06.04.2025
Category: Fur and Fur Farming
The Italian Senate has officially passed Bill AS 1308, a significant legislative advancement aimed at reinforcing animal protection across the country. The bill, previously approved by the Chamber under the name AC 30, introduces comprehensive amendments to the criminal code, criminal procedure code, and related provisions to address and deter crimes against animals, including the brutal practice of dogfighting.
One of the key aspects of the new law is the redefinition of the criminal code’s Title IX bis, replacing the outdated concept of “Crimes against the human sentiment toward animals” with the clearer and more progressive “Crimes against animals.” This change reinforces the idea that animals are deserving of legal protection in their own right, as sentient beings, not merely as subjects whose suffering might offend human sensitivity.
The bill also significantly increases penalties for acts of cruelty, including the killing of animals without necessity, mistreatment, and violations of the ban on unauthorized animal fighting or competitions. In particular, sentences for organizing or participating in animal fights have been increased, aiming to better deter those involved in these violent and illegal activities.
Additionally, the law introduces harsher penalties for crimes committed in aggravating circumstances, such as in the presence of minors or against multiple animals, as well as for the dissemination of videos or images of such acts via digital platforms. This is a critical step in tackling the spread of animal cruelty content online.
“The final approval of AS 1308 represents another important step in the protection of animals in Italy. We’ve made further progress towards the full recognition of non-human animals as sentient beings and victims of crimes, finally overcoming the outdated concept of exclusively protecting the ‘human sentiment’ towards them. We are pleased with the increase in penalties for dogfighting, a criminal activity that we have been combating for years through the ‘Io non combatto project,’ and the expansion of penalties to anyone participating in dogfighting in any capacity,” said Alessandro Fazzi, institutional relations consultant for Humane World for Animals Italy.
“We hope that it will soon be possible to intervene to offer even greater protection for minors, and also to introduce specific social rehabilitation programs for all those who commit crimes against animals, starting with those who participate in dog fights,” continued Fazzi. “By combining these requests with what has been approved today, our country will be able to take truly significant steps toward a more advanced legal civilization.”
A notable provision also addresses the management and recovery of animals seized in criminal proceedings. Under the new legislation, these animals can now be permanently assigned to certified organizations that can provide care and rehabilitation, helping to ensure they are not left in limbo during often-lengthy legal processes. The bill further includes a nationwide ban on keeping dogs chained, a practice often linked to dogfighting, except in strictly defined health or safety circumstances.
“The recently approved bill marks a significant step forward for all those who dedicate themselves every day to the protection of animals. It is a strong signal that strengthens the recognition of animals as sentient beings, deserving of direct protection. It also represents a concrete evolution on an operational level, particularly for the management of animals who are victims of crimes, taken from criminal circuits, and placed under judicial seizure,” said Federica Faiella, president of Fondazione Cave Canem, “I’m especially thinking of the dogs involved in fighting: this law finally recognizes their right to be immediately placed on a path of psychological and physical recovery and, where possible, welcomed into a family setting. This avoids the paradox of animals saved from abuse who remain trapped in the judicial system for years, confined to detention facilities.”
Although some proposed amendments, such as dedicated funding for law enforcement training or the ban on the import and export of hunting trophies from endangered species, were not included in the final version, the bill nonetheless marks a decisive move forward. It modernizes Italy’s approach to animal welfare by aligning legal language and enforcement practices with contemporary views on animal rights and ethical treatment.
By recognizing animals as victims of crime and ensuring stronger legal and institutional tools to protect them, this bill lays the groundwork for more robust animal welfare policies in the future. It sends a clear message that cruelty against animals will be met with serious consequences and that animal protection is a core part of a civilized, humane society.
AI may soon be able to decode whalespeak, among other forms of communication – but what nature has to say may not be a surprise
harles Darwin suggested that humans learned to speak by mimicking birdsong: our ancestors’ first words may have been a kind of interspecies exchange. Perhaps it won’t be long before we join the conversation once again.
The race to translate what animals are saying is heating up, with riches as well as a place in history at stake. The Jeremy Coller Foundation has promised $10m to whichever researchers can crack the code. This is a race fuelled by generative AI; large language models can sort through millions of recorded animal vocalisations to find their hidden grammars. Most projects focus on cetaceans because, like us, they learn through vocal imitation and, also like us, they communicate via complex arrangements of sound that appear to have structure and hierarchy.
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https://www.ibanet.org/Legal-systems-increasingly-utilised-to-protect-animals
Joanne Harris – Monday 2 June 2025
In April, Michoacán became the sixth Mexican state to ban bullfighting, while the previous month, legislators in Mexico City approved legislation to reform the sport. These reforms will ban ‘traditional’ bullfighting, limiting the length of contests and preventing matadors from killing their animal opponents – making the sport ‘bloodless’. Meanwhile in 2024, the Colombian President signed a bill that calls on the country’s government to completely ban bullfights by 2027.
