Latin America advances in the protection of animal rights

On social networks like Tik Tok, videos are proliferating in which users recreate the movie Inside Out 2 with their pets. In their imagination, dogs, cats, rabbits and even goats smile, cry, dream, get angry, get depressed… as if they were human beings. Specifically, like the teenage protagonist of the successful Pixar film.

These images go viral quickly, because the context helps: Caring for animals and respecting their rights is becoming more and more prevalent in laws and government decisions, in response to a social trend that seems irreversible. Especially in Latin America, where there have been a number of recent advances in this regard.

In Colombia, for example, Congress approved a ban on bullfighting in late May starting in 2028 (on July 22, President Gustavo Petro signed the law). In Costa Rica, the government decided to close the two state-run zoos. And Argentina is debating a law (named after President Milei’s late dog) that will toughen penalties for animal abuse.

In all cases, an argument hovers somewhere between philosophical and legal: animals have feelings (they are “sentient” beings and, therefore, are subjects of rights. Even science supports this conception. In 2012, a group of neuroscientists signed the ‘Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness’, which He concluded that humans and other animals have homologous circuits in their brains that coincide with conscious experience. That is, they have the capacity, for example, to feel fear, pain or stress.

“This changes our perspective on the planet. In other words, we are just another species, we are no longer the dominant species,” explains Laura Velasco, director of the Institute of Animal Law in Argentina. This would be the scientific basis for why animals today should be considered non-human subjects of rights.

In terms of legal advances, the lawyer brings up concepts such as “dog children”, a term that refers to the “multispecies family” that includes humans and dogs (or cats or other animals). And she highlights that there is already jurisprudence that takes this into account. “It is very interesting to consider this connection with animals as if they were another member of the family, considering that the family is a cultural concept and that any species can be part of it.”

We are just another species, we are no longer the dominant species.

Criminal lawyer Óscar Mellado, who specializes in defending animals, also highlights these advances, but warns of a contradiction: while the law recognizes animals as sentient beings, civil codes continue to consider them things. “It is doctrine and jurisprudence that have done important work, because they have been able to ‘perforate’ the Civil Code… They have been able to introduce very important cases, starting with Sandra.” This refers to the orangutan that the Argentine justice system considered a non-human person in 2014, allowing her to leave the Buenos Aires zoo to live in a nature reserve in Florida, United States.

This ruling marked a major leap forward in the world of animal rights. Since then, some Latin American countries have declared animals to be sentient beings in their constitutions, such as Colombia, Guatemala and Peru. In contrast, cockfighting remains legal in Colombia itself, as well as in Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Puerto Rico.

Animal abuse

Chicken Run is another very popular animated film. With a lot of humor, it tells the story of a group of chickens locked up on a farm, in a regime similar to that of a Nazi concentration camp. Forced to lay eggs between barbed wire and the stern gaze of a grumpy and rude guard, their daily goal is to escape from that place by any means possible.

Is it valid to compare the treatment we give to laying hens (or pigs and cows) with Nazism? This is what the film from 2000 tries to question and what more and more voices in the world repeat: the food industry treats animals terribly, and subjects them to suffering and mistreatment as if they were things. If science and law already contradict this, Should we stop these practices? And even more radically, should we stop eating animal flesh?

Vegans have the most extreme response. People who do not consume any animal products (they do not eat, wear or entertain themselves with animals) argue, like Laura Velasco, that any activity that involves mistreatment, cruelty or violence against a living being should be prohibited.

This is what led to the ban on bullfighting in Colombia, a long-standing tradition inherited from the Spanish colony. Terry Hurtado is a former councillor in Cali who has led protests against this activity since 1990. For him, bullfights do not only suffer, but also the horses used in the fight. And although these shows will only be suspended from 2028, Hurtado points out that the approved law includes a request that children be prohibited from entering from now on. “The UN Commission on the Rights of the Child classifies this as a form of psychological violence,” he argues.

This activist adds another reason to fight bullfighting: “It is a highly speciesist event, that is, a form of discrimination based on a moral prejudice for reasons of species, which corresponds to that anthropocentric tradition in which other things that are not human are despised and not valued.” In their defense, the followers of bullfighting argue that the fighting bull enjoys a privileged life compared to those who live on farms and agricultural holdings. And that, in addition, it is not always sacrificed in a bullring.

Those who could be killed are the hippos from the Magdalena River in Colombia, those imported by drug lord Pablo Escobar. They have reproduced so much that today they are considered an invasive species, so the Government has already approved a management plan to control their population, which irritates many animal rights activists.

Meat industry

Another activity under his strict eye is the industrial production of meat. There is a statistic that says that every minute that passes, 117,000 chickens, 3,000 pigs, 2,600 rabbits and 1,100 cows are slaughtered in the world. They all end up on supermarket shelves. Carlos María Uriarte, who was Uruguay’s Minister of Livestock during the presidency of Luis Lacalle Pou, defends this industry. He says that “any meat production system responds to the need to meet the omnivorous nature of human beings, who eat both meat and vegetables.”

According to data shared by Uriarte, livestock farming in Uruguay is the main export sector (US$ 3,148 million in 2023). And it employs some 80,000 people. The former head of the Rural Society of his country and livestock producer also acknowledges that the activity “violates the right of animals to be free”, but highlights that livestock production in countries such as Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil is not so intensive because there is wide access to pastoral lands, which makes it “sustainable and sustainable”. And in that sense he affirms that in feed lots (cattle fattening pens) “it is common to see expressions of joy in the animals, because they have company and safe food”.

But he admits that “there is animal abuse at all stages of meat production, which could be improved. We have to look at the level of stress that animals, for obvious reasons, suffer when they reach the slaughterhouses.”

For people like the criminal lawyer Mellado – who says he is “on the path to veganism” – if to eat meat “you have to kill a being first”, there is no doubt that livestock farming should not exist. And although he admits that his position is “unpopular”, he maintains that “our ideal is to end animal exploitation of all kinds, whether it is for food, (…) for profit, for play, for fun, for competitions… In a sentence: respect the animal as a sentient being and a subject of law”.

This is not the case with Mellado, but the most intransigent vegans maintain that, contrary to popular belief, “carnism” is a cultural, not biological, behaviour. And that is why we can replace meat in our diet. Even the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics of the United States assures that replacing animal proteins with vegetable ones is perfectly healthy.

“Meat will continue to be a very important food for humanity,” disagrees Uriarte. For him, rather than prohibiting it, the solution is to incorporate into industries like his concepts such as that animals have the right to a dignified life. Something that cattle ranchers or cowboys of yesteryear did not even consider. Much less bullfighters, cock breeders or circus owners who entertained millions of human beings with animals until not long ago.

LEONARDO OLIVA

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