal systems’ margin of appreciation, the DEDA risks encountering integration challenges, particularly regarding the concept of sui generis legal personhood for animals, which may prove incompatible or counterproductive. A more flexible approach, enabling a gradual adaptation to specific legal and cultural frameworks while ensuring a common baseline for protection, would be better suited to ensuring the effective and lasting implementation of the declaration’s principles.

ICARE commends the efforts undertaken by the authors of the European Declaration for the Rights of the Animal (DEDA) and acknowledges the importance of initiatives aimed at strengthening the legal protection of animals. However, we remain convinced that any progress toward animal rights must be based on a legally rigorous, coherent, and genuinely progressive approach.

It is from this perspective that ICARE will continue its work to propose robust normative frameworks, ensuring effective and lasting advancements for animal rights. We support initiatives advocating for animal rights, but with a commitment to conceptual precision and philosophical integrity.

Thus, we remain vigilant against pitfalls that could undermine this progress, including the use of reifying or regressive terminology, as well as the influence of ableist paradigms, which could hinder the genuine recognition of animals as rights-bearing subjects.

1. Une déclaration conservatrice qui ne consacre aucun droit pour les animaux, malgré son titre.

2. Une approche juridique problématique, en décalage avec les avancées scientifiques et normatives.

Ces écueils risquent non seulement de limiter l’impact de la déclaration, mais également de freiner l’évolution du droit des animaux en imposant des concepts discutables et juridiquement inadaptés.

I. Une déclaration qui ne définit aucun droit pour les animaux

À la lecture de la DEDA, un constat s’impose : elle ne contient aucun droit concret pour les animaux.

Malgré son titre, elle ne dresse pas un catalogue de droits pour les animaux, mais se limite à des énoncés généraux et parfois rétrogrades, formant un ensemble de principes vagues et incohérents, sans réelle portée normative ou effective.

A. Une approche symbolique sans portée normative

Une déclaration peut avoir, par définition, un rôle symbolique et éducatif, mais encore faut-il qu’elle pose des bases solides pour avoir vocation à faire avancer le droit. Or, la DEDA n’inclut aucun droit fondamental applicable aux animaux, et n’apporte aucune avancée par rapport aux cadres existants (droit de l’Union européenne, droit européen comparé).

Les articles 13 et 14 sont des propositions certes très intéressantes (Défenseur des Droits des Animaux et éducation à la sentience animale), mais qui ne constituent pas, à proprement parler, des droits pour les animaux. L’éducation à la protection animale est essentielle, mais cela ne constitue pas un droit fondamental pour les animaux. Aussi, la formation des personnels travaillant avec les animaux fait déjà l’objet d’une régulation en droit de l’Union européenne.

B. Un manque de clarté et de cohérence interne

Le texte souffre d’une absence de vision directrice. Il mélange des principes de protection animale et de respect des animaux, des références aux droits de la nature et des notions anthropocentrées d’écologisme moral, sans jamais articuler un cadre cohérent ni énoncer aucun droit pour les animaux. Cela nuit à la clarté de la Déclaration.

En effet, la Déclaration adopte un approche plutôt conservatrice à l’égard de la protection animale, plaçant ‘l’espèce humaine’ au sommet de la hiérarchie du vivant, le point de départ de cette réflexion étant les ‘caractéristiques morales’ (sous-entendu, spéciales) que celle-ci détiendrait en comparaison avec le reste des animaux non-humains, établissant ainsi un mur anthropocentrique et spéciste entre nous et eux, dont nous, l’espèce humaine, serions responsables.1 Elle ne reconnaît pas de droits ou de valeur aux animaux indépendamment du regard humain, et souffre de paternalisme : nous décidons du sort des autres êtres vivants, et en cela, nous aurions ‘l’obligation d’empêcher l’extinction des espèces animales vivant à l’état de liberté naturelle’ (Article 9, alinéa 1), mentionnant, à ce titre, ‘la perte de richesse biologique qui en résulte’ avant même de leur accorder des droits, comme celui de ne pas être exploités ou chassés.

La Déclaration est plus proche du welfarisme que d’une véritable position de droits des animaux ; on y trouve davantage la recherche d’une amélioration des conditions de vie des animaux, qu’une véritable remise en cause leur exploitation, qui n’est à aucun moment abordée, ni leur instrumentalisation remise en cause. Il est davantage question de ‘bien-être animal’, qui n’est par ailleurs jamais défini (article 4), que de droits des animaux. L’expérimentation animale n’est pas non plus remise en question, bien que l’article 5 aborde l’insensibilisation. On a l’impression d’assister à un catalogue d’occasions manquées.

C. Un titre problématique et réifiant

L’utilisation du singulier dans le titre, ‘Déclaration Européenne des Droits de l’Animal’, est particulièrement problématique et réduit d’entrée toute la diversité des êtres sentients que l’on entend protéger à un concept abstrait, distant, et froid, presque sans vie : ‘l’animal’, comme si les animaux n’étaient qu’un. Parler ‘de l’Animal’ comme d’une entité unique réifie les animaux et invisibilise leur diversité. Cette approche, souvent critiquée en éthique animale,2 va à l’encontre de l’idée d’une reconnaissance des animaux comme des individus qui ont des intérêts propres et nie leurs existences multiples, tant en tant qu’espèces qu’en tant qu’individus qui les constituent. Cela contredit le principe-même de droits pour les animaux, qui visent à reconnaître les animaux comme des êtres sentients dotés de préférences et d’expériences subjectives et à reconnaître et valoriser leurs identités distinctes et leurs personnalités uniques.

De plus, une déclaration qui ne contient aucun droit ne peut légitimement être qualifiée de ‘Déclaration des Droits’. Son contenu est bien loin des standards des véritables déclarations fondatrices en matière de droits fondamentaux, comme la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l’Homme (DUDH, 1948) ou la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l’Animal (DUDA, 1978). Cette dernière, bien que proclamée il y a de cela plus de 45 ans, contient des principes de protection plus avancés que la DEDA, malgré son absence de portée juridique.

La DEDA semble avant tout énoncer des principes visant à encourager un même niveau (‘consolidation’) ou une meilleure protection des animaux ainsi que leur respect (article 10, articles 13 et 14)–notamment via leur représentation et la proposition d’une personnalité juridique sui generis (articles 10 à 12)–, à promouvoir le maintien ou l’amélioration de leur bien-être (articles 3 à 6) et à lutter contre la cruauté et les mauvais traitements dont ils peuvent être victimes (articles 1 et 2), tout en assurant leur préservation (articles 7 à 9). Toutefois, son champ d’application reste ambigu. En particulier, bien que la DEDA condamne la souffrance infligée aux animaux et la violence dont ils sont victimes, elle ne précise pas explicitement si cette protection devrait s’étendre à tous les animaux, y compris ceux qui sont les plus vulnérables et exploités par les humains, tels que les animaux utilisés dans les élevages intensifs et les systèmes de production ou l’expérimentation scientifique. Aussi, cette omission est significative et ne peut être que le fruit d’un choix délibéré, et reflète l’approche welfariste qui vise principalement à atténuer les souffrances des animaux sans remettre fondamentalement en question leur exploitation institutionnalisée.

