How we treat animals reflects our society

For some years now, the de­bate on an­i­mal rights has ceased to be con­sid­ered mar­ginal and ec­cen­tric and be­come a cen­tral de­bate that con­di­tions the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal agenda. It is a very sim­i­lar process to what had hap­pened be­fore in de­bates about the en­vi­ron­ment, cli­mate change or food: at first they were sup­ported by very minor sec­tors of the pop­u­la­tion and none of the major po­lit­i­cal par­ties re­ally con­sid­ered them, but today they are at the very core of every po­lit­i­cal pro­ject and every gov­ern­ment pol­icy. Read­ing the analy­sis and com­ments made on cli­mate change or the ef­fect of fos­sil fuels only a few decades ago shows us what will also hap­pen with the an­i­mal rights issue. Be­cause, as strange as it may seem to some today, an­i­mals do have rights. Yes, it will be dif­fi­cult to achieve the cul­tural change that this rep­re­sents, be­cause it will in­volve very dif­fer­ent ways of doing things and liv­ing, but it surely is as un­stop­pable a path as the de­fence of re­new­able en­ergy once was.

A few coun­tries have al­ready made great progress with leg­is­la­tion, such as the UK, one of the lead­ers in an­i­mal wel­fare, with the aims of giv­ing an­i­mals a more dig­ni­fied life and greater re­spect, and im­prov­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween an­i­mals and hu­mans. But there is still a long way to go. Eco­nomic in­ter­ests and a cer­tain ret­i­cence to take the mat­ter se­ri­ously are still major ob­sta­cles to new poli­cies being drawn up in this re­spect. It has been more than a decade since the Par­lia­ment of Cat­alo­nia de­cided to ban bull­fight­ing, but this was con­tested by the Span­ish State and even in France they have not dared im­ple­ment a sim­i­lar mea­sure.

On the other hand, more progress is being made in the pet sec­tor, and it seems the topic has met with more em­pa­thy and pop­u­lar con­sen­sus within large parts of the pop­u­la­tion. There is the risk here, how­ever, that we some­times con­fuse an­i­mal rights with the “hu­man­i­sa­tion” of an­i­mals, which would be an­other way of deny­ing them the right to be what they truly are: an­i­mals.