5ANIMALS FOR ENTERTAINMENT
Introduction
Animals are used in many ways for human entertainment. This can range from hunting and angling to the use of animals in circuses, local customs, advertisements, television programmes and films. Many of these activities have a long history, which is often used as an argument to perpetuate them as part of our ‘cultural heritage’.
According to the European Union’s Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), the welfare of animals should be taken into account ‘while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the Member States relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage’.
The Party for the Animals believes that animals are sentient and feeling living beings that must be treated with care and respect. It therefore has objections to animals being used for human entertainment to the cost of their freedom and welfare. These objections are naturally the strongest concerning animals that are injured and killed, such as occurs in hunting and angling, or if the animals are subjected to fear and stress. The objections to other kinds of entertainment relate to inadequate housing and the restriction of freedom for the animals in question.
Measures
| 5.1 | The passage in the Amsterdam Treaty regarding the cultural and religious traditions that involve animals, such as bull-fighting and slaughter without stunning, should be scrapped. |
Angling
Measures
| 5.2 | Angling is discouraged and should be curtailed through education, the abolition of fishing rallies, barbed hooks, live nets and fishing competitions. In the long-run, a ban on angling is desirable. |
Circuses
Measures
| 5.3 | The use of animals in circuses should be banned. Making animals perform tricks is disrespectful, while condemning them to a life behind bars is unacceptable. Wild animals in particular experience serious problems. |
Zoos
It is unacceptable to catch animals in the wild and keep them in zoos and dolphinariums for the purpose of human entertainment. Their living environment is so drastically reduced that they are unable to exhibit their natural behaviour. The argument that zoos have an educational value is unmerited. Zoos do not allow visitors to see how animals behave in their natural environment. Moreover, they tacitly suggest that it is morally justifiable to rob animals of their freedom in order to put them on display for people. Zoos can only provide a (preferably temporary) acceptable form of housing only if animals cannot survive in or be returned to their natural environment. The original aim is thus transformed into a shelter for wild animals, or otherwise endangered animals and species. In this case, the animals’ enclosures should come as close as possible to their natural living conditions. In general, the breeding of animals in zoos is undesirable, given that the new animals will have to spend their lives in captivity. An exception can be made for scientifically grounded breeding programmes that focus on conservation with a view to returning the animals to nature.
Measures
| 5.4 | Governmental funding of zoos should be stopped unless the sole aim is to provide sanctuary to endangered species or to provide endangered populations with new blood. |
Children's farms
Measures
| 5.5 | Animals kept on children’s farms should be kept and cared for according to the natural behaviour of the species in question. Optimal housing conditions should be striven for for each species; social animals must not be housed alone. |
| 5.6 | Animals must not be bred on children’s farms. To maintain numbers, surplus animals for other children’s farms and animal shelters should be acquired. Elderly animals should not be killed simply due to their age. |
Sport with animals
The problem with the use of animals in sport is that this often damages their health and welfare. This applies particularly to angling (which is unjustly also referred to as a kind of sport), which involves catching fish with hooks. However, there are also other forms of sports/hobbies that can compromise animal welfare due to animal-unfriendly training methods, overworking and the premature killing of animals that are discarded due to a decline in their performance. For instance, hundreds of thousands of homing pigeons in the Netherlands lose their way each year due to the extreme demands of pigeon racing. They subsequently end up in bird sanctuaries and cities, where the shelter and care of these animals and their progeny is accompanied by high costs. The Party for the Animals takes a positive stance towards agility training and play activities for dogs, which do not involve any element of competition or financial gain, as long as they do not compromise the animals’ health and welfare.
Measures
| 5.7 | Strict legislation to safeguard the welfare of animals used for sport and recreation. |
| 5.8 | Long flights for pigeons should be banned, particularly for young birds. |
| 5.9 | No overnight flights should be organised for homing pigeons. |
Recreational horse-riding
Measures
| 5.10 | Legal regulations for the housing of horses should be drawn up, which satisfy the behavioural needs of the animals. |
Events and media recordings
Animals are widely used for events and media recordings (advertisements, television programmes and films). The housing and care of these animals, the training methods and the knowledge of those working with the animals sometimes leaves a lot to be desired.
Measures
| 5.11 | The leasing of animals must be prohibited. |
| 5.12 | Welfare requirements should be drawn up with respect to animals that are used for events. The way in which they are treated must not be in conflict with their nature and natural behaviour, their welfare and health must not be compromised or lead to fear and stress. No stimulants must be administered to the animals and they must not be incited to engage in activities that pose a danger to their health and welfare or are incompatible with their self-worth. A ‘positive list’ should be drawn up to establish which animal species are suitable for this. |
| 5.13 | There should be a behavioural code for the broadcasting of realistic images in which the animal is the victim of abuse or humiliation. Such images set a poor example. |