Dès lors, le choix du titre peut à nouveau être interrogé. En effet, si l’objectif était de reconnaître des droits pour les animaux, force est de constater que la DEDA ne contient aucun droit au sens juridique du terme, c’est-à-dire aucune prérogative subjective reconnue aux animaux eux-mêmes (et pour eux-mêmes), opposable aux humains et garantissant leur protection indépendamment de leur utilité ou de leur bien-être. À l’inverse, son contenu semble davantage aligné avec une approche de bien-être animal, qui repose sur des devoirs des humains à l’égard des animaux plutôt que sur des droits inaliénables leur étant propres. Dans cette perspective, il aurait sans doute été plus cohérent d’intituler ce texte ‘Déclaration Européenne pour le Bien-être Animal’, afin de mieux refléter la nature des principes énoncés et d’éviter une confusion quant à a sa portée véritable.

II. Des fondements juridiques rétrogrades et scientifiquement dépassés

Au-delà de l’absence de droits concrets, la DEDA repose sur des fondements juridiques discutables qui reflètent un retard sur les avancées actuelles en droit des animaux. Elle accumule les approximations terminologiques et les références obsolètes.

A. Une confusion entre sentience et cognition

Pour être efficace et effective, une déclaration de droits doit s’appuyer sur les avancées les plus récentes en sciences et en droit. L’un des passages les plus problématiques du préambule est l’affirmation suivante :

Le préambule de la déclaration établit un lien entre capacités cognitives et fondement des droits. Cet énoncé est scientifiquement erroné et juridiquement dangereux.

En droits humains, les droits ne sont pas fondés sur les capacités cognitives, mais sur la dignité intrinsèque de la personne humaine.4 Fonder la reconnaissance des droits sur les capacités cognitives ouvre la porte à des exclusions discriminatoires entre espèces, voire entre individus au sein d’une même espèce.

Les droits humains sont universels et ne reposent pas sur l’intelligence ou les capacités mentales ou spécifiques d’un individu, afin d’éviter toute hiérarchisation discriminatoire. L’universalité des droits de l’homme ne dépend pas des capacités individuelles (sinon, cela justifierait des discriminations envers des humains en situation de handicap cognitif, ce qui est éminemment condamnable et tout le contraire de l’objectif et de l’esprit de protection des droits humains).

Pourquoi alors établir ce critère pour les animaux ? Ce choix est capacitiste et pourrait avoir des effets délétères : en mettant en avant la cognition comme critère d’octroi des droits, la DEDA risque de légitimer une hiérarchisation entre espèces animales et d’exclure certains individus moins ‘intelligents’, ou ayant moins de ‘capacités cognitives’, selon des critères arbitraires.

En droits des animaux, c’est la sentience (et non la cognition) qui fonde la reconnaissance de leurs intérêts. Cette imprécision montre un manque d’alignement avec les avancées scientifiques et juridiques récentes.

B. Un vocabulaire et des concepts dépassés

Le texte emploie plusieurs notions inadaptées qui traduisent un décalage avec les avancées récentes en droit et en éthique animale.

Tout d’abord, le préambule utilise le terme ‘sensibilité’ au lieu de ‘sentience’,5 alors que ce dernier est consacré au sein de l’article 13 du Traité sur le Fonctionnement de l’Union Européenne (TFUE), et dans les recherches récentes en éthologie.6 L’utilisation du mot ‘sensibilité’ est une régression terminologique qui trahit une méconnaissance des concepts scientifiques et juridiques en vigueur. Ensuite, le préambule semble également cautionner certaines formes d’exploitation animale, puisqu’il distingue de facto entre exploitation animale et ‘exploitation abusive’ (paragraphe 4), confirmant une approche welfariste qui ne remet pas en cause l’utilisation et l’exploitation des autres animaux, mais recherche, de l’aveu du paragraphe 6 dudit préambule, à améliorer la condition des animaux :

Surtout, la Déclaration est empreinte d’une tonalité anthropocentrée, où l’humain semble s’ériger en ‘gérant’ des animaux et de la nature, du fait de sa place et ses ‘capacités’ spéciales, au lieu de reconnaître une valeur intrinsèque aux animaux. Le texte insiste sur la responsabilité humaine envers la nature et les animaux, plutôt que sur les droits des animaux eux-mêmes. Cela induit une protection des animaux qui dépend de la reconnaissance humaine de cette responsabilité, ce qui reflète davantage une approche de stewardship (gestion responsable des animaux et de la nature) qu’une véritable reconnaissance des animaux comme sujets de droits. Or, les droits des animaux ne devrait pas dépendre d’un devoir moral humain de protection ou de respect à l’égard du ‘vivant’.

Une formulation préférable, véritablement ancrée en droits des animaux et fondée sur leur sentience, déplacerait le centre de gravité de la réflexion vers une reconnaissance des animaux pour eux-mêmes plutôt qu’à travers la seule perspective humaine, du type ‘Tenant compte de la valeur intrinsèque des animaux sentients et de leurs intérêts propres, indépendamment de leurs relations avec l’espèce humaine…’.

C. Une focalisation sur la personnalité juridique

Le texte présente la personnalité juridique comme une condition sine qua non pour les droits des animaux (article 11). Or, cette approche est non seulement doctrinalement discutable, mais elle risque de se révéler contre-productive, car politiquement risquée.

Pourquoi est-ce problématique ?

