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Giving chickens a legal voice
Did you know there is a UK centre for animal law? Appropriately named A-Law, the charity’s mission is to promote awareness of the laws relating to animal protection, to achieve a better legal framework for animals and to see law applied properly.
Run by lawyers on a volunteer basis, A-Law's team work remotely, bringing together anyone interested in animal protection to volunteer and use their skill to help animals. They work with animal advocacy groups to identify areas where law reform or other legal solutions could address problems such as poor animal welfare standards.
You can therefore imagine our keenness to forge a relationship with A-Law to give even more voice to laying hens where possible.
As you’ve just seen, our newly launched Poultry Vet Guide will support vets in practice when diagnosing and treating poorly pet poultry. However, there is a complex regulatory regime in place regarding the medicines which can and cannot be prescribed for pet hens, which is where we sought support from A-Law.
Much ground was covered during our initial meeting with Hannah Moneagle, A-Law chairperson, and Paula Sparks, A-Law volunteer, both of whom are university lecturers with incredibly varied and complex roles.
Paula explained: “The problem facing owners of re-homed hens is that due to the risk of antibiotics entering the food system, many veterinary medicines for infection control are not licensed for their use. Our contribution has been to assist BHWT understand the legislation relating to veterinary medicine prescription and to help identify law reform opportunities in respect of veterinary regulation. This knowledge will hopefully be beneficial to the BHWT when it comes to identifying entry points to advocate for the hens' welfare in public policy.”
Looking at wider welfare issues facing chickens raised in commercial poultry systems, A-Law is a member of Eurogroup for Animals who are lobbying in many areas and working towards a cage-free Europe.
Paula added: “We are currently working on a report concerning the enforcement of animal welfare law and the BHWT team has been helpful in providing a perspective from the ground about some of the issues that changes in the regulatory system could potentially address.”
Barely a day goes by when we aren’t put in touch with incredible people who have skillsets to help us progress our work raising awareness of commercial laying hen welfare, and we are so grateful to Hannah and Paula for their support thus far.
If you have a particular skillset or bank of knowledge you think be of benefit to laying hens we’d love to hear from you. Please email [email protected]