• Public Consultations

Food waste: Proposal for a Directive on Food Waste Reduction Targets (deadline: October 31st)

Make sure to check Animal Law Europe’s Guide to Public Consultations to find out what public consultations are and how to use them to advance the interests of animals in EU law. We're honored to see our guide featured on The Good Lobby's website.

 

• 🇳🇱 The Netherlands – Aquatic Animals and Fur Animals: Amsterdam’s City Council issued a ban on the sale of live crabs, live lobsters, and fur in all of the city’s retail points of sale. The prohibition will enter into force in 2022.
   
• 🇪🇸 Spain – Wildlife (wolf): In an executive order reviewed by the Council of State, the highest administrative court in the country, the Spanish government amended its list of protected species to include wolves. This executive order entered into force in September. The new legal status as a protected species has afford wolves higher levels of protection from human activities, most notably the prohibition on wolf hunting, including by ranchers.
   
• 🇧🇪 Belgium – Farm animals (slaughter): In two rulings, the Constitutional Belgian Court dismissed two appeals filed by Muslim and Jewish communities. The faith groups challenged newly adopted laws which prohibit the religious practice of slaughter without stunning in two of the biggest regions in the country, Flanders and Wallonia. This rejection followed a 2020 preliminary ruling by the European Court of Justice. In this ruling, the European Court of Justice decided that it was lawful, under EU law, for Member States not to provide a religious exemption to the requirement of stunning animals before slaughter.

• 🇦🇷 Argentina prohibited intensive salmon farming: The Legislature of Argentina’s Southernmost province, Tierra del Fuego, adopted a law banning salmon farming in open-net pens on the grounds of the significant economic and environmental risks this intensive farming method poses. Open-net pens essentially operate like floating cages and adversely impact the welfare of animals and ecosystems. This bill had the effect of halting a farming project in the Beagle Channel, as well as banning this practice in all of Argentina, since the ban covers the geographical areas (Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and the South Atlantic Islands) where the farming of salmon occurs.
   
• 🇨🇴 Colombia reinforced penalties for wildlife trafficking violations.
   
• 🇮🇳 India: Delhi’s High Court ruled that residents have the right to feed stray dogs.
   
•  🇲🇽 Mexico banned animal testing for cosmetics: The Mexican Legislature amended its General Public Health Law (Ley de Salud General) to ban animal testing of cosmetics in early September of this year. The amendment further establishes a marketing ban on animal testing for finished cosmetics. With this law, Mexico becomes the first country in North America to ban animal testing for cosmetics, and the second in Latin America – after Guatemala.

Nonprofits

• Jeremy Coller Foundation’s Coller Animal Law Forum Launch Event
  October 14 | 5PM | Free, online, and open to the public | Registration

• European Fisheries Control Agency has published its 2020 Year in Review report.
   
• The European Food Safety Authority has published an assessment of animal diseases caused by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in pork production.
   

• Charlotte Blattner, Global Migration Crises: Nonhuman Animals, and the Role of Law in Like an Animal: Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering, Nathalie Khazaal and Núria Almiron (eds.), Brill.

• Alice Di Concetto and Marie Friant-Perrot, Le bien-être animal et l’information des consommateurs, Revue de l’Union européenne (Dalloz)(in French).
   
• Julia Fentem et al., Upholding the EU's Commitment to “Animal Testing as a Last Resort” Under REACH Requires a Paradigm Shift in How We Assess Chemical Safety to Close the Gap Between Regulatory Testing and Modern Safety Science, Alternatives to Laboratory Animals.
   
• Yumiko Nakanishi, Case C-336/19 Centraal Israëlitisch Consistorie van België: Animal Welfare and Freedom of Religion, Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law.
   
• Katie Sykes, Animal Welfare and International Trade Law, Edward Elgar Publishing.

📚 New scientific journal: Animal Ethics Review by the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

• Animals’ Angels, 100 Reasons to Revise Council Regulation EC1/2005 on the Protection of Animals during Transport.
   
• Peter Lanius and Lynn Johnson, Modernising CITES, A Blueprint for Better Trade Regulation, Nature Needs More.