Tous les animaux ont-ils besoin d’une personnalité juridique pour se voir reconnaître des droits ? Rien ne le prouve. Bernet Kempers propose une approche alternative où la reconnaissance de la personnalité juridique des animaux est envisagée comme une conséquence potentielle de l'élargissement progressif de leurs droits, plutôt que comme une condition préalable à leur reconnaissance.7

Kurki, lui, propose la ‘théorie du faisceau’ de la personnalité juridique. Il soutient que la personnalité juridique est un ensemble de prérogatives légales qui peuvent être attribuées de manière flexible. Ainsi, les animaux peuvent se voir accorder certains droits sans être reconnus comme des personnes juridiques à part entière.8

Aussi, certains droits dits ‘simples’ peuvent exister indépendamment de ce statut, et certains auteurs soutiennent que c’est déjà le cas (ex. : interdiction de la cruauté, droit à l’étourdissement préalable). Selon Stucki non plus, la personnalité juridique n’est pas une condition sine qua non pour l’attribution de droits—ni simples, ni fondamentaux—aux animaux. En effet, elle soutient que l’attribution de droits fondamentaux aux animaux ne nécessite pas obligatoirement la reconnaissance de leur personnalité juridique, distinguant entre la personnalité juridique et la titularité de droits. Stucki propose que les animaux puissent être titulaires de droits légaux, même sans être reconnus comme des personnes juridiques à part entière. Elle introduit les concepts de ‘droits simples’ et de ‘droits fondamentaux’ pour différencier les droits légaux actuellement faibles des animaux de ceux plus robustes qu’ils devraient posséder. Cette approche suggère que la protection juridique des animaux peut être renforcée sans nécessiter une requalification complète de leur statut en tant que personnes juridiques.9

Stucki développe également le concept de ‘One Rights’, qui propose une intégration des droits humains et des droits des animaux dans un cadre unifié. Elle examine comment les droits des animaux peuvent être envisagés comme une nouvelle génération de droits humains, en s’appuyant sur des justifications non-exceptionnalistes basées sur des capacités partagées, telles que la vulnérabilité.10 Cette perspective souligne que l’octroi de droits aux animaux peut se faire en étendant les protections des droits humains aux animaux, sans pour autant leur conférer une personnalité juridique distincte. Ainsi, selon Stucki, la personnalité juridique n’est pas la seule voie pour attribuer des droits fondamentaux aux animaux.

Ces travaux suggèrent que l’attribution de droits aux animaux peut se faire de manière progressive, sans nécessiter une reconnaissance immédiate et complète de leur personnalité juridique.

Rien ne prouve non plus que la personnalité juridique sui generis (c’est-à-dire, ni une personne physique, ni une personne morale) soit la seule manière d’accorder des droits fondamentaux aux animaux, et rien ne prouve—surtout—qu’accorder la personnalité juridique aux animaux s’accompagne automatiquement de l’octroi de droits fondamentaux.

En réalité, c’est une proposition de plus au sein d’une Déclaration qui apporte davantage de confusion que de clarté pour les législateurs et les juges, alors que la Déclaration de Toulon (2019) proposait déjà une personnalité physique non-humaine pour les animaux.

Imposer un modèle unique (‘sui generis’) de personnalité juridique pour les animaux au sein d’une déclaration de droits fige le débat et empêche des évolutions alternatives. Or, les cadres juridiques nationaux sont divers : une approche trop rigide pourrait limiter l’adoption de protections adaptées et de droits pour les animaux dans chaque État européen, en conditionnant l’octroi de droits à une personnalité juridique ‘sui generis’ pour les animaux.

Les objectifs de cette approche ne sont pas clairs : l’argumentaire adjoint à la Déclaration ne démontre pas pourquoi la personnalité juridique constituerait un ‘moyen privilégié’ d’accorder des droits aux animaux. Pire, elle les unit au sein d’un seul et même article, comme si l’un ne pouvait pas aller sans l’autre, et sans avoir défini des droits clairs et actionnables à l’usage des législateurs et juges européens.

III. Des articles qui n’apportent aucune avancée concrète

En examinant les articles de la déclaration, plusieurs limites apparaissent.

A. Une absence de définitions claires

La première limite qui apparaît à la lecture des articles est que les ‘animaux’ ne sont pas définis, le champ d’application de la DEDA étant ainsi ambigu, ce qui se vérifie dès les premiers articles concernant la cruauté et les mauvais traitements envers les animaux. Il aurait aussi été opportun de définir le ‘bien-être animal’ par exemple, ce terme revêtant une importance capitale au sein de cette déclaration.

Les articles 1 et 2 proposent une définition insuffisante des actes de cruauté, qui semblent exclure les animaux sauvages. Ainsi, ‘Nul animal ne doit être soumis ou exposé à un acte de cruauté’, cet acte se caractérisant selon la DEDA :

Or, ces articles semblent concerner exclusivement les animaux domestiques et les animaux sauvages détenus en captivité, loin de l’idée de ne soumettre ‘Nul animal’ à la cruauté d’une part, ou de représenter une avancée dans la lutte contre la cruauté envers les animaux en Europe.

Cela aurait pourtant représenté une véritable avancée d’inclure explicitement les animaux sauvages vivant à l’état de liberté, mettant à disposition des acteurs européens un outil pour mettre fin à cette dichotomie en droit pénal entre animaux domestiqués et captifs, et animaux sauvages exclus de la protection juridique contre les actes de cruauté dont ils sont les victimes invisibles. Aussi, nul besoin de souligner les actes de cruauté et les mauvais traitements dont sont victimes les animaux au sein des systèmes de production et dans la recherche, dont la légalité et la cruauté du traitement n’est pas pointée du doigt.

B. Une déclaration empreinte de welfarisme…

Les mauvais traitements également ne concernent que les animaux domestiques ou les animaux sauvages détenus en captivité (articles 3 à 5). L’article 3 se borne à reprendre peu ou prou les Five Freedoms, sans aucune avancée juridique significative.11 Dans la logique welfariste de la DEDA, cet article reprend sans innovation les Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare formulées par le Farm Animal Welfare Council en 1965 dans le Brambell Report.12 En effet, il impose des normes minimales de détention des animaux en fonction de leurs besoins biologiques et comportementaux, ce qui correspond directement aux ‘cinq libertés’ du bien-être animal, à savoir:

• une alimentation et une hydratation adéquates (liberté de la faim et de la soif) ;

• un environnement approprié (liberté de l’inconfort) ;

• des soins vétérinaires garantissant l’absence de souffrance physique (liberté de la douleur, des blessures et de la maladie) ;

• des conditions permettant l’expression des comportements dits naturels (liberté d’exprimer un comportement ‘normal’) ;

• et une protection contre la peur et la détresse (liberté de la peur et de la détresse).

Toutefois, cet article ne consacre aucun droit pour les animaux, et se limite à encourager la régulation de leur traitement en visant à atténuer la souffrance animale, sans remettre en question l’exploitation animale, ni la privation de liberté dont il est question. L’article 3 se borne à établir des conditions acceptables d’usage des animaux, plutôt que de leur reconnaître des droits.