These developments are part of a number of recent legislative and legal efforts around the world aimed at enhancing animal welfare. In New Zealand, the government plans to outlaw greyhound racing – a result, it says, of the significant number of injuries and deaths suffered by the dogs. It intends to introduce legislation later this year. Meanwhile, a growing number of non-profit organisations are seeking to protect animal rights through the courts.
‘It’s unmistakeable that there’s a growing trend in favour of protecting animals through the legal system,’ says Christopher Berry, Executive Director of US-based organisation the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP). His organisation is now 30 years old, but Berry believes the use of the law to enhance animal welfare has taken strides forward in recent years.
‘We’re currently in the midst of a global change in society’s relationship with animals,’ Berry says, highlighting how science is delving deeper into their intelligence, emotions and communication. There’s reportedly a boom in such research, with an ever-increasing range of species observed using tools or playing for fun.
Helen Mitcheson, a director at non-profit legal organisation Cet Law – which focuses on advocating for the protection of whales, porpoises and dolphins – agrees science has been one of the factors in the growing regulation of facilities that house captive cetaceans in recent years. However, ‘there’s not one driver or one-size-fits-all movement to stop captivity or change practices in captivity and in a lot of cases it’s not even a legal driver. It’s driven by legislative, political and social actions,’ Mitcheson says.
Looking back at the history of the anti-bullfighting movement in Mexico, Cecilia Stahlhut, Secretary of the IBA Healthcare and Life Sciences Committee, explains that the sport was suspended in Mexico City in 2022, but the ban was later overturned by the country’s Supreme Court in 2023. Since then, groups advocating both for and against bullfighting have been vocal on the subject.
The details of Mexico City’s reforms are still awaited. The city’s government has seven months to publish secondary regulations, detailing exactly how the changes will be brought about. ‘Most of the groups that support bullfights will wait until that moment to submit any claim against this amendment. That’s when the real legal fight will begin,’ says Stahlhut, who’s also a partner at Hogan Lovells in Mexico City.
While other states have already introduced regulations to prohibit bullfights – and also contests involving dogs – some are waiting to see how the situation in Mexico City develops, says Stahlhut. However, she adds that Mexico has strong regulations around animal protection. At the end of 2024, the Mexican Constitution was amended to explicitly protect animals from cruelty and to allow Congress to legislate in matters of their protection and welfare.
At a federal level, these amendments to the Constitution enhanced the protection of animals in the country, and Stahlhut says the Mexico City proposals on bullfighting would bring its state legislation in line with federal laws. ‘It’s just to be consistent with what the government at a state and federal level has been working on. You can’t criminalise certain acts against animals and not other ones,’ she says.
However, legislation protecting animals can lead to complex knock-on effects. In 2021, France banned whale and dolphin displays at aquariums – a move that has, according to park managers, directly led to the closure of facilities such as Marineland in Antibes, which shut its doors in January. Mitcheson says the park is still responsible for the care of the dolphins it had in captivity, and questions remain about where they should be sent.
Similar questions arise in the case of Happy the elephant, who has been in captivity in the Bronx Zoo since 1977. NhRP brought a case to the New York courts arguing that Happy was entitled to the right of habeas corpus – which would allow a challenge to the elephant’s detention. The New York Court of Appeals rejected the case in 2022, but two judges wrote dissenting opinions saying Happy did have a right to freedom – even if that involved merely moving to a more spacious sanctuary. Bronx Zoo operator the Wildlife Conservation Society maintains its elephants are well cared for.
Efforts to give animals legal rights are growing worldwide. In 2024, Polynesian Indigenous leaders signed the He Whakaputanga Moana – or Declaration for the Ocean – granting whales legal personhood. That move was followed by a pro bono initiative involving the UK’s Simmons & Simmons, marine law firm Ocean Vision Legal and the Pacific Whale Fund, to draft proposed legislation called ‘Te Mana o Te Tohorā’ (‘the enduring power of whales’), which would offer nations a pathway to adopt similar laws. ‘Legal personhood for environmental bodies is a real topic,’ says Mitcheson. ‘It’s very academic at the moment because the difficulty of it is implementation.’
Cultural barriers will probably also remain a challenge when it comes to implementing legislation protecting animals, and there are significant differences in the ways jurisdictions look at these issues – what may be permitted in one country could be banned in another.
But recent trends certainly show a move towards enhanced animal welfare protection through legislation, regulation and the courts. ‘There’s a lot of energy and there is a lot of progress being made,’ says Berry. ‘It’s incremental and it’s frustrating and there’s a lot of obstacles in our way, but I’m very positive about the way this is headed in the long term. How fast it spreads and how quickly remains to be seen, but the trend line is for more protection and higher legal status for animals.’
