It's a fraught issue, I think... To be honest, I only started giving the animal rights thing a lot of thought after my little sister came to visit. She's not a deer or anything, it's that she's just gone vegan and joined some animal rights group at her uni (I think it's the ALF [although, now I've finished this piece, I've found out that I'm actually wrong on that front: it's a small Kent-based group who're a bit less crazy-nuts bonkers]).
You see, as an argumentative and scientific-minded sort, I found something to disagree with on my sister's assertions that all creatures have a right to exist and [something something something...]. I stopped listening after a while. But my sister definitely got me thinking, so I suppose she succeeded in at least one sense. Since I'm basically a geek, my curiosity got the better of me, and lo and behold I found myself reading animal rights law at 2am on a work night. After a little research, here's what I found:
The Law as it Stands
The first thing to note is that the Animal Rights legislature in Britain is actually fairly up to date. The last major paper, the Animal Welfare Act, was introduced in 2006 (2008 in Scotland, with a few changes). Its remit is for the care of domesticated and farm animals, and is actually pretty strict. What it doesn't cover is laws on humane slaughter for meat, minimum space requirements for kept animals or using animals in scientific procedures or experiments.