C. … et d’inspiration écocentrée

Les articles 7 à 9 introduisent une approche écocentrée et quelques éléments biocentrés, qui semble davantage inspirée par les droits de la nature que par une véritable protection des animaux en tant qu’individus sentients. Ces articles privilégient la préservation des cycles et processus biologiques (article 8) davantage que la valeur intrinsèque des individus, tout en admettant que certains individus puissent être protégés pour eux-mêmes (lors d’un transfert en sanctuaire, article 7), conditionné à des impératifs écosystémiques. L’idéal posé par l’article 8, alinéa 3, est louable, mais juridiquement et pratiquement inapplicable :

L’analyse de ces articles met en évidence une contradiction inhérente à la DEDA : bien qu’elle se présente comme une déclaration de droits de l’animal, ces dispositions relèvent davantage d’une approche conservationniste et écocentrée, ancrée dans la protection des espèces et des écosystèmes (article 9). La protection des animaux est subordonnée à des critères fonctionnels et écosystémiques, ce qui est révélateur d’une perspective gestionnaire et régulatoire, et contredit la reconnaissance-même d’une personnalité juridique aux animaux.

Si ces objectifs sont indéniablement importants, leur intégration dans la DEDA pose problème, car la protection des animaux est alors envisagée en fonction de leur rôle écologique et de leur appartenance à une espèce, et non en tant qu’individus sentients dotés d’intérêts propres. Cela contredit l’ambition affichée d’une déclaration supposée reconnaître des droits aux animaux eux-mêmes. De même, l’idée même de droits est incompatible avec une vision qui considère les animaux comme des éléments d’un ensemble écologique à préserver, tel que le réitère l’article 12 et qui n’échappe pas aux contradictions du texte.

L’article 10, enfin, mentionne la représentation en justice des animaux pour eux-mêmes, ce qui est certainement le point le plus intéressant de cette déclaration. Cependant, il ne s’agit que d’un alinéa (alinéa 2 de l’article 10), qui passera certainement inaperçu au milieu de cette déclaration, et reste insuffisamment développé et non doté des moyens de produire le moindre effet. L’article 11 est le cœur d’une focalisation excessive sur la personnalité juridique, au détriment d’un véritable développement de droits concrets et substantiels pour les animaux.

Conclusion : Une déclaration pour le bien-être animal ou une occasion manquée pour les droits des animaux en Europe?

Si l’objectif d’une déclaration pour les droits des animaux est d’encourager des avancées juridiques concrètes, la DEDA échoue à remplir cette mission. Non seulement elle n’est pas en mesure d’accorder le moindre droit concret aux animaux ni d’influencer leur adoption substantielle, elle risque également d’entraver l’évolution du droit en imposant des concepts discutables et juridiquement peu pertinents, ou de le ralentir en ‘consolidant’ des principes rétrogrades ou qui ne représentent pas les dernières avancées scientifiques et juridiques.

La distinction implicite entre animaux protégés et animaux invisibilisés est une limite importante de la DEDA, qui hiérarchise la protection (à accorder) aux animaux et manque d’universalité. Ainsi, les animaux sauvages sont protégés au moins indirectement et de manière collective lorsqu’ils vivent à l’état naturel, et bénéficient d’une reconnaissance de leur importance écologique et d’une protection de leur habitat. Les animaux utilisés par les humains sont seulement protégés dans une logique welfariste, c’est-à-dire en tant qu’êtres dont il convient d’atténuer les souffrances, mais sans remettre nécessairement en cause leur exploitation.

Une déclaration de droits des animaux efficace devrait :

• Proposer des droits clairs et applicables.

• Définir son champ d’application.

• Être alignée sur les avancées juridiques et scientifiques récentes.

• Adopter une approche philosophique cohérente et non réifiante des animaux.

Dans sa forme actuelle, la DEDA ne répond pas de manière satisfaisante à ces enjeux complexes et pourrait, en raison de certaines de ses limitations, soulever davantage de questions à l’échelle européenne qu’elle n’apporte de solutions concrètes. En l’absence d’une définition claire des droits conférés aux animaux et d’une cohérence conceptuelle entre bien-être animal et droits des animaux, elle demeurera sans véritable impact juridique.

Enfin, le texte ne prend pas en compte les particularités institutionnelles et légales de l’Union européenne et n’est pas suffisamment ancré au niveau européen, ce qui limite sa portée et son efficacité. En ne laissant pas de marge d’appréciation aux systèmes juridiques nationaux, la DEDA risque en effet de se heurter à des obstacles d’intégration, notamment au regard du concept de personnalité juridique animale sui generis qui pourrait se montrer incompatible ou contreproductif. Une approche plus souple, permettant une adaptation progressive aux cadre juridiques et culturels spécifiques tout en garantissant un socle commun de protection, serait plus à même d’assurer une mise en oeuvre effective et durable des principles de la déclaration.

ICARE salue les efforts entrepris par les auteurs de la Déclaration des Droits de l’Animal (DEDA) et reconnaît l’importance des initiatives visant à renforcer la protection des animaux sur le plan juridique. Toutefois, nous restons convaincus que toute avancée en faveur des droits des animaux doit s’appuyer sur une approche juridiquement rigoureuse, cohérente et véritablement progressiste. C’est dans cette perspective qu’ICARE poursuivra ses travaux pour proposer des cadres normatifs solides, garantissant des avancées effectives et durables pour les droits des animaux.

Nous soutenons les initiatives en faveur des droits des animaux, mais avec une exigence de précision conceptuelle et d’intégrité philosophique. Ainsi, nous demeurons vigilants face aux écueils susceptibles de compromettre cette évolution, notamment l’emploi de terminologies réifiantes ou rétrogrades, ainsi que l’influence de paradigmes capacitistes, qui pourraient nuire à une reconnaissance véritable des animaux en tant que sujets de droits.

• Una declaración conservadora que no consagra ningún derecho para los animales, a pesar de su título.

• Un enfoque jurídico problemático, en discordancia con los avances científicos y normativos.

Estos obstáculos no solo pueden limitar el impacto de la declaración, sino también frenar la evolución del derecho animal al imponer conceptos discutibles y jurídicamente inapropiados.

I. Una declaración que no define ningún derecho para los animales

Al leer la DEDA, se impone una constatación: no contiene ningún derecho concreto para los animales.

A pesar de su título, no establece un catálogo de derechos para los animales, sino que se limita a enunciados generales y, en algunos casos, retrógrados, formando un conjunto de principios vagos e incoherentes sin verdadera eficacia normativa o aplicabilidad efectiva.

A. Un enfoque simbólico sin alcance normativo

Por definición, una declaración puede desempeñar un papel simbólico y educativo, pero para que tenga la vocación de hacer avanzar el derecho, debe sentar bases sólidas. Sin embargo, la DEDA no incluye ningún derecho fundamental aplicable a los animales y no supone ningún avance respecto a los marcos existentes (derecho de la Unión Europea, derecho comparado europeo).

