What happens when animal rights meets the electoral interests of political parties?
Early in 2003 Malta’s first Animal Welfare Act saw the light of day. It may have seemed to many as a major achievement for animal rights campaigners, after many years of lamenting its absence and going about the business of lobbying government and opposition parties to fill up the blank. Their first taste of success had come when the Malta Labour Party had made animal rights a campaign issue prior to the 1996 election. In Malta’s muddled politics, it was an indirect result of unrest among hunters over stricter regulations introduced by the Nationalist government up to that point. While wooing the hunters it was worthwhile distracting animal lovers by offering them a sop they could not refuse.
This political technique was swiftly adopted by the PN, which made a U-turn on the hunting issue following its defeat in 1996. By 1998 both the PN and the MLP were wooing the hunters and both talked about animal rights to cover their tracks.
Once the PN took office in 1998 after having attempted to deflate the MLP thrust on animal rights with the usual slurs of incompetence and amateurishness, they became even more vulnerable to pressure from animal rights activists who demanded legislative action. Somebody was given the job and eventually a Bill was drawn up apparently covering every aspect of the issue from humane animal husbandry and slaughter to scientific experiment and the general prohibition of cruelty.
By February 2003 the Bill had become an Act of Parliament after receiving the President’s assent. And that was that, one might think.
In fact the Animal Welfare Act is a giant enabling Act, providing the Minister responsible with legal authority to make regulations on the myriad issues that arise once one begins to consider the issue seriously. The Act is a sort of Constitution for animals including among many other things a splendid if worthless Declaration of Principles in its Part I. It is certainly a constitution for the Council for Animal Welfare created in Part II of the Act which provides for its composition, remit and functions, although the dodgy wording would leave any judge in a tizzy if asked to interpret it: “Art 5. The Council shall – (a) …(e) the Minister, in issuing regulations, orders or rules under this act, shall consult the council.” [sic]
Looking back at the time of its enactment it becomes clear that the country was in the throes of political paroxysm and nobody was looking out for typos. The EU Referendum Campaign, with its lies, great lies and statistics, was all the rage.
Still the legislative bungling was a little excessive in the case of the Animal Welfare Act, no matter what else was going on at the time. Its final article repealing parts of the Code of Police Laws went a little too far, and repealed Art 97 of the C of PL... which contains most of our existing sanitary regulations for the construction industry, governing ventilation, sewers and chimneys and has not so much as a hair, feather or fish scale to do with animals. Zap! It was gone.
Well, perhaps not so fast. The Bill presumably went through all stages in parliament was scrutinised at every stage by the government side, was criticised by the opposition and must have been assigned to parliament in committee before final approval and being sent off to the President for his assent. Nobody latched onto the fact that they had accidentally dematerialised our sanitary regulations until it was too late. The matter was rectified when Art 97 was re-enacted by Act III of 2003 – after weeks, if not months, of a situation where no sanitary regulations existed in the building industry.
That major howler set the tone for the whole Animal Welfare Act. It did repeal a number of other articles of the Code of Police Laws that dealt with the keeping of animals, amusingly keeping in force regulations that had been enacted on the strength of them over the years. It takes significant legal sleuthing to work upwards from these regulations these days, since the enabling law that permitted them seems no longer to exist when you look up the Code of Police laws. In fact the ghosts of vanished laws remain visible in the Animal Welfare Act, magically transferring authority over those provisions from the Ministry of Health to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, or creating a legal limbo.
Are Sanitary Officers still responsible for enforcing what remains in the Code of Police Laws? If not them, who should see to it that our neighbours do not keep cows and horses in their basements?
In fact the very limited rules that existed since the enactment of the Code of Police Laws have been further restricted by the Animal Welfare Act which was intended to give the Minister power to extend them. Since 2003, no new regulations have been made, no new rules of conduct established and no enforcement developed.
There are several dramatic cases in which people reporting an intolerable situation to the sanitary authorities have been told that no law exists to prevent the offenders from running chicken farms in basements and common courtyards.
To be fair, Minister Pullicino must have found that he had bitten off more than he could chew in enacting the Animal Welfare Act: to establish rules for the whole country on the keeping of pets and farm animals could set off a revolution. In the absence of clear rules and effective enforcement, we have horses kept in garages in Sliema and Qormi while sheep and goats have always been kept as a matter of course in every village in Gozo. Pigeon fanciers have kept lofts wherever they thought fit, much to the annoyance of their neighbours. Moreover, these days you never know which of your neighbours may be the proud owner of some exotic or venomous reptile or insect.
To set out on the task of regulating all this would take monumental political courage. My guess is that it will never get done. We have an Animal Welfare Act and a Council for Animal Welfare as the net result of the political one-upmanship between the PN and the MLP; but in effect we have less than the little we had before.
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Their first taste of success had come when the Malta Labour Party had made animal rights a campaign issue prior to the 1996 election. In Malta’s muddled politics, it was an indirect result of unrest among hunters over stricter regulations introduced by the Nationalist government up to that point. While wooing the hunters it was worthwhile distracting animal lovers by offering them a sop they could not refuse.
