No doubt many of you will have seen the news this week about Zoe Rosenburg, a student in California who is currently on trial for taking chickens from a factory farm. She carried out this act with other members of the animal rights group, Direct Action Everywhere, whose members are routinely in court for carrying out what they claim as ‘rescues’ of animals from factory farming institutions. The facts of the act are not in dispute because Rosenberg and her fellow activists had subsequently released video footage of what they had done, mking this case more of a question of why they carried out this act rather than who carried out this act.
Direct Action Everywhere routinely carry out these sorts of actions, namely going into farms and removing animals that are injured or sick, on the basis that they are intending to aid them rather than to simply remove them from the farmer’s property. What makes theses situations so interesting is that there are already ‘right to rescue’ laws in many US states, including California, which grant people criminal and civil protection if they forcibly enter a motor vehicle to remove an endangered animal. The argument therefore is that the same principle should apply to all animals in distress.
In the UK, whilst there are laws in place to protect animals (such as the Animal Welfare Act 2006), intervention when an animal is in need is legally restricted to authorised individuals, such as the police or local authority inspectors. Unauthorized action to free an animal, even if from distress or harm, could result in criminal charges, most commonly for theft or criminal damage. As animals are still seen as property, to remove that property from another person could be deemed as theft, and as it is likely that removing that animal will involve breaking into private property in some way, it could result in charges for criminal damage or burglary.
But the interesting thing about the law is that just because something is legal, does not mean that it is right. Just as if something is illegal, does not mean that it is wrong. Justice and the Law are two very different things. At least in my opinion they are. But that is where these sorts of cases raise a lot of debates: Two things can be true at the same time, and whilst these activists could be morally right, they are legally in the wrong. So which is more important?
This is a very complicated area of law and there are a lot of different avenues that could be taken when faced with this situation, depending on what charge the person is facing. These cases are also based in the US, which has a VERY different legal system to the UK, so it might be hard to see how these cases would play out in the UK legal system, but they are interesting cases none the less.
Personally, I cannot really give an opinion because I think animal farming needs to come to an end as soon as possible. But from a practical perspective, if farmers and instustry personnel want activists to stop ‘stealing’ (in quotation marks as this is usually the allegation made) animals that are being neglected and abused, maybe stop neglecting and abusing the animals? If you do not want activists to break in and ‘steal’ your animals, then would you not want to improve the welfare and conditions of your animals so that activists cannot claim that they were ‘rescuing’ your animal? Again, this is a very complicated area of law and a very interesting topic to discuss, but it does seem like a rather easy fix. Then again, if the animal agriculture industry would rather throw money at lawyers rather than throw money at improving the welfare of their animals, then maybe these cases will remain inevitable.
Taylor Talks Vegan 