Los artículos 13 y 14 presentan propuestas interesantes (Defensor de los Derechos de los Animales y educación sobre la sintiencia animal), pero no constituyen, en sentido estricto, derechos para los animales. La educación sobre protección animal es esencial, pero no equivale a un derecho fundamental para los animales. Además, la formación del personal que trabaja con animales ya está regulada en el derecho de la Unión Europea.

B. Una falta de claridad y coherencia interna

El texto carece de una visión directriz clara. Mezcla principios de protección animal y respeto a los animales, referencias a los derechos de la naturaleza y nociones antropocéntricas de ecologismo moral, sin articular un marco coherente ni establecer ningún derecho para los animales. Esto afecta la claridad de la declaración.

De hecho, la DEDA adopta un enfoque conservador en relación con la protección animal, situando a la ‘especie humana’ en la cumbre de la jerarquía de los seres vivos. Su punto de partida son las ‘características morales’ que supuestamente diferenciarían a los humanos del resto de los animales no humanos, estableciendo una barrera antropocéntrica y especista entre nosotros y ellos, lo que implica que la humanidad sería responsable de su destino.1 No reconoce derechos o valores inherentes a los animales, independientemente de la perspectiva humana, y adolece de un paternalismo en el que los humanos deciden el destino de otros seres vivos.

La declaración se acerca más al bienestarismo que a una verdadera posición de derechos de los animales. Se enfoca en mejorar las condiciones de vida de los animales en lugar de cuestionar su explotación o instrumentalización. Se habla más de ‘bienestar animal’, sin definirlo (artículo 4), que de derechos de los animales. La experimentación animal tampoco es cuestionada, a pesar de que el artículo 5 menciona la insensibilización. En este sentido, la declaración parece una serie de oportunidades desaprovechadas.

C. Un título problemático y reificante

El uso del singular en el título, ‘Declaración Europea de los Derechos del Animal’, es particularmente problemático, ya que reduce toda la diversidad de seres sintientes a un concepto abstracto, distante y frío: ‘el animal’, como si todos los animales fueran uno solo. Hablar de ‘el Animal’ como una entidad única reifica a los animales e invisibiliza su diversidad. Este enfoque, ampliamente criticado en la ética animal,2 contradice la idea de reconocer a los animales como individuos con intereses propios y niega sus existencias múltiples, tanto a nivel de especies como de individuos dentro de ellas.

Además, una declaración que no contiene ningún derecho no puede calificarse legítimamente como ‘Declaración de Derechos’. Su contenido está lejos de los estándares de declaraciones fundacionales en materia de derechos fundamentales, como la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos (DUDH, 1948) o la Declaración Universal de los Derechos del Animal (DUDA, 1978). Esta última, a pesar de haber sido proclamada hace más de 45 años, contiene principios de protección más avanzados que la DEDA, a pesar de su falta de fuerza jurídica.

La DEDA parece, ante todo, enunciar principios destinados a fomentar un mismo nivel (‘consolidación’) o una mejor protección de los animales, así como su respeto (artículos 10, 13 y 14), promoviendo su representación y la propuesta de una personalidad jurídica sui generis (artículos 10 a 12), promover el mantenimiento o la mejora de su bienestar (artículos 3 a 6) y luchar contra la crueldad y los malos tratos que puedan sufrir (artículos 1 y 2), garantizando al mismo tiempo su preservación (artículos 7 a 9). No obstante, su ámbito de aplicación sigue siendo ambiguo. En particular, aunque la DEDA condena el sufrimiento infligido a los animales y la violencia de la que son víctimas, no especifica explícitamente si esta protección debería extenderse a todos los animales, incluidos aquellos que son más vulnerables y explotados por los humanos, como los animales utilizados en la ganadería intensiva y los sistemas de producción o la experimentación científica. Esta omisión es significativa y solo puede ser el resultado de una elección deliberada, reflejando el enfoque bienestarista que busca principalmente aliviar el sufrimiento de los animales sin cuestionar fundamentalmente su explotación institucionalizada.

Por lo tanto, el título elegido vuelve a ser cuestionable. Si el objetivo era reconocer derechos para los animales, es evidente que la DEDA no contiene ningún derecho en el sentido jurídico del término, es decir, ninguna prerrogativa subjetiva reconocida a los animales mismos (y para ellos mismos), oponible a los humanos y garantizando su protección independientemente de su utilidad o bienestar. Por el contrario, su contenido parece estar más alineado con un enfoque de bienestar animal, que se basa en los deberes de los humanos hacia los animales en lugar de en derechos inalienables propios de estos. En esta perspectiva, habría sido más coherente titular este texto ‘Declaración Europea para el Bienestar Animal’, para reflejar mejor la naturaleza de los principios enunciados y evitar confusiones sobre su verdadero alcance.

II. Un enfoque jurídico retrógrado y científicamente desfasado

Más allá de la ausencia de derechos concretos, la DEDA adopta un enfoque jurídico cuestionable que refleja un retraso respecto a los avances actuales en derecho de los animales. Acumula imprecisiones terminológicas y referencias obsoletas.

A. Una confusión entre sintiencia y cognición

Para ser efectiva y aplicable, una declaración de derechos debe basarse en los avances más recientes de la ciencia y el derecho. Uno de los pasajes más problemáticos del preámbulo es la siguiente afirmación:

El preámbulo de la declaración establece un vínculo entre capacidades cognitivas y la fundamentación de los derechos. Esta afirmación es científicamente errónea y jurídicamente peligrosa.

En el ámbito de los derechos humanos, los derechos no se fundamentan en las capacidades cognitivas, sino en la dignidad intrínseca de la persona humana.4 Basar el reconocimiento de derechos en las capacidades cognitivas abre la puerta a exclusiones discriminatorias entre especies e incluso dentro de una misma especie.

Los derechos humanos son universales y no dependen de la inteligencia o de las capacidades mentales específicas de un individuo, con el fin de evitar cualquier jerarquización discriminatoria. La universalidad de los derechos humanos no depende de las capacidades individuales (de lo contrario, se justificarían discriminaciones contra personas con discapacidades cognitivas, lo que sería altamente condenable y contrario a los principios de protección de los derechos humanos).

¿Por qué entonces establecer este criterio para los animales? Esta elección es capacitista y podría tener efectos perjudiciales: al priorizar la cognición como criterio para la concesión de derechos, la DEDA corre el riesgo de legitimar una jerarquización entre especies animales y de excluir a ciertos individuos considerados ‘menos inteligentes’ o con ‘menores capacidades cognitivas’, según criterios arbitrarios.

En el derecho de los animales, es la sintiencia (y no la cognición) lo que fundamenta el reconocimiento de sus intereses. Esta imprecisión demuestra una falta de alineación con los avances científicos y jurídicos recientes.

