Summer Academy Animal Law 2021 Conference Handbook

19/20 June 2021

Live Zoom event Summer Academy Animal Law 2021 We are thankful to

taOtfefniwciuanld serp oisnt sdoerr Oofff itzhieelle sponSsuomr dmere sro mAmcaerdaekmadyemie 2021Animal Law 2021 The mission of Animal Interfaith Alliance is to create a united voice for animals from all the major faiths to bring about a world where they are treated with respect and compassion.

AIA has the following objectives:

1.To provide a stronger voice for animals through the interfaith group than can be provided by many separate voices from individual faiths; 2.To create a co-ordinated approach across the faiths to educate people on the humane treatment of animals; 3.To create a strong and co-ordinated campaigning organisation; 4.To provide a forum to learn from and share the wisdoms of other cultures and traditions; 5.To disseminate that wisdom through literature, including a regular newsletter, books and orders of service, and through the internet, including a website and social media, which can also be used as a campaign tool; 6.To inspire others through interfaith conferences and services with a major event celebrating World Animal Day on 4th October; 7.To promote a vegetarian/vegan diet, which also embraces the issues of environmental protection, healthy lifestyles and ending world hunger, and to end animal exploitation. www.animal-interfaith-alliance.com Table of contents

Foreword 6

Message of Greeting 8

Program 9

Time Zone Conversation Table 11

The Summer Academy 2021 13

Joining the Summer Academy via Zoom 14

Panel Discussion 15

The Summer Academy Team 16

Annex: Preparatory reading list 17 Foreword

Humans kill billions of animals every year. While there is already a vibrant discussion about human animal relations in the humanities - one also speaks of an "animal turn" in the humanities - the legal profession still turns a blind eye on the human treatment of animals. In 2016, as an undergaduate student, I founded the Animal Law Academy in Berlin to counteract the "animal blindness" of the legal profession. By offering seminars, workshops and lecture series, the Animal Law Academy aims to promote animal law as a distinct field of study, to arouse interest among law students and budding lawyers for animal law, and to thereby generate momentum for improving the protection of animals through the legal system.

However, the Animal Law Academy has another important aim. Like Richard Dawkins said, lectures do not exist to transmit knowledge. Knowledge one derives from books or nowadays also from the internet. Lectures exist to inspire!

Animal activists frequently meet with incomprehension and even ridicule by the larger society. In addition, internal strifles and sectarianism inside the animal movement lead to an increased risk of burnout. It is therefore all the more important to regain inspiration on a regular basis!

I am very glad that an outstanding line-up of highly inspiring speakers has agreed to teach at the Summer Academy Animal Law 2021. This year, participants have the rare chance to get taught by some of the founding fathers of the modern animal rights movement. The Summer Academy also provides the opportunity to network with fellow course participants from all over the globe.

I am very thankful to the speakers who have all waived their speakers fees to make this extraordinary event possible. I am also thankful to the course participants without whom the Summer Academy would not be a Summer Academy.

A project such as this only achieves its purpose if new joint projects arise from it. Therefore, I hope that the Summer Academy 2021 will not only be a high-class teaching event, but also a catalyst for new projects and initiatives by the course participants.

For the animals,

Julius Berrien

Message of Greeting

I welcome all participants to the Summer Academy Animal Law, and look forward to stimulating discussions of how we can best use the law to protect the rights of animals and reduce the suffering that we are currently inflicting on such vast numbers of them.

