The growing understanding of animal sentience - their ability to think, to feel pleasure and pain - has led to an increasing interest in giving rights to animals. This talk explores what that might mean for society.
At present animals are protected through animal welfare laws, but these are limited to how we keep animals and how we kill them, and not whether we should keep and kill them. Animal rights laws would grant fundamental rights to animals, such as the right to life (eg not be killed and eaten for food) and the right to bodily integrity (eg the right not to be experimented on).
Animal rights law is an emerging field of legal study, and is an optional course on the undergraduate Law degree at the Law Faculty at Cambridge.
Date:
Tuesday, 12 March, 2024 - 11:30 to 12:00
Event location:
University Centre