B. Un vocabulario y conceptos obsoletos

El texto emplea varias nociones inapropiadas que reflejan un desfase con los avances recientes en derecho y ética animal.

En primer lugar, el preámbulo utiliza el término ‘sensibilidad’ en lugar de ‘sintiencia’,5 a pesar de que este último ha sido consagrado en el artículo 13 del Tratado de Funcionamiento de la Unión Europea (TFUE) y en investigaciones recientes en etología.6 El uso de la palabra ‘sensibilidad’ representa una regresión terminológica que denota un desconocimiento de los conceptos científicos y jurídicos vigentes. Además, el preámbulo parece legitimar ciertas formas de explotación animal, al distinguir de facto entre explotación animal y ‘explotación abusiva’ (párrafo 4), lo que confirma un enfoque bienestarista que no cuestiona el uso y explotación de los animales, sino que busca, según el párrafo 6 del mismo preámbulo, mejorar su condición ‘sin debilitar la protección de la integridad de la persona humana’.

Sobre todo, la Declaración está impregnada de una tonalidad antropocéntrica, donde los humanos se erigen en ‘gestores’ de los animales y la naturaleza debido a su posición y sus ‘capacidades’ especiales, en lugar de reconocer un valor intrínseco a los animales. El texto enfatiza la responsabilidad humana hacia la naturaleza y los animales, en lugar de reconocer los derechos de los propios animales. Esto implica que la protección de los animales depende del reconocimiento humano de esta responsabilidad, lo que refleja más un enfoque de administración responsable (stewardship) de los animales y la naturaleza que un verdadero reconocimiento de los animales como sujetos de derechos. Sin embargo, los derechos de los animales no deberían depender de un deber moral humano de protección o respeto hacia lo ‘viviente’.

Una formulación más adecuada, verdaderamente arraigada en los derechos de los animales y basada en su sintiencia, desplazaría el centro de gravedad de la reflexión hacia un reconocimiento de los animales por sí mismos, en lugar de a través de la sola perspectiva humana, con un enfoque como: ‘Teniendo en cuenta el valor intrínseco de los animales sintientes y sus propios intereses, independientemente de su relación con la especie humana…’.

C. Una focalización en la personalidad jurídica

El texto presenta la personalidad jurídica como una condición sine qua non para los derechos de los animales (artículo 11). Sin embargo, este enfoque no solo es discutible desde el punto de vista doctrinal, sino que también podría resultar contraproducente debido a su riesgo político.

¿Por qué es problemático?

¿Todos los animales necesitan una personalidad jurídica para que se les reconozcan derechos? No hay pruebas de ello. Bernet Kempers propone un enfoque alternativo en el que la personalidad jurídica de los animales se contempla como una posible consecuencia de la ampliación progresiva de sus derechos, en lugar de una condición previa para su reconocimiento.7 Por su parte, Kurki propone la ‘teoría del haz’ de la personalidad jurídica. Sostiene que la personalidad jurídica es un conjunto de prerrogativas legales que pueden atribuirse de manera flexible. Así, los animales pueden recibir ciertos derechos sin ser reconocidos como personas jurídicas.8

Algunos derechos denominados ‘simples’ pueden existir independientemente de este estatus, y algunos autores sostienen que este ya es el caso (por ejemplo, la prohibición de la crueldad o el derecho al aturdimiento previo). Según Stucki, la personalidad jurídica tampoco es una condición sine qua non para la concesión de derechos—ya sean simples o fundamentales—a los animales. De hecho, sostiene que otorgar derechos fundamentales a los animales no requiere necesariamente el reconocimiento de su personalidad jurídica, diferenciando entre la personalidad jurídica y la titularidad de derechos.

Stucki propone que los animales puedan ser titulares de derechos legales, incluso sin ser reconocidos como personas jurídicas de pleno derecho. Introduce los conceptos de ‘derechos simples’ y ‘derechos fundamentales’ para diferenciar los derechos legales actualmente limitados de los animales de aquellos más sólidos que deberían poseer. Esta perspectiva sugiere que la protección jurídica de los animales puede reforzarse sin necesidad de una reconfiguración completa de su estatus jurídico.9

Además, Stucki desarrolla el concepto de ‘One Rights’, que propone la integración de los derechos humanos y los derechos de los animales dentro de un marco unificado. Examina cómo los derechos de los animales pueden considerarse una nueva generación de derechos humanos, basándose en justificaciones no excepcionalistas apoyadas en capacidades compartidas, como la vulnerabilidad.10 Esta perspectiva enfatiza que otorgar derechos a los animales puede lograrse ampliando las protecciones de los derechos humanos a los animales, sin conferirles necesariamente una personalidad jurídica distinta. Así, según Stucki, la personalidad jurídica no es la única vía para otorgar derechos fundamentales a los animales.

Estos estudios sugieren que la concesión de derechos a los animales puede realizarse de manera progresiva, sin necesidad de reconocer inmediatamente y en su totalidad su personalidad jurídica.

No hay pruebas tampoco de que la personalidad jurídica sui generis (es decir, ni una persona física ni una persona moral) sea la única manera de otorgar derechos fundamentales a los animales, ni de que conferir la personalidad jurídica a los animales implique automáticamente la concesión de derechos fundamentales. En realidad, se trata de una propuesta más dentro de una Declaración que genera más confusión que claridad para legisladores y jueces, mientras que la Declaración de Toulon (2019) ya sugería una personalidad física no humana para los animales.

Imponer un modelo único (‘sui generis’) de personalidad jurídica para los animales en una declaración de derechos congela el debate e impide alternativas evolutivas. Dado que los marcos jurídicos nacionales son diversos, un enfoque demasiado rígido podría limitar la adopción de protecciones y derechos para los animales en cada Estado europeo, condicionando el reconocimiento de derechos a la adopción de una personalidad jurídica ‘sui generis’.

Los objetivos de este enfoque no son claros: el argumentario adjunto a la Declaración no demuestra por qué la personalidad jurídica constituiría un ‘medio privilegiado’ para otorgar derechos a los animales. Peor aún, la Declaración une estos dos conceptos en un solo artículo, como si uno no pudiera existir sin el otro, sin definir derechos claros y accionables para que los legisladores y jueces europeos puedan aplicarlos.

III. Artículos que no aportan avances concretos

Al examinar los artículos de la declaración, se identifican varias limitaciones.

A. Una falta de definiciones claras

La primera limitación que surge al leer los artículos es la ausencia de una definición de ‘animales’, lo que genera ambigüedad en el ámbito de aplicación de la DEDA. Esta falta de claridad se evidencia desde los primeros artículos sobre la crueldad y los malos tratos hacia los animales. Asimismo, habría sido pertinente definir el concepto de ‘bienestar animal’, ya que este término tiene una importancia fundamental.