Best wishes,

Peter Singer, AC Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics University Center for Human Values Princeton University Program Saturday, 19 June 2021

8:45 Julius Berrien Introduction

9:00 Peter Singer (Ira W. DeCamp Professor for Bioethics at Princeton Universität): Ethics beyond the Species Boundary

10:00 Jonathan Birch (Associate Professor for Philosophy at LSE): The place of animals in Kantian ethics

11:00 Short break

11:15 Richard D. Ryder (President of the RSPCA): Speciesism, Painism and Legislation

12:15 Barbara Gardner (Animal Interfaith Alliance): The Golden Rule and Animals in the World's Major Faiths

13:15 Lunch break

14:15 Mark Rowlands (Professor for Philosophy at the University of Miami): Contractarianism and Duties to Animals Program Sunday, 20 June 2021

11:00 Antoine F. Goetschel

(Global Animal Law GAL Association): Global Animal Protection

12:00 Raffael Fasel (Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law): Sentience-based constitutionalism

12:45 Short break

13:00 Panel discussion Protecting animals through law

14:30 Lunch break

15:15 David Favre (Professor for Property Law and Animal Law at Michigan State University): A Few Rights for a Few Animals

16:15 Steven Wise (Nonhuman Rights Project): Legal Rights for Nonhuman Animals

All times correspond to CET (Central European Time) Time zone conversion tables

The Summer Academy Animal Law 2021 is a truly global event. It spans four continents and a multitude of time zones. Please note that all times in the program correspond to CET (the time zone of Berlin, Germany). There are time zone converters on the internet that you can use to calculate your local time. The following is a schedule of the Summer Academy including time conversion tables.

Despite our efforts to provide correct times, we cannot assume any warranty for the correctness of these informations. If in doubt, please double-check.

The Summer Academy 2021

On two intense days, the Summer Academy Animal Law explores the philosophic underpinnings and the legal realization of animal rights.

On the first day, participants will acquire a solid foundation in the central theories of animal rights. Peter Singer's utilitarian position on animals is of particular historic importance. Richard Ryder developed the moral theory of Painism which differs from utilitarianism in important aspects. Jonathan Birch will present his Kantian deontological theory of animal rights. Mark Rowlands developed a neo-Rawlsian account of animal rights rooted in contractualism.

The second day will focus on how to leverage the law to protect animals.

The two days are related content-wise and the entire program of the Summer Academy constitutes a harmonious whole. However, the individual blocks do not build on each other. Therefore, it is possible to participate in just some lectures and still not lose track. The lectures are suitable for beginners as well as seasoned academics.

Most lectures consist of 30 minutes speech plus 15-30 minutes Q&A and live discussion. The talks are interspersed with five minute breakout sessions. Smalls groups comprising five participants each will be automatically re-directed to individual breakout rooms to discuss and reflect on the lessons learned. After the time has lapsed, participants will automatically be sent back to the main conference room.

Some speakers provide preparatory reading lists. The links are to be found in the annex of the conference handbook.

The conference language is English.

Joining the Summer Academy via Zoom

To join the Summer Academy on Zoom please click on this link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84 200532744?

pwd=L2F4aFkxa0wxZzdTQWdWeDlhUVd5Zz09

You can also join using the Me eting ID and Code:

Meeting ID: 842 0053 2744 Code: Summer2021

Panel discussion: Protecting animals through law

Sunday, 20th June, 1pm (Berlin time)

The panel discussion on Sunday 1 pm Berlin time (please check time zone conversion tables) will be a special highlight of this year's Summer Academy.

A group of leading minds from the fields of animal ethics and animal law will discuss how to best use the law to protect animals.

We encourage active contributions from our participants. Please make use of this extraordinary opportunity to ask live questions and to discuss animal philosophy and animal law with the panelists and fellow participants.

We look forward to a stimulating discussion. The panelists:

Richard Ryder Peter Singer

David Favre Jonathan Birch

Mark Rowlands Raffael Fasel The Summer Academy Team

Julius Berrien is the founder of the Animal Law Academy. He also moderates the sessions.

Wera Uschakowa supports the Animal Law Academy as a camera operator.

Martin Birr is the Zoom Operator. He also runs his own YouTube channel.

