With improved technology and a much greater appetite among the young for books to remind them of the wonderful biosphere in which they live, it is heartening to see how many new, high-quality publications are emerging from within India. Here are two books that Sanctuary believes should be in every public library and in the homes of all those whose hearts beat to nature’s drum.
The Case for the Legal Protection of Animals:
Humanity’s Shared Destiny With the Animal Kingdom
By Kimberly C. Moore
Published by Palgrave MacMillan,
Hardcover, 334 pages, Price: € 129
I first learnt of Kimberly Moore’s work when she delivered a lecture on ‘Animal Ethics and Animal Law’ at the Fifth Annual Oxford Animal Ethics Summer School on July 24, 2021. Kimberly persuasively and eloquently laid out the case for greater legal and moral protection of all animals. Later, I was able to get to know her personally and learn about her pioneering legal initiatives to extend the scope of protection for all animals – wild, domestic, farm, laboratory, and those in entertainment. So, it was a pleasant experience reading her recently published book on this topic, The Case for the Legal Protection of Animals: Humanity’s Shared Destiny with the Animal Kingdom.
The first thought that comes to mind about laws and animals is Emperor Ashoka’s edicts on safeguarding animals, written during his reign in India from approximately 268 BCE to 232 BCE. These statutes are considered to be the first in the world for animal protection. Humanity has come a long way since, but as Kimberly’s book reveals, there is still much scope for introspection of our relationship with animals to chart a better course for the future.
Since gaining independence, India established several laws and policies that promote respect for animals, including two major pieces of legislation, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960 and the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, that was amended in 2022. India instituted legal provisions to prohibit the exhibition of circus animals in 1998, streamlined the process of professional zoo management through the Central Zoo Authority in 1992, banned all forms of ivory trade in 1991, stopped the export of and trade in indigenous live birds in 1990/1991, banned cosmetic testing on animals in 2014 and prohibited the import of exotic animal skins in 2017. We also took a conscientious decision to restrict the use of sentient animals such as monkeys in laboratory experiments, when the former Prime Minister of India Morarji Desai ended the export of monkeys from India in 1977. Acknowledging the status of animals as non-human persons, India also banned the exhibition and performance of cetaceans in captivity in 2013.
Moore quotes examples of similar laws from around the world. She states that our growing understanding of animals goes hand-in-hand with other movements to secure the rights of women, people of colour, religious and ethnic minorities, and children and individuals entrapped in conflict zones. Indeed, much of the modern environmental movement, spanning across conservation, animal welfare and animal rights campaigns, borrows heavily from many aspects of various human rights movements that have shaped morality, culture and legality, which have, in many instances, become part of modern-day mainstream thought processes. Moral and legal issues surrounding wildlife and the environment have been given an additional boost by growing concerns over the rapidly discernible impacts of climate change.
The impact of the law on animals, as expressed in jurisdiction, and the philosophy of law, as manifested in jurisprudence, have been ably expressed in Kimberly’s writing. These concepts were also articulately stated in Raj Panjwani’s book Courting Wildlife, published by the World Wildlife Fund in 1994. It is important to keep in mind that what is legal is not always moral, and there continue to be legal gaps in animal protection. Researchers such as Neil D’Cruze have conducted extensive research on legal protections accorded to wild animals and conclude that legal wildlife trade has a damaging impact on animals and the environment. As such, we should all be made aware that just because some wildlife trade is legal, unfortunately, that does not provide automatic assurance that it is safe, sustainable or humane.
India took a conscientious decision to restrict the use of sentient animals such as monkeys in laboratory experiments, when the former Prime Minister of India Morarji Desai ended the export of monkeys from India in 1977. Image for representative purposes only. Photo: Bharath Kumar/Sanctuary Photolibrary.
Although Moore does touch upon the legal status of some invertebrates, her book does not mention the legal gap allowing cruelty in pure silk production, which entails the killing of hundreds and thousands of silkworms and silk moths, the exploitation of child labour, and the environmental damage from the silk production process. She mentions the devastating impact of wars on humans, where legal statutes fail to control the impact of our viciousness on voiceless animals caught in a conflict not of their own making. The plight of zoo animals in Gaza in Palestine in the Israel-Palestine war and in Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine war have been covered while the savage impact of the American napalm bombing on Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laos’ forests and wildlife during the Vietnam war, is not mentioned.
Today, it is acknowledged that factory farming is a destructive process of rearing animals for meat, and organisations such as World Animal Protection continue to raise awareness about this. Recent legal relaxations given to the movement of captive elephants in India, combined with a spurt in the demand for keeping elephants in captivity, vividly illustrate the need for powerful laws to safeguard our National Heritage Animal.
Bearing in mind the numerous issues surrounding our legal obligations to animals across the spectrum, The Case for the Legal Protection of Animals represents a laudable and important contribution to our understanding of all animals.
Reviewed by Shubhobroto Ghosh, Wildlife Campaign Manager at World Animal Protection, and author of the book Dreaming In Calcutta And Channel Islands.