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Campaign, “Invisible Animals”
https://sentience.ch/en/invisible-animals/
Invisible Animals
In Switzerland, animal welfare issues are mainly discussed with regard to wildlife, companion animals and so-called “farmed animals”. In doing so, we forget about the individual whose interests we neglect the most and who are hardly – if at all – protected by the law. We are talking about the “invisible” animals – pigeons, rats, bees and fish.
These animals are subjected to immense daily suffering. Pesticides strip bees of their navigational abilities; rats face an agonising death from rodenticides; sick pigeons lie lifeless on the streets of our cities; and fish are confined in aquaculture basins under conditions that would be deemed unacceptable even in factory farming.
Considering the capacity for suffering as a crucial moral criterion is the core concern of Sentience. Therefore, we believe that all these animals deserve more attention, consideration, and protection. To eradicate today’s injustices, we must, together with you, sharpen public awareness and advocate for animals’ interests in politics.
Even small changes – such as banning certain rodenticides or pesticides, maintaining pigeon lofts, and improving water quality in aquaculture – can improve the well-being of billions of animals. By signing our petitions today, you help bring political attention to the “invisible” animals.
https://aeon.co/essays/human-exceptionalism-is-a-danger-to-all-human-and-nonhuman
This January, a 57-year-old man in Baltimore received a heart transplant from a pig. Xenotransplantation involves using nonhuman animals as sources of organs for humans. While the idea of using nonhuman animals for this purpose might seem troubling, many humans think that the sacrifice is worth it, provided that we can improve the technology (the man died two months later). As the bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Brendan Parent put it last year: ‘Animal welfare certainly counts, but human lives carry more ethical weight.’
Of course, xenotransplantation is not the only practice through which humans impose burdens on other animals to derive benefits for ourselves. We kill more than 100 billion captive animals per year for food, clothing, research and other purposes, and we likely kill more than 1 trillion wild animals per year for similar purposes. We might not bother to defend these practices frequently. But when we do, we offer the same defence: Human lives carry more ethical weight.
But is this true?
Most humans take this idea of human exceptionalism for granted. …..
I sadly accept that there will always be some folk who enjoy eating dead animals as part of their diet. Saying that, a reduction in meat consumption and the associated reduction in animal murders (slaughter houses) can only be seen as a positive from my corner.
But I am a realist also, accepting that everyone on the planet will never move to plant based. Thus as welfare campaigners, we have a responsibility to ensure that we get the best for animals that we can. The global tide is rather rapidly moving towards plant based diets – and that can only be positive; very positive. In other ways, a negative global tide is surrounding us in the form of global warming and the ‘master human’ who knows best – no, ask the whales !
The more posts I can write about on this site re the ‘killing factories’ (they are SLAUGHTER HOUSES, not abattoirs – a place where animals are killed for their meat) BEING CLOSED DOWN; then the better.
We all saw that the recent closure of Arley ritual slaughterhouse; a closure really attributed to their own non conformances with national UK laws which are supposed to give animals the maximum protection ?? at the times of their deaths. Does frightening the shit out of a sheep about to be slaughtered by playing a recording of a howling Wolf in the background constitute UK laws regarding slaughter legislation? – no, they do it for kicks which really shows the types they are.
They failed in many areas, they were closed down – end of. WONDERFUL.
So, as the EU Parliament now commences votes on its priorities for the next long term EU budget, all of us in the welfare camp are calling for higher funding in the transition to better animal welfare practices in accordance with the vast majority of EU citizens demands.
The ‘Multiannual Financial Framework’; or MFF, is a seven year framework regulating the EU’s annual budget. The current long term budget runs until the end of 2027; so now we have to start work !
Ahead of the proposals in the next long term budget; expected in July; the Budget Committee of the European Parliament; has set out its priorities in an own-initiative report. It emphasises the need to meet more ambition to meet citizens expectations in the context of the US retreating from its global role; Russia’s war on the Ukraine; economic and social challenges, EU competitiveness and the worsening climate and biodiversity crisis.
The report implies that the budget should finance public goods, support the resilience and competitiveness of EU small scale farms and better help protect the environment. It highlights that the ‘Common Agriculture Policy’, or CAP, is crucial for food security, and that spending must persue EU objectives.
The Eurogroup for Animals call for the long term spending on the CAP to consider the expectations that EU citizens have on improved animal welfare. These expectations are not yet fully met, and the importance of animal welfare as a public good has been repeatedly demonstrated by the European Citizens’ Initiative ‘End The Cage Age, as well as the latest barometer on animal welfare. More than 9 out of 10 Europeans state that it is important to protect the welfare of farmed animals; with an absolute majority deem it as very important. More than 8 out of 10 believe that farmed animals in their countries should be given more protection than they are at present.