Nico Siewert is member of the technical support team. Together with Martin he ensures a smooth running of the Zoom event. Attachment: Preparatory reading list

Peter singer Peter Singer's recommendation is that participants read something that takes a different view from him, like the articles by Bernard Williams and Roger Scruton

Bernard Williams: The Human Prejudice https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.ph p/4851188/mod_resource/content/1/WI LLIAMS%2C%20Bernard.%20The%20Hu man%20Prejudice.pdf Roger Scruton: Animal Rights https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal- 02163073/document

This early paper by Peter Singer summarizes his position on animals

Peter Singer: All Animals Are Equal https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/ phil_ex/vol5/iss1/6/ JOnathan The talk by Jonathan Birch is based on his research on Christine Korsgaard's Kantian Birch theory of animal rights

Jonathan Birch: The place of animals in Kantian Ethics: Christine M. Korsgaard, Fellow creatures: our obligations to the other animals. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102437/1/Birch_p lace_of_animals_in_Kantian_ethics_pu blished.pdf

His presentation can be downloaded here:

Jonathan Birch: The place of animals in Kantian ethics https://personal.lse.ac.uk/birchj1/pdf/ck. pdf

Raffael The following papers by Raffael Fasel are Fasel openly accessible Raffael Fasel: The Old "New" Dignitarianism https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007 /s11158-018-09411-2 Raffael Fasel: "Simply in virtue of being human?" A critical appraisal of a human rights commonplace https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 .1080/20403313.2017.1418272 RichArd ryder Richard Ryder has provided the script of his speech already in advance. SPECIESISM, PAINISM AND LEGISLATION

RICHARD DUDLEY RYDER

Speciesism and Anti-Speciesism

I invented the term Speciesism in 1970 as I lay in my bath at Oxford worrying about the world’s failure to grasp the similarity between human animals and the rest of the animal kingdom. If we are so close to the other animals then why do we treat them with so little respect? We do not think it is right to experiment cruelly on other humans, even our enemies; we do not hunt them for sport or intensively farm them. We do not even eat other humans! So why do we think it is acceptable to do all these things to our evolutionary cousins — the other animals? In a vast universe why should a respectable morality be applicable only to one species on one tiny planet?

Charles Darwin had pointed out that:-

“There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties. The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pain, happiness and misery.”

Man is an animal too, said Darwin. So why don’t all the moral and legal restraints that are normally recognised by civilised human beings towards one another, also apply to our evolutionary kin? We are all animals and we can all suffer pain.

The moral implications of Darwin are taking a long time to sink in!

As Jeremy Bentham said in 1789 “…the question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but can they suffer?” (Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789.) It does not matter how intelligent a human or a nonhuman is, it only matters if they are sentient. (I sometimes use the word ‘painient’ to be more precise.) Maybe very small or unintelligent animals actually suffer more pain than we do.

We should not, morally speaking, without very good reason, inflict suffering of any sort on other sentient beings: animals, insects, octopuses, lobsters, fish, space aliens or sentient machines.

Before I got out of my bath, I said to myself — “if only we could find a word that would help nice kindly normal human beings to realise the absurdity of their usual moral position. I sank back into the warm soap suds. It was the end of the 1960s. The era of anti-prejudice was in full flow — we were rejecting racism and sexism and ageism. We were even attacking classism in Britain. It was the age of anti-prejudice! We clearly needed another ‘ism’! So it finally came to me. We should also be attacking all prejudice based upon the wobbly concept of species: against the prejudice of SPECIESISM.

Throughout the 1970s I did publicise the concept of speciesism a lot on radio and television around the world and, very much helped by my old Oxford friend Peter Singer, the word speciesism finally got stuck in the English language with the assistance of the Oxford English Dictionary!

(Anti-speciesism, of course, means opposition to the prejudice of speciesism.)

Painism

I had read bits of Utilitarianism in my teens and found its emphasis upon pain very much like my own.