Los artículos 1 y 2 presentan una definición insuficiente de los actos de crueldad, que parecen excluir a los animales salvajes. El artículo 1 establece: ‘Ningún animal debe ser sometido o expuesto a un acto de crueldad’, definiendo estos actos como aquellos cometidos :

Sin embargo, estos artículos parecen referirse exclusivamente a los animales domésticos y a los animales salvajes en cautiverio, alejándose del principio de que ‘ningún animal’ debería ser sometido a la crueldad y sin representar un avance significativo en la lucha contra la crueldad animal en Europa.

Incluir explícitamente a los animales salvajes que viven en estado de libertad habría representado un avance real, proporcionando a los actores europeos una herramienta para eliminar la dicotomía en el derecho penal entre animales domesticados o cautivos y animales salvajes, quienes actualmente quedan excluidos de la protección jurídica contra actos de crueldad de los que son víctimas invisibles. Además, no se menciona la crueldad y los malos tratos que sufren los animales en los sistemas de producción y en la investigación científica, cuyo tratamiento, aunque legal, es innegablemente cruel y no es objeto de crítica en la declaración.

B. Una declaración impregnada de bienestarismo

Los malos tratos mencionados en la declaración solo se aplican a los animales domésticos o a los animales salvajes en cautiverio (artículos 3 a 5). El artículo 3 se limita a repetir,11 sin innovaciones jurídicas significativas, los Five Freedom of Animal Welfare (cinco libertades) formulados por el Farm Animal Welfare Council en 1965 en el Informe Brambell.12

Este artículo impone normas mínimas de tenencia basadas en las necesidades biológicas y conductuales de los animales, reflejando las ‘cinco libertades’:

• acceso a una alimentación e hidratación adecuadas;

• un entorno apropiado;

• atención veterinaria para evitar el sufrimiento físico;

• posibilidad de expresar comportamientos naturales;

• y protección contra el miedo y la angustia.

Sin embargo, este artículo no consagra ningún derecho para los animales, sino que solo busca regular su tratamiento para mitigar el sufrimiento, sin cuestionar su explotación ni la privación de su libertad. Se limita a establecer condiciones aceptables de uso, en lugar de reconocerles derechos.

C. … e inspirada en el ecocentrismo

Los artículos 7 a 9 introducen un enfoque ecocéntrico con algunos elementos biocéntricos, que parecen inspirarse más en los Derechos de la Naturaleza que en un auténtico compromiso con la protección de los animales como individuos sintientes. Estos artículos dan prioridad a la preservación de los ciclos y procesos biológicos (artículo 8) en lugar de reconocer el valor intrínseco de los animales individuales, aunque reconocen que algunos individuos pueden ser protegidos por sí mismos (en caso de traslado a un santuario, artículo 7), aunque sujetos a imperativos ecosistémicos. El principio enunciado en el apartado 3 del artículo 8 es laudable, pero inaplicable desde el punto de vista jurídico y práctico:

El análisis de estos artículos pone de manifiesto una contradicción inherente a la DEDA. Aunque se presenta como una declaración de derechos de los animales, algunas de sus disposiciones responden más bien a una lógica conservacionista y ecocéntrica, arraigado en la protección de especies y ecosistemas (artículo 9). La protección de los animales se subordina a criterios funcionales y ecosistémicos, lo que refleja una perspectiva gestora y reguladora y contradice directamente el reconocimiento de la personalidad jurídica de los animales mencionado en el Artículo 11.

Aunque estos objetivos son innegablemente importantes, su integración en la DEDA es problemática, ya que la protección de los animales se considera entonces en función de su papel ecológico y su pertenencia a una especie, y no como individuos sintientes con intereses propios. Esto entra en contradicción directa con la ambición declarada de una declaración que supuestamente reconoce derechos a los propios animales. Asimismo, el propio concepto de derechos es incompatible con una perspectiva que considera a los animales meros componentes de un todo ecológico que hay que preservar, como se reitera en el Artículo 12, que no escapa a las contradicciones más generales del texto.

El artículo 10 menciona la representación jurídica de los animales por si mismos, lo que posiblement constituye el aspecto más importante dentro de la declaración. No obstante, esta mención se encuentra relegada a un solo apartado y carece del desarrollo necesario para ser efectiva. Mientras tanto, el artículo 11 ejemplifica esta excesiva atención a la personalidad jurídica (y en el modelo particular de una personalidad jurídica sui generis), en detrimento del desarrollo de derechos concretos y sustantivos para los animales.

Conclusiones: ¿Una declaración de bienestar animal o una oportunidad perdida para los derechos de los animales en Europa?

Si el objetivo de una declaración sobre los derechos de los animales es fomentar avances jurídicos concretos, la DEDA no cumple con esta misión. No solo no otorga derechos reales a los animales ni influye en su adopción sustancial, sino que también corre el riesgo de obstaculizar el desarrollo del derecho al consolidar principios obsoletos y carentes de fundamento en los avances científicos y jurídicos más recientes.

Una declaración efectiva de los derechos de los animales debería:

• Proponer derechos claros y aplicables.

• Definir su ámbito de aplicación.

• Estar alineada con los avances jurídicos y científicos recientes.

• Adoptar una visión coherente y no reificante de los animales.

La DEDA no responde de manera satisfactoria a estos desafíos y, debido a sus limitaciones conceptuales, podría generar más dudas que soluciones a nivel europeo. Su falta de definición clara de los derechos conferidos a los animales y la inconsistencia entre el bienestar animal y los derechos de los animales reducen su hipotético impacto jurídico.

Además, el texto no toma en cuenta las particularidades institucionales y legales de la Unión Europea, lo que limita su eficacia. La imposición de un modelo rígido de personalidad jurídica para los animales podría generar barreras de implementación en distintos sistemas jurídicos europeos. Una aproximación más flexible, que permita una adaptación progresiva a los marcos legales y culturales de cada país, garantizaría una implementación más efectiva y duradera.

ICARE reconoce el esfuerzo de los autores de la DEDA y valora las iniciativas que buscan fortalecer la protección jurídica de los animales. Sin embargo, consideramos que cualquier avance en los derechos de los animales debe basarse en un enfoque jurídico riguroso, coherente y realmente progresista. En esta línea, ICARE continuará trabajando para desarrollar marcos normativos sólidos que garanticen avances efectivos y sostenibles para los derechos de los animales. Apoyamos las iniciativas en favor de los derechos de los animales, pero con un compromiso firme con la precisión conceptual y la integridad filosófica. Por ello, nos mantenemos atentos ante cualquier obstáculo que pueda comprometer esta evolución, como el uso de terminologías reificantes o retrogradas y la influencia de paradigmas capacitistas que puedan dificultar el reconocimiento de los animales como sujetos de derecho.

