Animal Law and Ireland: More Questions Than Answers
- Etain Quigley
- Nov 22, 2022
- 19 min read
Updated: Mar 12
Introduction
The human–animal relationship, as a concept of study, spans multiple disciplines and indeed has been an area of interest across both time and geography. At its core are historic and cultural norms which often go unchecked and unquestioned. The set of legal rules governing human–animal relationships is known as animal law.[1] This area of law is a complex web of rules that govern many relationship types and situations related to animals. At an academic level this area of law is divided across ideological lines—welfare versus rights. The two schools converge in some areas of thought but are largely at odds in relation to their respective positions. The ideological position of those in the animal welfare school of thought is that animals can be utilised by humans for their daily living needs but that it must be done in a manner that upholds certain welfare standards in terms of the animals’ experience of life.[2] Whereas, the animal rights ideological position perceives animals as sentient beings who should have certain rights to uphold their place in society as living creatures.[3]
This ideological division is not the only problem evident in the animal law field. Additional critiques include: it being static;[4] selective in terms of application; lacking in legal and transnational protection regimes; and primarily contained in secondary law, which is typically not legally binding.[5] Peters has argued that the current top-down approach runs the risk of lacking cultural sensitivities and imposing cultural and imperial standards.[6] Thus, she suggests that animal law will only positively contribute to society when it grows from the bottom up.[7] Finally, little has been done to align animal law and human rights law in a complementary manner (ie exploring and accounting for human cultural variation when designing and applying the laws).
Animal law, like environmental law, is central to population health, environmental sustainability, and biodiversity. Zoonotic diseases are a real risk to the world’s population; soil erosion due to overgrazing is a serious environmental risk; and deforestation is detrimental to the planet’s biodiversity. As such, animal law has global reach and impact and thus its fractured nature needs urgent attention. The COVID-19 crisis has focused experts’ and indeed citizens’ minds on the area and yet discussions remain largely restricted to discipline-specific debates and traditional approaches to regulations and guiding practices.
It may be argued that animal law is following a similar trajectory to environmental law, which only recently became a key legal speciality. Environmental law is now a rapidly growing area with over 1200 courts and tribunals operating across 44 countries.[8] It has become a legitimised legal speciality as a result of a number of facilitators: its alignment with human rights, public support for environmental issues, scientific support for a need for action, and a public health/survival debate.[9] Animal law has not had the benefit of these key drivers heretofore. However, there is now increasing public support for ethical produce and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought the human–animal relationship into mainstream discourse.[10] This discourse is now underpinned by scientific arguments about public health, providing the green shoots that drove the legitimisation of environmental law. As such it may be an ideal time to revisit animal law using an empirical lens.
