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Animals routinely cross international borders, whether through migration, trade, or trafficking, with the myriad ways humans use or otherwise interact with them featuring a cross-border dimension. Despite this, no international agreement guarantees their welfare or protection. Rather, animal protection on a global scale is a fragmented arrangement of national laws, regional agreements, and voluntary guidelines, each shaped by the cultural values, economic pressure, and political will particular to its jurisdiction. Understanding this relationship between international law and animal protection is critical for advocates working to improve the treatment of animals.
Animal Protection Across Borders – Animal Advocacy
Animal advocacy has largely focused on a country-by-country basis, securing protections in individual jurisdictions. This approach has yielded results, but it also has structural limitations. Because the threats to animal welfare exist on a global scale, advancements in even progressive jurisdictions cannot, on their own, resolve the problem. Often, such attempts merely displace the harm to another nation by incentivizing industries to seek out the lowest welfare nations. For example, after Germany banned male chick culling, a large number of chicks were imported from countries without such restrictions. What one state permits or restricts, from wildlife protections to slaughterhouse regulations, impacts conservation efforts, biodiversity, and public health worldwide.
Given the international scope of animal welfare issues, advocates must consider them through a global lens. Even in the absence of international standards, advocates can use one nation’s laws as reference points for other jurisdictions to follow. Advocates can also use a comparative framework across jurisdictions as a mechanism for self-examination. For instance, to raise questions such as why a given culture may regard the consumption of dogs or cats as unacceptable while treating the consumption of cows, pigs, or chickens as the norm. International comparison, therefore, can do more than illuminate divergent practices between countries. It can expose inconsistencies within a state’s own legal and cultural framework, which advocates may be able to leverage in making a case for reform at home.
Animal Protection Across Borders – Opportunities for Growth
These issues and opportunities that arise due to the global nature of animal law are explored in the International Animal Law course taught by Professor Rajesh K. Reddy. The course examines animal law developments within and among states and international organizations, paying close attention to the historical context, legal principles, economic calculations, cultural paradigms, health and environmental considerations, and moral imperatives that shape how animals’ interests are regulated. Students consider international animal law issues that impact farmed animals, wild animals, captive animals, and aquatic animals. In the course, students scrutinize past, present, and proposed treaties, declarations, and other instruments affecting animals. They are encouraged to think pragmatically about how to build more robust protections in the years ahead. By combining historical grounding with forward-looking analysis, the International Animal Law course prepares students to advance the interests of animals globally.
Through courses like International Animal Law, students in Lewis & Clark’s online Animal Law MSL and LLM programs explore complex animal protection issues from a global perspective and build the legal knowledge needed to advocate for animals across jurisdictions.