I had been one of those solitary little boys who liked to ask questions. I sat in the woods with my dog Toby asking him the basic questions. “What is right Toby? What is wrong? What is good? What is bad?” Toby was a wonderful companion. He always agreed with me. So quite quickly we together realised that pain was the essence of badness. ‘Bad’ and ‘pain’ mean almost the same thing. “Take anything bad”, I explained to Toby, “ask enough questions and you always end up with pain!” Toby agreed. “Take injustice, for instance, lack of liberty or fear or guilt” I went on. “Why is lack of liberty wrong for example? Because it makes one feel frustrated, unable to do what one wants to do, and bored.” “Why is bored bad?” Toby asked. “Because feeling bored is a painful sort of feeling” I said “just like when you were accidentally shut in the coal shed the other day. Injustice is bad because it makes you feel under-rated — it causes mental pain. You always end up with the negative feeling which is called pain.” Toby agreed. He licked my cheek. He wanted to carry on walking. “So even things like inequality, injustice and lack of freedom” I said “are all bad because they all cause pain.”

The one big point on which I differed from Bentham and Mill, I discovered, is that I could not agree that one can add up the pains and pleasures of different individuals. Nobody actually experiences such aggregations. Clearly, pains have to be experienced in order to count as pain. Only I can actually experience my own pains. I cannot directly experience yours or Toby’s. I may empathise — but the pains of empathy are always a separate set of pains.

Of course, it might one day be possible to run a cable from your brain to mine so that I can directly experience your pains, but I don’t think that has yet been done.

As it is, there is an impenetrable barrier of consciousness around the edges of each individual.

This is one reason why my theory of Painism is so much better than Utilitarianism! In Utilitarianism, where pains and pleasures are aggregated across individuals, you can find yourself in the absurd position of approving the torture of a victim if the sadistic pleasures of many torturers add up to more than the victim’s pain! How about a sadistic porno demonstration where one victim is tortured in front of two hundred sadists? The victim may feel 100 units of pain but each of the two hundred sadists feels, say, 10 units of pleasure (on average). 200 x 10 = 2,000 units! Clearly, according to a conventional Utilitarian calculation this action is therefore justified. The pleasures far outweigh the pains!

Or, consider the victim of mass rape by ten rapists. The victim may feel 100 units of pain (you can add up the various internal pains of one individual of course — so they may have, say, 40 units of pain caused by shame, 50 units of physical pain and 10 units of various other sorts of pain, giving a total of 100 units.) If the ten rapists feel an average of 20 units of pleasure each then the aggregated total of pleasures (200 units) is about double the pains of the victim! So the gang rape appears to be morally justified according to standard Utilitarianism. Clearly, this is all unacceptable.

In order to avoid these problems, I have done away with aggregation across individuals. I say that each individual is of paramount importance. Each individual is on their own. Among a group of sufferers, the highest scorer, the maximum sufferer, indicates the degree of moral seriousness of the situation. The maximum sufferer also demands priority attention. She is the number one priority for receiving help.

There is another reason for giving up aggregation. Unless you want to be considered completely mad you don’t go around saying things like “this busload of passengers felt a total of 1,000 units of fear when the bus crashed.” Nor “this group of girls felt 500 units of love after meeting the handsome men.” So if it is crazy to add up feelings of fear or love across individuals, why is it alright to add up feelings of pain? Clearly it is not alright. It is crazy too!

So I say the whole Utilitarian process of aggregation of pains and pleasures across individuals is wrong. It needs to go.

So we get Painism.

In my understanding Morality (Ethics) is all about how we should treat others. It is not about our own feelings of pain or pleasure or how we treat ourselves. (I think all that is in the realm of Psychology and not Ethics.)

In Painism, morality is about our treatment of other sentient beings. All sufferers have equal value, regardless of their race, sex, species or other morally irrelevant difference. So X amount of pain in a robot, an alien or a porpoise, for example, matters equally with X amount of pain in a human.

So things are not absolutely good or bad. It depends on their effects on others. They may be good one day and bad the next. It always depends on whether or not they cause pain. If they cause pain to one individual and pleasure to another, certain rules on cost-benefit need to be applied.

Everything boils down in the end to pain or anti-pain.

