The Lib Dems and Animal Protection

Animal Protection Performance

Since the last General Election in 2005, PAD has promoted 16 Early Day Motions (EDMs) in the House of Commons calling for improved animal protection. Early Day Motions are like petitions for MPs.

The Liberal Democrats were the most supportive of animal protection EDMs out of the three main parties. Although they make up only 10% of MPs, Liberal Democrats accounted for 25% of the support for EDMs. In our index, the score 1 signifies the average animal protection commitment of the three main parties: the Liberal Democrats score 2.5.

However, the Lib Dem website lacks an animal welfare policy section at time of writing and we are also concerned about their rather cynical attempts to pander to vested interests in the countryside, as evidenced by their apparent support for badger culling. On the plus side, the party has started circulating a quite comprehensive policy paper entitled ‘Respecting all animals’. It is almost seven years old though, which raises questions about its current applicability and the true level of interest and commitment in the party at the moment.

Hunting

According to the Lib Dems’ Environment spokesperson Tim Farron MP, ‘A Liberal Democrat government would not prioritise government time to debate this issue as we feel that it has already taken up too much of parliament’s time.’ I think it is fair to say that they are trying to sit on the fence on this issue! There is a tendency for Lib Dems in rural seats to be more equivocal on hunting, which betrays a worrying lack of principle. However, the majority of Liberal Democrat MPs in the House of Commons supported the hunting ban - 26 voted for a hunting ban and 18 voted against. In their policy paper, the Lib Dems ‘reassert [their] existing policy of supporting a ban on hunting with dogs’.

Democratic Reform

The Lib Dems have a long-standing policy to establish an Animal Protection Commission to ‘bring all animal welfare related matters under the responsibility of a dedicated expert body [which] will be regulatory and advisory’. A recent Lib Dem statement indicates that they still propose to ‘establish a permanent Animal Protection Commission, answerable to Parliament through a Cabinet Minister, to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for all animals used by humans and to ensure animal welfare considerations are upgraded’.

This is a potentially very positive institutional change that could start to give animals a fairer hearing in Whitehall, when decisions that affect millions of animals are being made. The departments currently responsible for regulating cruel practices - mainly the Home Office and DEFRA - have an entrenched mindset that they won’t do anything pro-active to protect animals and have, effectively, been captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate.

Battery Eggs and Intensive Farming

In their 2003 paper, the Lib Dems acknowledge that ‘enriched’ battery cages still cause significant suffering and distress for hens. Recently, an impressive 54 out of 63 Lib Dem MPs have signed Early Day Motion 92 opposing any dilution or postponement of the 2011 ban on beak-trimming.

More broadly, the Lib Dems are somewhat vague about what they will do to help the millions of pigs, turkeys, chickens, cows and other animals used in intensive food production. Their pledge to strengthen welfare inspection may at least result in more adequate enforcement of EU legislation requiring pigs to be provided with enrichment materials and prohibiting routine tail docking. Currently, many farmers ignore these rules.

Animal Experimentation

Back in 2003, the Lib Dems claimed that they wished to reduce and eventually eliminate painful animal experiments - which accounts for virtually all the 3.5 million experiments currently licensed every year. They also pledged to repeal Section 24 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act which imposes blanket confidentiality on all information relating to animal research. Another positive proposal was the recognition that the Home Office Inspectorate lacked sufficient resources to adequately scrutinize research applications and inspect laboratories.

However, there has been a significant change of tone in recent pronouncements, which are less pro-active and much vaguer than the 2003 policy paper. Their talk now of ‘vigorously pursuing the replacement, reduction and refinement of animal research’ is meaningless without a commitment to developing a targeted road-map towards the elimination of painful experiments. New Labour have been parroting the same line for 13 years, but there are more experiments now than in 1997. The Lib Dems’ references to eliminating animal tests for household products are pretty empty given they are almost non-existent anyway.

They are also repeating a dubious storyline about the contribution of experiments on primates to advancing treatments for Parkinson’s Disease, while failing to acknowledge the growing evidence for the unreliability of animal research and the growing potential for non-animal replacements. Indeed, Dr Kieran Breen, director of Research and Development at the Parkinson’s Disease Society says “Because only humans get Parkinson’s, we can’t use animals for research.” At the very least, the current Lib Dem endorsement of animal experiments could be described as crude and one-sided.

Habitat

The Lib Dems should be applauded for acknowledging the suffering that humans can cause indirectly to animals through damaging their habitat.

With regards the specific issue of the impact of biofuels on rainforest habitat for orangutans and other animals, the Lib Dems say they will put in place safeguards to ensure that the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) only permits sustainable biofuels as required by the EU 2009 Directive on the Promotion of Renewable Energy Sources and includes a calculation taking into account the effects of indirect land use change.

As long as these conditions are adhered to, then this should prevent further habitat destruction. However, there are suggestions that the EU will redefine ‘sustainable’ in order to permit ongoing destruction of rainforest for the sake of palm oil plantations. As ever, the devil is in the detail!

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