From January 1, 1996, the EU will ban imports of furs from countries using the leghold trap, a move which will hit the US hard. The US, meanwhile, has banned imports of tuna caught in a way it perceives as violating a dolphin's right to life, an action bitterly resented by the EU.
Both claim to hold the moral high ground. US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit has announced that the US will exert "moral authority" and use the "trade stick" to bring the rest of the world along on animal welfare issues. EU Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, meanwhile, has predicted that animal welfare issues will be covered in the ongoing GATT/WTO round on trade and the environment, but without standards around which to build a body of regulations, such talks can only end in chaos. So far the GATT/WTO has denied it signatories the right to swing the trade stick on animal welfare issues not covered by international agreements or internationally accepted standards, but this does not stop them from trying. The EU Commission itself admits that its fur embargo will probably be GATT-illegal.
The animal welfare debate at an international level is characterised by a lack of standards, double standards, hidden agendas and confusion over basic concepts. While Babbit seeks to exert moral authority, the US continues to allow bear baiting and hunting with bows and arrows. The UK, which gives its own wild animals no legal protection against gratuitous cruelty or potentially cruel hunting methods, demands that other countries apply slaughterhouse standards to their hunts. Organisations whose ultimate objective might be to have us all become vegetarians, or to outlaw all killing of wild animals, focus for tactical reasons on animal welfare issues while surreptitiously promoting a far more radical agenda of animal rights. The distinct and often conflicting concepts of animal welfare, animal rights and environmentalism are frequently and deliberately confused.
The new development in the animal welfare debate is that important questions concerning factory farming are starting to be considered by the public at large. Though so far attention has focused on limited aspects only, such as the furor in Britain over the transportation of live veal calves in crates, the trend is to be welcomed.
Solutions to animal welfare issues in factory farms will have a direct impact on the public in the form of higher prices for a better quality of life for livestock, and it is this potential for having a direct impact on our lives that will force us to examine more closely our relationship with animals. This, in turn, will hopefully promote the development of standards and the removal of double standards.
Here at the International Whaling Commission, whales are many things to many people, but no member has yet suggested that whales should be regarded as anything other than animals. The debate concerning the humaneness of killing whaling must therefore be seen in the broader context of animal welfare in general.
In the series "Crying for Standards", the Harpoon will present examples of the enormous range of double standards being applied today in the field of animal welfare, in the hope of initiating debate on the development of practical standards that everyone can work with.