In the Loophole

Part One

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.

Big Top Society

Just a  few words about the recent agreement by MPs to introduce a ban on wild animals in circuses.

It's an excellent motion: it isn't binding, it isn't an 'immediate possibility' (in the words of Ministers who tried to scupper it, despite its being backed by parliamentary and public opinion) and it isn't going to happen until after the outcome of a legal challenge to a similar ban in Austria has been decided.

The official reason for the government holding back on the ban, preferring to mumble about the possibility of reinforcing existing laws, is that a ban might infringe the rights of circus owners under European Law, though as Allegra Stratton points out, the European Commission does allow individual members to make exceptions on animal welfare grounds.

Mary Creagh, Shadow Environment Secretary, described the government's handling of the motion as 'confused.' This presumably refers to the botched three-line whip that the Conservatives put out against voting in favour of the ban, and to their policy of acknowledging the obligation laid on them to take action while persisting in their obvious unwillingness to do so. It could be said that their sympathies lie with entrepreneurial circus-owners (and the performing animal company in Cameron's constituency) but it seems to me this is typical of the way the Tories tread water over animal welfare issues, in a way that ultimately does no good to man or beast.

Take their handling of the impending badger cull, which Caroline Spelman is 'strongly minded' to back. If the current government had shown more strength of mind they might be offering to deliver on the previous government's promise of an oral vaccine for badgers by 2015. This solution would be more reliably effective than the hugely expensive culls (likely to cost in the region of £92 million), which carry with them the risk if not likelihood of perturbation (whereby TB escalates in  areas surrounding the culling hotspots). The government seems to have put the kibosh on vaccination, and is apparently committed to frustrating progress in animal welfare whenever it can.

The Conservatives' behaviour over the circus issue seems particularly characteristic because the preservation of old-style circuses fits in with the Enid Blytonesque aesthetic of Cameron's fantastical Big Society, where we all head down to the Big Top for some big laughs. Never mind a bit of entrenched cruelty or injustice, it's all in good fun.

Notably the embarrassingly chippy Tory MP Mark Pritchard - a self-described 'little council-house lad' and leader of the Parliamentary campaign for the ban - does not have a place in this vision.

Notes on a Pledge

Yesterday Lynne Featherstone reaffirmed the  reaffirmation she made on the 29th March 2011 of the government's pledge to ban the use of animal testing in the making of household products. VP awaits concrete action, but is not holding her breath.

 The initial pledge, made in the coalition's 2010 programme for government was taken from the Lib Dem Manifesto, and is the only one of three pledges therein to have made its way into the coalition programme. Given the general reluctance of the Conservatives to engage in animal welfare (compared to the other main parties, Tory MPs have shown the least support for animal protection EDMs), it seems unrealistic to expect any quick movement on the testing ban, although it is an obvious and uncontroversial move. I suspect many people  would be surprised that a practice that has been banned in the production of cosmetics is still officially acceptable in the production of washing-up liquid.

It turns out there are ethical products that can be identified by a 'leaping bunny' logo. Ever  heard of it? Thought not. The brands associated with the BUAV 'Cleaning up Cruelty' campeign (2008) can be found on their website, but not in any supermarket I have ever been to. Admittedly this is because I have only ever been to Tesco (the Co-operative and Marks and Spencer are predictably virtuous) but then, I am a  woman of the people.

And there is a benighted minority who don't go to expensive supermarkets, or moniter ill-publicised Home Office statements. Animal rights, as an ethical issue, is less prevalent  than it seems, and vivisection more so. The recherche nature of the brands that have voluntarily opted out of the use of animal testing, or ingredients whose production involves it, reflects the problem with consumer-led morality: going about your business without unknowingly propogating cruelty and exploitation involves more money and research than most can spare. Especially over  such an unglamorous issue as household cleaning.