Sex, for example, is not a great evil in itself. If it causes pleasure to all involved, then it is resoundingly good! If, however, it causes severe pain, even to one person, then almost certainly it can be bad! Painism says it is impossible to justify severe pain by causing even the greatest of pleasures.

Adding up pains or pleasures across separate individuals is meaningless (no-one suffers such totals) so the quantity of sufferers does not matter, morally-speaking. The wrongness of an event is calculated not by the number of sufferers but by the quantity of pain experienced by its maximum sufferer.

It is pain that matters, not who experiences it!

So it is the duty of all of us, and the duty of states and their governments to reduce the pain of all sentients (painients) within their jurisdiction. The state owes animals, just like children, its protection.

All sentients are citizens. Because they are sentient they have rights. I say that all sentients are also persons!

Legislation

So why don’t lawyers automatically include nonhuman sentients within the full protection of the law? I fear it is just because it is inconvenient to do so. Our diet used to be the old excuse. Until recently people believed we had to eat meat. Without meat we would die! This has now been proved wrong by millions of vegetarians and, more recently, by vegans also. Indeed there are now strong scientific arguments against eating meat! So I think (as a non-lawyer) that the time has come for a huge revolution in law. Legal protection should be given to all sentient beings.

Nearly fifty years ago I worked with Lord Houghton and Clive Hollands to produce a huge reform in the law controlling the use of laboratory animals in Britain. This became the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. I then helped my old schoolfriend Stanley Johnson MEP (father of Boris) to create the EU Directive on laboratory animals based partly upon my book Victims of Science (published in 1975). Houghton, Hollands and I had discussions with Merlyn Rees and William Whitelaw, both Home Secretaries. I had written the details of our so- called CRAE Memorandum to the British Government suggesting the reforms we needed, while Douglas Houghton wrote the Foreword. This document was important because it was not only the basis for the new legislation, but it contained some innovative Painist principles. In it:-

1) I placed the overall emphasis upon reducing and preventing pain. 2) I stressed the importance of each individual animal. 3) I reiterated the arguments against speciesism. 4) I pointed out the difficulties of Utilitarian aggregation across individuals. 5) I admitted the difficulties of calculating cost-benefit analyses. 6) But confessed that cost-benefit analyses were still sometimes necessary. 7) I urged the calibration of likely animal suffering in some scientific procedures, and 8) Urged the sober calculation of possible benefits coming from experimentation.

Predictions, however, are always uncertain, so must carry far less weight.

The period 1970 to 2010 was a period of unprecedented reform for nonhuman animals. In Britain twelve new animal protection laws were passed, while in the EU no less than fort-two new pieces of animal welfare legislation became law (David Bowles, RSPCA, 2018). If one accepts that the point of most law is to bring benefits to citizens then surely it becomes important to be able to measure such things as pains, pleasures and happiness.

The Home Office (the UK Ministry of the Interior) is now doing this in terms of intensity and duration of suffering. This is, so I understand, how they scientifically calculate the “severity” of suffering. A Home Office Inspector has also said that the Home Office now considers that a “few severe sufferers count for more than many lesser sufferers, because each individual’s suffering matters.” So the intensity of pain matters more than the number of sufferers (RSPCA Conference on Sentience, Friends Meeting House, London, 2nd May, 2019).

This is all Painism. The RSPCA discussed and endorsed all these principles in 2010. They are a model for all future legislation for human and other animals.

In my theory of Painism, pain is very broadly defined to include all negative experiences: e.g. Why is lack of liberty wrong? Because it causes pain. Why is denial of equality wrong? Because it causes pain. Why is injustice wrong? Because it causes pain.

“Pain” means all forms of suffering and so includes all negative psychological states: e.g. Why is fear wrong? Because it causes pain. Why is guilt wrong? Because it causes pain.