There is a crucial need for adequate funding from the long term budget for the transition to new animal welfare rules and regulations. The proposal for a review of the EU farm animal directive is envisaged in 2026.reduce production costs;
Financing better animal welfare in the EU is not just an ethical priority, it is a financial security for the EU’s future. Improved animal welfare can and would reduce production costs, enhance the product quality, drive innovation and strengthen the EU’s global market postioning.
Adequate funding from the MFF for the CAP is crucial to support farmers in transitioning to the new animal welfare rules. There needs to be higher funding for farmers to transition to higher animal welfare standards; and the need to support early transitioners is a vital element.
As someone with a special interest in campaigning for, and stopping long distance live animal transports; enough evidence has been supplied over decades by investigators to show the abuses with the ‘EU system’.
It is now time for them to step up to the plate; ACCEPT THE MASSIVE ABUSES UNCOVERED, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT !!
We would like to introduce you to an excellent site; named ‘Our Compass’ https://our-compass.org/about/ which is run by friend Stacey in the United States.
OC, as will now refer to it, is a ‘vegan abolitionist community focused on nonhuman animals, the harm inflicted on them due to human exploitation and speciesism, and the necessity of veganism as the only meaningful and humane response to support animals and their liberation from humans’.
As you will see by clicking on the above link, OC provides an insight into many major animal abuse / suffering issues, as well as photos, videos, and sample letters which you can use as a baseline for taking your own campaigning further.
For example:
OC has many different resources and subjects. I (Mark) know that Stacey (OC) will agree with myself and Diana when I say that like this WAV site, it is often harder; no, impossible; to give every subject animal around the world the coverage that they deserve for their individual cases – by trying to cover everything, you simply touch on a host of activities – Fur; Live transport; Intensive farming; Donkeys in the brick brick industry; Vivisection and big pharma; Hunting; The environment; Saving the Whales; Veganism; Cruelty free; AND Human Rights when coverage is necessary; human traffiking; or in our case, being a voice for the wonderful Tibetan people and their suffering under Chinese rule; – we become an information / reference source on so many issues rather than the ‘specialist’ covering just one.
Whatever; both OC and ourselves are more than happy to push for the day when ALL the cages are opened and the occupants liberated; when you do not cover your body with the skin of an animal that has lived and died under the barbaric fur production industry; when the hunts no loger hunt or animals are spared from the suffering of live transport / live exports.
If you have not visited OC yet; we know that you will find an endless resource the of information and links:
Enjoy this amazing site – we do !
Regards Mark, Diana and Stacey (OC).
Well, novel certainly … not sure we may hope for Chris, CBE, being sainted by the Vatican any time soon … even with the link to S. Francis.
14 May 2025 7:39pm BST
Chris Packham with his portrait, which it is said depicts him as “a living saint”, in the Fitzrovia Chapel Credit: Richard Ansett/Radio Times
Chris Packham has posed as St Francis of Assisi in a portrait celebrating him as a “living saint”.
The portrait of the presenter and environmental campaigner is now on show on the altar of the Fitzrovia Chapel, central London.
Originally commissioned by Radio Times magazine to mark Earth Day, it is the work of photographic artist Richard Ansett.
Packham is surrounded by images of some of the UK’s most endangered species. Mr Ansett said it also made reference to Packham’s neurodiversity – the presenter was diagnosed with autism in his 40s.
“I hope that every pixel of this portrait offers a safe space for anyone challenged by neurodiversity. Packham’s remarkable connection to the natural world drives him relentlessly to save us from ourselves,” Mr Ansett said.
The portrait of Packham is available to view until May 21 at the former chapel, where it is described as a work “elevating him to the status of living saint”.
Chris Packham is surrounded by some of the UK’s most endangered species in the artwork Credit: Richard Ansett/Radio Times
Packham said: “This photo is about a fundamental level of engagement, an engagement of equals. It conveys the importance of nature to heal us, provide us with a sanctuary in times of terrible trouble.
“But the species featured are also rare or declining so it serves to remind us that our one and only home, our Earth, is on a brink too many are refusing to see and act to protect and repair.
“This is a photograph about love, a love of life, all life.”
The featured species include the red squirrel, the house martin, the woodcock and the hedgehog.
Mr Ansett, an award-winning photographer whose previous works include Sir Grayson Perry in the style of the Madonna and Child, added that the Packham portrait “recognises the difficulties that he has prevailed over to become a success in his career and a positive light for so many people”.
It is “a personal tribute to Packham’s humanity in challenging the worst parts of ours, in our ambivalence to the destruction created in the wake of our own needs”, the photographer said.
World Animals Voice 