Going forward, we plan to start sharing recaps of what we have been covering in the lectures.💡 We really look forward to going more into the (plant-based) meat and potatoes of animal law with you in our blog. That way, you won’t have to wait until our next course to learn more about animal law! 🤗

Because writing these recaps will take more time, you can expect fewer emails from us in the future (about 1-2/month).

Did you know that in addition to this blog on Substack, we also have a newsletter? You can sign up for our newsletter on our website here.

Evaluation Week:

During our evaluation week, participants will conduct detailed research on a topic covered in weekly classes and prepare a concise oral presentation. The evaluation aims to synthesise the course’s learning and encourage exploration of a specific issue of Animal Rights Law.

The challenge is to present research findings within a 10-minute timeframe, demonstrating clarity, critical thinking, and practical communication skills.

An esteemed panel of distinguished academics — Dr. Nirva Patel, Dr .Kathy Hessler, Dr. Rosa Maria de la Torre Torres, Dr. John Adenitire, Dr. Oscar Horta, and Dr. Carlos Contreras López — will provide constructive feedback and evaluate the presentations during Evaluation Week.

Participants will receive a Guide for Research Presentation and a Guide for Research Publication and be invited to submit a student paper to the Journal of Animal Rights Law if it complies with the journal's editorial standards.

Here’s a brief introduction from panelist Dr. Rosa Maria de la Torre Torres:

“Hi, my name is Rosa Maria de la Torre. I have a PhD in Constitutional Law. Also, I'm a Specialist in Animal Rights. I'm the founder and General Coordinator of the Animal Law Research Group at the Michoacana University in Mexico. I'm a National Researcher of the Council of Humanities, Science, and Technology, and I'm very honoured by Marine's kind invitation to be a jury member for your final project assignment.

I hope to see you soon on the online course organised by the International Centre for Animal Rights and Ethics. See you soon.”

How can I sign up for this course?

Our course will be back later this year, and we would love to have you join us!

You can join the waitlist for the 2nd live edition (Fall 2025) or explore our upcoming on-demand CIARL course (Spring 2025) to access the recordings of the live lectures and tailored assignments to learn at your own pace.

Find out more and join the waitlist here.

Where can I find more information about this course?

You can read our previous Substack post (see below), or go straight to our website. Our course booklet is available for download here.

Connect with us on social media:

Follow us in your favourite social media platform to stay updated on everything we are doing to advance animal rights law and ethics. ICARE is active on

• LinkedIn,

• Bluesky, and

• Instagram.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Updates on our research, advocacy, and legal education programmes,

• News about upcoming courses, seminars, and events,

• Insights into our mission to reshape legal systems to protect animals.

We are building a community of passionate animal advocates, legal professionals, and academics dedicated to making a real difference for animals and their rights.

We would love for you to be part of it. Let’s connect, share ideas, and work together to create change!

That’s right, we are organizing an online Speed Moot Court for our course participants!

If you are not enrolled in our course and are experiencing some FOMO, we got you covered. Our live course will be back later this year, and we would love to have you join us!

You can join the waitlist for the 2nd edition (Fall 2025) or explore our upcoming on-demand CIARL course (Spring 2025) to access the recordings of the live lectures and tailored assignments to learn at your own pace.

Find out more and join the waitlist here.

Online ‘Speed Moot Court’

Amy P. Wilson and Prof. Hira Jaleel will facilitate the online Speed Moot Court on Aquatic Animal Rights, providing participants with a unique opportunity to apply their knowledge, particularly in Animal Rights Jurisprudence.

Acting as both Trainers and Judges, they will guide participants through this hands-on session focused on the often-overlooked field of Aquatic Animal Rights, offering practical experience in this critical and emerging area of law.

Here is an introduction from them:

Hi, everyone. I'm Hira Jaleel, Visiting Assistant Professor at the Centre for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, where I teach courses on food law, aquatic animal law, and farmed animal protection law.

I'm looking forward to participating in the ICARE Contemporary Issues in Animal Rights course and to get to know and meet students as to prepare to advocate for animal rights through the legal system. Along with my colleague, Ms. Amy Wilson, I will be participating as a Judge and trainer for the Online Speed Moot Court.

As all lawyers and law students know, litigation is one of the most essential skills we need to acquire during our legal education. In the animal rights space, litigation plays an important role in securing legal victories for animals through the judicial system. Hence, the purpose of the Speed Moot Court is to allow students to apply their knowledge of animal rights jurisprudence in a simulated online courtroom setting.

Our hope is that once they graduate from this course, students will be able to use the knowledge they acquire, litigating and advocating for animal in the real world.

Hi, everyone. I am Amy P. Wilson, co-founder and acting executive director of Animal Law Reform South Africa. I am a research associate and lecturer with the University of Johannesburg and a senior adjunct lecturer at the University of Western Cape in South Africa.

I am really excited to be part of the 2025 ICARE Contemporary Issues in Animal Rights Law Course. This online programme blends insightful academic theory with practical advocacy and litigation skills, equipping participants from diverse backgrounds to become effective change makers in one of the most dynamic areas of legal study.

Even within the animal protection and animal law movement, many aquatic animals are forgotten or less considered than other types of animals. Yet they are some of the most vulnerable and harmed beings on Earth. It is critical that we recognise them as individuals with intrinsic worth and elevate them within our consciousness and advocacy.

Promoting aquatic animal rights is not only key to ensuring the survival of these magnificent creatures, but to safeguarding the rights of all other species, as well as our beautiful blue planet.

Acting as both trainers and judges, Hira and I will guide participants through this hands-on session focused on the often overlooked and underdeveloped field of aquatic animal rights, offering practical experience in this emerging area of law.

I hope to meet you soon, and I am really looking forward to working with you on these critical issues.

How can I sign up for this course?

This round of the course is full, but you can join the waitlist to be informed of future courses (we will open the registration for the on-demand version of this course soon): www.icare-animals.org/ciarl-course

Where can I find more information about this course?

You can read our previous Substack post, or go straight to our website. Our course booklet is available for download here.

Connect with us on social media:

Follow us in your favourite social media platform to stay updated on everything we are doing to advance animal rights law and ethics. ICARE is active on

• LinkedIn,

• Bluesky, and

• Instagram.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Updates on our research, advocacy, and legal education programmes,

• News about upcoming courses, seminars, and events,

• Insights into our mission to reshape legal systems to protect animals.

We are building a community of passionate animal advocates, legal professionals, and academics dedicated to making a real difference for animals and their rights.

We would love for you to be part of it. Let’s connect, share ideas, and work together to create change!