So the quantity of sufferers in a disaster does not matter, morally speaking. The wrongness of an event should be measured by the amount of pain experienced by the Maximum Sufferer. One individual suffering agony matters more than a million suffering slightly. So in “Trolley Situations” (familiar to all philosophers) killing fewer victims is not necessarily morally better than killing many victims. It is the amount of pain felt by each individual victim (particularly the Maximum Sufferer) that matters. Painism says it is correct to add up contemporaneous pains and pleasures within individuals but not across them. But it is difficult to play off pains against pleasures because pains are nearly always more powerful than pleasures. For example, most would forego several hours of ecstasy in order to avoid even five minutes of expert torture. Furthermore, pains are not exact negatives of pleasures. There are also some differences between a pleasure and a reduction of pain.

Pain

Pains and pleasures colour all our experiences and affect most of our behaviour.

Pains, and their avoidance, dominate our lives.

Pain is sometimes defined as “unpleasant sensory or emotional experience”.

But in Painism I define pain more widely to also include perceptual, cognitive and mood states — i.e. perceptions, thoughts and moods. They can all be negative, causing suffering.

So there are at least five types of pain or suffering that are relevant to Painism:-

( i) negative sensations (e.g. ‘physical’ or nociceptive and neuropathic pains)

( ii) negative feelings or emotions (e.g. grief, fear, disgust, horror, frustration or boredom)

(iii) negative perceptions (e.g. of ugliness, distortion, mutilation, negative hallucinations and other unpleasant interpretations of sound, vision, touch or smell)

(iv) negative thoughts of (e.g. shame, rejection, danger, loss, guilt and awareness of failure, unfairness, criticism, insult or death)

( v) negative moods (e.g. depression caused, for example, by loss, frustration, or prolonged stress etc.)

All these experiences are unpleasant.

Pains of all five types can be severe, moderate or mild, and brief (acute) or long-lasting (chronic). Causing severe pain that is unconsented-to is never justified, nor does one individual’s pleasure ever justify another’s pain. (I regard these rules as arbitrary but axiomatic.) But causing slight and brief pain in one individual in order to avoid or reduce severe pain in another may well be justified. The brevity of the pain here seems to be important.

Does the Sequence of Pains and Pleasures Matter?

Yes, later pains (or future pains) count for more than earlier pains. (Because all’s well that ends well and all’s wrong that ends badly.)

Can the Intensity of Pain be Measured?

Yes. The British government’s Home Office has been scientifically estimating the intensity of pain in animal experiments for some thirty years. This work comes under the administration of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, and is based upon my CRAE recommendations made in 1976. Similar procedures and principles (such as the principle that the severity of a sufferer’s pain matters more than the quantity of sufferers) should also be applied to human welfare legislation. Painism should be the basis for human welfare laws also.

Does the Lack of Free Will Invalidate Painism?

No more than it may invalidate other moral systems. Free Will may be like Quantum Mechanics rather than Newtonian Physics. Quantum Physics includes an element of unpredictability or freedom. I believe the brain is a complex machine and the consciousness of our decisions only occurs after our brain has taken the decisions. But who understands Consciousness?

If the Brain Operates According to Quantum laws Does This Answer the Problem of Determinacy and Moral Responsibility?

To an extent. Subatomic particles appear to have Free Will. Why do they go one way rather than another? How can they influence each other at a distance? Particles ‘wait’ to be observed before they ‘act’. Is such “observation” the same thing as consciousness? Our experience of our apparent Free Will may be our direct experience of the operation of Quantum Physics itself.

Conclusions

* Painism not only brings together the best of Utilitarianism with the best of other Ethical theories, it also joins philosophy with psychology by bringing together their previously separated languages. It overcomes some of the problems of modern Ethics. It has been hailed as the “best candidate” modern moral theory. (Alexander Joy: Ethics of the Future.)

* Pain is a very strong foundation on which to build a moral theory.

* We all know about the reality of pain. It is a basic part of all our lives. It is not like trying to build an ethical theory upon what an unknown God is supposed to want us to do.-

* Anything that causes pain (e.g. racism, sexism or speciesism), however ‘natural’ it is, is prima facie morally wrong.

