The Observer
09.01.22 43UK as a leader in animal
welfare? Well, some animals
are more equal than others
To protect game birds,
the government has
decided it’s fi ne to kill
crows and jackdawsWith a zillion
images of themselves to choose
from, many taken by a reverent
state photographer, Boris and
Carrie Johnson used a picture of
their dog, Dilyn, for their recent
Christmas card.
If unlikely to appeal to the current
pope , the pet is, they presumably
concluded, more generally
inoffensive, ostensibly uninvolved
in the family’s tireless
requisitioning
of free luxury
goods and, on
a more positive note, a
pointed reminder of the
household’s remaining
claim to virtue. Or if that’s
putting it too strongly: to
their formal recognition as
sentient beings.
For say what you like about
his indifference to human
welfare, not excluding that of
close family members, the PM
has, by his standards, worked
tirelessly for lobsters. Better still,his wife, who’s employed by the
Aspinall Foundation , a zookeeper
so upmarket that it disdains
zookeeping, is routinely described
as an “animal rights campaigner”.
There is talk of a Carrie wildlife
show on Netfl ix. True, lizards,
adders, insects and many other less
immediately captivating creatures
have yet to see the benefi t of having,
in Downing Street, these natural
successors to Armand and Michaela
Denis or the Born Free couple –
but have we mentioned Dilyn, the
famous rescue dog?
Since the start of this
administration, animals –
occasionally held aloft for the
purpose – have been the couple’s
way of signalling that they are
not, after all, shits. Johnson
may have failed, for instance, to
free Nazanin Zaghari -Ratcliffe ,
having idly blighted her hopes of
liberation, but consider his work for
badgers, following his girlfriend’s
(as she then was) well-publicised
intervention.
In 2019 the future Mrs Johnson,
after a briefi ng from Dominic Dyer,
then CEO of the Badger Trust , got
Johnson, not formerly known for
any interest in animals beyond
dressing up and killing them , to
stop an imminent badger cull
in Derbyshire. A judicial review,
brought by the National Farmers’
Union , was later dismissed. Carrie
Symonds went on to condemn
trophy hunting, elephant rides
and the fur trade and becamePeta’s UK 2020 person of the year.
“Symonds is a true ally to animals
and her activism gets results,” Peta
said, citing her condemnation of
monkey labour.
As for her husband, his
government later produced an
Action Plan for Animal Welfare , a
characteristically boastful document
in which George Eustice , the
environment secretary, explained
why, even as it discards EU
regulation, the UK will lead the
world in animal welfare. “The way
we treat animals refl ects our values
and the kind of people we are,” he
wrote. “We will continue to raise the
bar and we intend to take the rest of
the world with us.”
A lesson in international bar-
raising occurred sooner than anyone
could have expected when, during
the chaotic Kabul evacuation, the
Johnsons intervened to save some
of the dogs and cats collected by
Pen Farthing’s charity, Nowzad.
Farthing’s ally, Dominic Dyer, told
the BBC he had again “reached
out” to Symonds, and “forced the
prime minister’s arm”. So it seems
reasonable to ignore Downing
Street’s denials, especially given the
whistleblower Raphael Marshall’s
evidence to the foreign affairs
select committee. There was
an “instruction from the Prime
Minister” to evacuate Farthing’s
dogs, zero policy justifi cation for
this and it came at a sickening
cost. “There was a direct trade-
off,” Marshall writes, “between
transporting Nowzad’s animals
and evacuating British nationals
and Afghan evacuees, including
Afghans who had served with
British soldiers.”To balance this triumph
for a UK brand of animal welfare so
world-beating that it privileges pets
over people, there are indications,
however, that the government is
not so much anti-speciesist as
species selective. Had Farthing
chosen to deliver neglected Afghan
goats they would probably not, for
all their sociability and cleverness,
have inspired a Carrie Johnson
mercy intervention. The RSPCA
has already noted , following LizTruss’s Australia trade deal (likely
to be a template for others), that
a government proudly sensitive
on pet-smuggling and badger
survival will happily surrender
livestock standards for trade deals.
Unless some new intervention is
imminent, Dilyn’s owners, recently
willing to trade interpreters’ lives
for Farthing’s cats, have no problem
with imported beef from cattle
raised on “enormous bare feed-lots”
and subjected to transport times of
48 hours and lamb from animals
mutilated without anaesthetic.
As applied to killing animals
for fun, Johnson’s eclectic
welfare principles could lead to
yet more confusion in countries
unfamiliar with the UK tradition
of class-based animal protections.
What, for instance, makes a UK
badger’s welfare more worthy of
consideration than a UK crow’s?
The bird is famously brainy,
capable of social learning, of
reasoning and of using tools –
quite likely more effective in that
respect than Johnson , for all his
opposable thumbs.
Nest sanitation is, in contrast
to the prime ministerial “tip”, a
given. Their rank in Tory animal
taxonomy dictates, however, that
crows are among several wild
creatures that can now, following
an updating of the law, be more
easily killed in order to protect
game birds , which vastly outnumber
all native British birds and are
the cause of extensive ecological
damage. Jackdaws, pigeons and
rooks can be likewise sacrifi ced for
a higher purpose: the subsequent
slaughter of the protected game
birds, by landowners, in still
greater numbers. The RSPB said
the revised regulations could be
a “ massive backward step for
nature conservation ”.
Again, it’s not too late for another
intervention by Mrs Johnson. Even
if crows and pigs lack the superfi cial
appeal of dolphins, monkeys and
Dilyn the rescue dog, she might
yet decide that some registered
aversion to killing game birds for
amusement, and to mistreating
livestock for profi t, is a minimum
requirement for her career in animal
welfare. Though admittedly no law
says professional animal lovers
must love all animals. The late
Steve Irwin was killed harassing a
stingray. And they’re still seeking a
successor to Joe Exotic.Catherine
Bennett
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