2012 looks like it’s going to be a good year for broken promises. Back in July 2011, when this blog and I were young, Lynne Featherstone made and later reaffirmed a pledge to ban the practice of animal testing in the making of household products. This story, like most animal-related policies, floated briefly into the media’s field of vision like a dead fish bobbing to the ocean’s surface before sinking away to rot in obscurity. Now it transpires that the government is considering weakening its policy by permitting manufacturers to use ingredients that have been tested on animals, so that the ban will only apply to finished household products.
This government seems to have settled nicely into a long-beloved paradigm for dealing with animal rights: make a pledge, wait a bit, then break it, or introduce a loophole so big that there’s more hole than law. In March 2010 Featherstone stated in Parliamentary Questions that the ban would apply both to finished products and all ingredients, ‘although in practice mainly the latter are tested’, so she can hardly be unaware of the extremity of the planned betrayal. Animal testing will insinuate itself into the household cleaning industry in much the same way that eggs from battery farms have been allowed into the market through the back door, as ‘liquid’ ingredients, even while the ‘solid’ products can’t legally be sold.
Cameron’s government shows an incredibly healthy lack of respect for the birds and the beasts, as well as the British voter: neither its own laws nor public opinion (about battery farming, vivisection or, for example, Andrew Lansley’s death-and-glory healthcare reforms) will stop them from doing exactly what they want, which apparently is to destroy every form of welfare. If you can think of one nice thing that this government does, please send your answer to me on a postcard.
Part 2
I am exaggerative, but it’s fair to say that the majority of elected representatives seem to be actively against most measures in favour of animal welfare. The movement for banning animal-tested cosmetics is not controversial, but it is embattled. A law banning it, agreed on in 1993 and meant to be put in effect in 1998 was delayed first to 2000, then to 2002, and now its promised fulfilment in 2013 looks likely to be delayed by another 10 years. This issue is currently in the hands of John Dalli, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, who in 2011 told the Humane Society that he ‘would not commit to supporting a legislative ban on selling animal tested cosmetics.’
Supporting measures like this is not worth a politician’s effort, because it alienates businesses while gaining no significant political rewards, and backtracking generates little scandal. The impermeability of the British media to animal rights can be demonstrated by the fact that an open letter to Dalli from Leona Lewis, sent on Valentine’s Day and asking him to support the ban, barely got any attention. Leona Lewis! Don’t pretend you don’t know who she is. I certainly do.
The question is, can anything save the Humane Society’s ‘Cruelty-free 2013’ campaign if celebrities can’t? They’ve got some really good ones – even Ricky Gervais has taken time out from calling people mongs to fight the good fight. The government isn’t interested, the media isn’t interested – perhaps the public isn’t very interested either. But I’m not the first one to be troubled by the arrogance that leads politicians to break promises, not in the face of overwhelming necessity, but simply because they know they can get away with it.
Unapologetic: Ricky Gervais is not ashamed of his third nipple.
