Right to freedom for animals worked out

Are animal rights properly legally established?

The first paragraph of article 36 of the Dutch Animal Health and Welfare Act of 1992 read: "it is prohibited, without reasonable purpose or in excess of what is permissible to achieve such a purpose, to cause pain or injury to an animal or to harm the health or welfare of an animal". Since 2013 the same provision is found in article 2.1 of the Animals Act.

Only (active) abuse of animals is considered immoral by society and is prohibited by law. Passive animal mistreatment is rejected by a majority of society, but this majority does not yet act against it and the law has not yet been adapted on this point either. The law's upholder lags behind the "brutal" border crossing by factory farming.

To give you a proper understanding of the way in which this right should be worked out in terms of freedom, we compare two situations: how the keeping and killing of animals is looked upon now and how it ought to be if animals have a constitutional right to freedom.

From now to a right to freedom

Avoidable or to be avoided?

Most problematic situations in dealing with animals belong to the category "avoidable". It is up to the individual to choose to what extent he or she goes along.

When we take freedom as a fundamental right for animals, the category "avoidable" really becomes "to be avoided". With this subtle difference we want to indicate that it is better to avoid these things, but that given the situation the principle that animals are entitled to freedom still applies. For example: if you are of the opinion that you may eat animals (which is avoidable and unnecessary), you are nevertheless morally obliged to choose those animals that have had as much opportunity as possible to show their natural behaviour during their whole lives before slaughter.

The animals concerned are fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. In principle animal rights apply to all animals, but we do not want to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Basing animal rights on freedom has a number of consequences for farming, sport and the way we keep pets: these need to be curtailed.

* We would most like to see controlled hunting become superfluous by encouraging the natural balance, possibly by (re)introducing natural predators. Then there is no need to discuss whether controlled hunting should be prohibited.

** Keeping pets that have not been over-bred and are able to behave naturally. In general one could say: "if the animal stays with a human in complete freedom, there is nothing wrong with keeping it as a pet".

*** There are primary and secondary responsibilities for animal suffering. Wearing (fake) fur is something different (more secondary) from breeding fur animals (more primary). A ban on wearing fur goes too far, because out of sheer contrariness and protest against the restriction of their freedom it may tempt people to wear fur after all. Something similar applies to obliging people to eat ecologically produced meat. For these matters it is better to exert social pressure.

What is freedom?

We deliberately give no definition of freedom. Freedom is a paradoxical concept that becomes unworkable when it is worked out in too much detail: "freedom defined is freedom denied".

Animals are free:

1. from thirst, hunger and malnutrition;
2. from physical and physiological discomfort;
3. from pain, injury and disease;
4. from fear and chronic stress;
5. to express their natural (species-specific) behaviour.

The first freedoms are undisputed; the last two are (unfortunately) often not achieved in practice.