* Painism is consequentialist. It focuses not upon the character of the doer but upon the experience of the victim.

* A country’s government has the duty to care for all painients within its borders, not only humans. Painience itself gives rights and moral standing. All painients qualify as persons and citizens, and should be called “she”, “he” or “they” as appropriate.

* Painism gives emphasis to each painient individual.

* The science upon which Painism is based, in particular the evidence that nonhumans can experience pain, exposes the irrationality of Speciesism.

* As already said Painism is concerned with the amount of pain (suffering) experienced by each sentient individual regardless as to what that individual looks like (robot, alien or animal). So X amount of pain in a sentient robot matters the same as X amount of pain, in, say, an armadillo or a human.

* When assessing a moral situation, simply look for the individual pains arising.

* Painism uses modern and secular language but is close to the moralities of Jainism, Buddhism and some other faiths, and to the concept of Ahimsa (non-violence). It is also close to Christianity’s emphasis upon love for our neighbours, where Painism would define ‘neighbours’ or ‘others’ to include all sentient (painient) things. As Gardner reminds us the Golden Rule is almost universal to the effect that we should only do to others what we would like them to do to us.

* Perhaps the great difference between beings is not whether they are alive or not, but whether or not they are painient. Increasingly we should all feel part of the community of consciousness and respect it. The founders of the RSPCA in 1824 were all anti-slavery campaigners. The parallels with todays Animal Slave Trade are considerable. Animal Cruelty is the modern equivalent of the Slave Trade.

* It is the duty of governments to protect all their sentient beings, not just the humans.

The United Nations

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be amended to become the United Nations Universal Declaration of the Rights of All Sentient Beings. Its preamble should commence with the words:

“Preamble

Whereas recognition of the capacity for suffering and happiness is the foundation for freedom, justice, peace and morality in the world.”

Until and including Article 15 of the existing Declaration, the Declaration needs little alteration except for the substitution of the words “every sentient being” instead of the word “everyone” and “no sentient being” instead of “no-one”.”

The word species can be included in Article 2.

I would suggest that in order to avoid opposition to such reforms on the grounds of “absurdity”, “going too far” and “sheer impracticality”, all such changes should commence only with cases of extreme cruelty.

Painism

The other great change to all protective legislation (including for humans) is to take the Painist line. In this, the prime object of the legislation is not necessarily to reduce the quantity of sufferers but to aim to reduce the quantity of pain (suffering) of the maximum sufferers.

Legislation

We need:-

1) A UN Convention to protect all Sentient Beings 2) The aim of such legislation to be, not the reduction in the quantity of sufferers, but the reduction in the quantity of pain felt by the maximum sufferers.

3) We need to proceed with the UDAW venture which has been around since at least 1975 or, if that continues to be stuck, to try to use amended versions of either the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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References

Barbara Gardner: Justice : Extending the Golden Rule to Animals, RE Today Magazine, Summer 2021 Edition

Alexander Joy: Ethics of the Future, Philosophy Now, 130, February 2019, pp 28-31

Richard D Ryder: Speciesism, Painism and Happiness : A Morality for the Twenty-First Century, Imprint Academic, Exeter, 2011

Richard D Ryder: Painism in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Ed Ruth Chadwick, 2nd Edition, Vol. 3, Academic Press, London, 2012

Richard D Ryder: Speciesism in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Ed Ruth Chadwick, 2nd Edition, Vol 4, Academic Press, London, 2012

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My thanks are owed to Julius Berrien, Henry Ryder, Barbara Gardner, Penny Merrett, Hugh Denman, Robert Oxlade and Peter Singer.

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(Dr Richard Ryder gained his MA (Experimental Psychology) and PhD at Cambridge University and was Mellon Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University. He invented the terms Speciesism in 1970 while working in Oxford, and Painism in 1990. He is currently President of the Animal Interfaith Alliance (AIA), President of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and in 2021 he was awarded the Peter Singer Prize.)