Keywords
animal law
animal’s fundamental rights
re-evaluation of animal protection
Abstract
The recognition of animals as sentient beings in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) gave rise to expectations as to real concern and care for animal welfare and a balance of human-animal interests. However, both the EU-legislation and the Finnish animal protection legislation is based on an animal welfare paradigm, meaning that animals have a weak legal status compared to humans that makes it impossible to de facto balance human and animal needs and interests in an effective manner from an animal point of view. The weak legal status of animals in the hierarchy of norms in the Finnish legal system contributes to the continuation of the oppression and exploitation of animals. The Finnish Animal Rights Lawyers Society have therefore made a proposal to strengthen animals’ legal status by including animals in the Finnish Constitution (FC) by safeguarding animals’ certain fundamental rights, thereby providing tools for balancing of human-animals interests. This article focuses on the re-evaluation of animal protection from an animal and constitutional point of view.
References
Algers, Bo. 2008. Naturligt beteende – lagen och biologin. Djuren är väl också människor – en antologi om hälsa och välbefinnande i djurens och människans värld (natural behaviour – the law and biology). Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, Institutionen för husdjurens miljö och hälsa, Avdelningen för husdjurshygien. Rapport 20. (only available in Swedish).
Bailey, R. & Froggatt, A. & Wellesley, L. 2014. Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector. London: Chatham House. The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Francione, Gary L. & Robert Garner. 2010. The Animal Rights Debate. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gerten, Diter, Johan Rockström, Jens Heinke, Will Steffen, Katherine Richardson, & Sarah Cornell. 2015. “Response to Comment on ‘Planetary boundaries: guiding human development on a changing planet’.” Science 348(6240): 1217. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab0031
Isomäki, Risto. 2016. Meat, Milk and Climate. Helsinki: Into.
IUCN Annual Report. 2018: 70 years: International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Koneswaran, Gowri and Danielle Nierenberg. 2008. “Global Farm Animal Production and Global Warming: Impacting and Mitigating Climate Change.” Environmental Health Perspectives 116(5): 578–582.
Kurki, Visa. 2017. A Theory of Legal Personality. Doctoral Thesis. Cambridge University.
Hessler, Kathy, Joyce Tischler, Pamela Hart & Sonia S. Waisman. 2017. Animal Law New Perspectives on Teaching Traditional Law. Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press.
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1993. “Crimes of war, crimes of peace.” Pp. 84 in Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, edited by S. Shute and S. Hurley. New York: Basic Books.
Pietrzykowski, Tomasz. 2018. Personhood Beyond Humanism. Animals, Chimeras, Autonomous Agents and the Law. Cham: Springer Briefs in Law.
Pöyhönen, Juha, ed. 2002. An Introduction to Finnish Law. Helsinki: Kauppakaari Finnish Lawyer’s Publishing.
Rojas-Downing, M. Melissa, A. Pouyan Nejadhashemi, Timothy Harrigan & Sean A. Woznicki. 2017. “Climate change and livestock: Impacts, adaptation, and mitigation.” Climate Risk Management 16/2017: 145–163. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2017.02.001
Scarborough, Peter, Paul N. Appleby, Anja Mizdrak, Adam D. M. Briggs, Ruth C. Travis, Kathryn E. Bradbury, & Timothy J. Key. 2014. “Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK.” Climatic Change 125:179–192. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1
Sowery, Katy. 2018. “Sentient Beings and Tradable Products: The Curious Constitutional Status of Animals under Union Law.” Common Market Law Review 55(1): 55–100.
Wahlberg, Birgitta. 2011. Produktions- och slaktdjurs rättsposition med utgångspunkt i EU-lagstiftningen och EU-domstolens tolkningslinjer samt i individens ansvar över miljön (the legal status of farm and slaughter animals based on EU legislation subject to the interpretations made by the European Court of Justice and Section 20 in the Constitution of Finland). JFT 1/2011:34-66 (only available in Swedish).
Winston, Morton. 2007. “Human Rights as Moral Rebellion and Social Construction.” Journal of Human Rights 6:279–305.
License
Manuscript authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permissions for any copyrighted materials included within manuscripts. The authors must provide permission letters, when appropriate, to the Society Register Editors.
In addition, all published papers in Society Register are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported License.
1.1 The Author hereby warrants that he/she is the owner of all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Work and that, within the scope of the present Agreement, the paper does not infringe the legal rights of another person. The owner of the copyright work also warrants that he/she is the sole and original creator thereof and that is not bound by any legal constraints in regard to the use or sale of the work.
1.2. The Publisher warrants that is the owner of the PRESSto platform for open access journals, hereinafter referred to as the PRESSto Platform.
2. The Author grants the Publisher non-exclusive and free of charge license to unlimited use worldwide over an unspecified period of time in the following areas of exploitation:
2.1. production of multiple copies of the Work produced according to the specific application of a given technology, including printing, reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means (reprography) and digital technology;
2.2. marketing authorisation, loan or lease of the original or copies thereof;
2.3. public performance, public performance in the broadcast, video screening, media enhancements as well as broadcasting and rebroadcasting, made available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them;
2.4. inclusion of the Work into a collective work (i.e. with a number of contributions);
2.5. inclusion of the Work in the electronic version to be offered on an electronic platform, or any other conceivable introduction of the Work in its electronic version to the Internet;
2.6. dissemination of electronic versions of the Work in its electronic version online, in a collective work or independently;
2.7. making the Work in the electronic version available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, in particular by making it accessible via the Internet, Intranet, Extranet;
2.8. making the Work available according to appropriate license pattern CC BY-NC 4.0 as well as another language version of this license or any later version published by Creative Commons.
3. The Author grants the Publisher permission to reproduce a single copy (print or download) and royalty-free use and disposal of rights to compilations of the Work and these compilations.
4. The Author grants the Publisher permission to send metadata files related to the Work, including to commercial and non-commercial journal-indexing databases.
5. The Author represents that, on the basis of the license granted in the present Agreement, the Publisher is entitled and obliged to:
5.1. allow third parties to obtain further licenses (sublicenses) to the Work and to other materials, including derivatives thereof or compilations made, based on or including the Work, whereas the provisions of such sub-licenses will be the same as with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Creative Commons sub-license or another language version of this license, or any later version of this license published by Creative Commons;
5.2. make the Work available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, without any technological constraints;
5.3. appropriately inform members of the public to whom the Work is to be made available about sublicenses in such a way as to ensure that all parties are properly informed (appropriate informing messages).
6. Because of the royalty-free provision of services of the Author (resulting from the scope of obligations stipulated in the present Agreement), the Author shall not be entitled to any author’s fee due and payable on the part of the Publisher (no fee or royalty is payable by the Publisher to the Author).
7.1. In the case of third party claims or actions for indemnity against the Publisher owing to any infractions related to any form of infringement of intellectual property rights protection, including copyright infringements, the Author is obliged to take all possible measures necessary to protect against these claims and, when as a result of legal action, the Publisher, or any third party licensed by the Publisher to use the Work, will have to abandon using the Work in its entirety or in part or, following a court ruling in a legal challenge, to pay damages to a third party, whatever the legal basis
7.2. The Author will immediately inform the Publisher about any damage claims related to intellectual property infringements, including the author’s proprietary rights pertaining to a copyrighted work, filed against the Author. of liability, the Author is obliged to redress the damage resulting from claims made by third party, including costs and expenditures incurred in the process.
7.3. To all matters not settled herein provisions of the Polish Civil Code and the Polish Copyright and Related Rights Act shall apply.