The killing of Wangwang and her puppies in China has prompted renewed calls for stronger laws protecting animals from cruelty. Vegan Australia supports those calls, while urging that the case also lead to a broader discussion about the rights of all animals.
China has laws dealing with wildlife, animal agriculture and other specific areas, but no national law specifically criminalising cruelty to companion animals. This means severe violence towards a dog or cat may not itself constitute an offence simply because of the harm done to the animal.
Laws should not allow deliberate violence against animals to go unpunished simply because the victims are non-human animals.
At the same time, the experience of countries such as Australia shows the limits of anti-cruelty laws. Every Australian state and territory has animal welfare or anti-cruelty legislation, yet those laws operate alongside standards, codes and exemptions that permit animals to be bred, confined, subjected to invasive procedures and killed in animal agriculture and other industries.
Wangwang's case can help people see that animals are individuals whose lives, bodies and freedom matter. But the same principle must apply to all animals, not only to dogs or to victims of especially shocking cruelty.
A campaign focused only on exceptional cruelty risks leaving the deeper speciesist system untouched. The longer-term task is to challenge the assumption that humans are entitled to subordinate the lives, bodies and freedom of other animals to our own purposes, whether through commercial exploitation, entertainment, experimentation, sadistic cruelty or other forms of domination.
Justice for Wangwang should therefore lead to something broader: recognition that all animals are individuals with rights to their own lives, bodies and freedom, and that veganism is the practical expression of respecting those rights.
Read more about Vegan Australia's position on animal rights and speciesism in What we stand for.
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