Bringing you a digest of news and opinion pieces you might have missed from the past week, covering all things animal agriculture, animal protection and environmental justice.

Fur and foie gras on course to be banned within the year under new UK Bill

Imports of fur and foie gras are set to be banned by law within months, promised environment minister Lord Goldsmith, reported the Telegraph on Friday.

The Animals Abroad Bill - to be debated in Parliament early this year - also includes provisions to ban imports of 7,000 species of animals hunted as trophies.

The announcement has sparked a furore and fierce opposition from the UK’s leading fur industry body, which stated that it was unpopular and damaging to relations "with fur producing countries like Canada and the US".

France’s foie gras producers’ association has also complained about the potential ban, with its leader saying that she was “shocked and outraged”. What a shame.

Lord Goldsmith discussed plans for the wide-ranging ban on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. The new bill would cover "a whole bunch of issues like foie gras imports, fur imports, elephant attractions", he said.

Animals? Call them ‘non-human persons’

Can a cow be legally protected from becoming a burger? Should it be illegal to keep animals in zoos? Are animals deserving of rights protecting their basic interests such as being alive, not being harmed and being free?

Cambridge-based academics have opened the first centre for the study of animal rights law in Europe to examine those questions and more as the push for animals to be treated as “non-human persons” gains momentum and animal sentience is increasingly recognised in UK legislation, reported The Times on Sunday.

The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law (CCARL) aims to become the go-to resource for lawmakers drafting new legislation involving animals.

The wildest animal escapes of 2021

Live Science rounded up the ‘wildest’ animal escapes of last year. It’s always wonderful to read about animals self-liberating, but always an odd reminder of our hypocrisy when it comes to rooting for escaping animals.

From the leopards who broke out of a Chinese zoo to ‘India’ the tiger who ran amok on the streets of Houston, it is a varied round-up of wild animals finding their way out of tricky situations, including a tale of sharks who used canals to escape toxic algae.

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Animal crossings: the ecoducts helping wildlife navigate busy roads across the world

Along the same lines, the Guardian on Wednesday ran a feel-good piece about the measures urban planners and civil engineers around the world are taking to help animals avoid roads, railways and other dangerous human infrastructure.

Sloths in Costa Rica with their ‘canopy bridges’, India and its ‘tiger corridors’ and Florida’s ‘alligator alley’ all make for fascinating stories of humans considering the needs of wild animals.

WASHINGTON POST: “Tax dollars should not be used to torment animals” 

In a letter to the Washington Post on Sunday, in reference to the earlier Metro article “USDA cites breeder for mistreating its beagles”, reader Kyler Vogan wrote:

“The National Institutes of Health spends taxpayers’ dollars to torment and kill animals in cruel tests every year, and it has bought dogs from Envigo. These dogs feel pain and fear. They yearn for love and companionship just like the treasured dogs who share our homes. Yet they are treated like puppy-producing factories and test tubes with tails. Dogs who survive the horrific conditions at Envigo will likely endure a lifetime of constant caging, punctuated only by painful, terrifying procedures during which they’re infected with diseases, cut open, injected with chemicals or violated in other ways. Experimenting on animals causes massive suffering and death, but it rarely results in cures or effective treatments for humans.  

“This must stop. Tax dollars should not be used to torment animals. Funds should be redirected to modern, human-relevant research methods instead.”

POLITICS.CO.UK: “Change is happening for animals – and 2022 will be a landmark year”

Elisa Allen, writing for Politics.co.uk on Friday, looks forward to the next 12 months for animals:

“With momentum now on our side, we’ll continue to make progress for animals – and 2022 is sure to be a year of landmark legislative change for animals. First up is trophy hunting. Perhaps one day, this display of bloodlust will be listed as a sign of a psychiatric disorder, as it should be today. In the meantime, the government can and likely will take a stand against this cruel pastime by introducing a ban on the import of hunting trophies early next year. The long-awaited – and much-needed – piece of legislation is set to be one of the most robust of its kind, preventing hunters from bringing back the heads, hides, and other body parts of thousands of endangered and threatened species and thereby deterring them from taking part in the killing sprees in which they obtain them.

“Live exports will also be banned from England and Wales – at long last. The move will distance us from this horrid trade, which crams cows and sheep into barren shipping containers without fresh air, food, or adequate water and marinates them alive in their own waste. Let’s hope the new law has a domino effect around the world, because animals raised for their flesh already endure extreme misery – the absolute least we can do is spare them the additional trauma of an arduous journey overseas, only to be killed at their destination.”

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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