“The Tory
Government has outdone itself when it comes to neglecting animal rights this
week – by effectively declaring that all animals (apart from humans,
of course) have no emotions or feelings, including the
ability to feel pain. While debating the Brexit bill, MPs voted not to transfer
into UK law the parts of EU legislation which recognise animals have sentience,
and can feel pain and emotions.
“Remember all that campaigning against the badger cull and
May’s attempt to bring back fox-hunting? It was probably all a waste. As the
Government begins to shape the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, it has taken a vote to
scrap EU legislation that sees non-human animals as sentient beings. Once we
leave the EU in 2019, it’s not only badgers and foxes that will be threatened
by this change in law, but all animals that aren’t pets. So basically all animals
that it will be profitable to exploit.
“This
vote comes in contrast to extensive scientific evidence that
shows that other animals do have feelings and emotions, some even stronger than ours.
“But
politicians clearly think that they know better about animal brains than the
majority of scientists on the
planet. This complete lack of logic leads me to believe that many of our MPs
probably have less intelligence than a jellyfish. But unfortunately I don’t
have any stake in Parliament to vote through my personal opinions, unlike those
MPs…”
"Industry wants to claim that animals don't feel pain so they can use efficient but cruel methods of slaughtering and butchering and doing God knows what else to them. This denial also opens the door to cruel, sometimes fiendishly cruel, experiments on animals. This perspective was the norm until the '70s when Peter Singer published Animal Liberation and over time philosophers and people generally came to accept that animals feel pain and should be treated kindly. Now industry can hire a semanticist or a brain scientist who will testify that animals know nothing of pain as we experience and discuss it, and deny the general fact that they feel pain. Anyone who works with animals, domesticated mammals and birds in particular have no doubt that they feel pain and suffer even though they cannot say it. The behavioral evidence that animals feel pain is compelling. Moreover, neural science has proven that the human nervous system had deep evolutionary roots and is not significantly different than the other higher mammals. These people who deny that animals feel pain are monsters. (Read the book Animals Like Us, a collection of studies showing that animal nervous system and basic sensibilities are not so different from those of Homo sapiens). Sorry for being wordy. Reading that the numbskull Tories who have sold the UK down the river with Brexit are voting that animals don't feel pain makes my blood boil"-Professor Kirill Thompson.
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