Sentientism 66: "Time has come for animals to be globally protected in UN-iversal law" - Sabine Brels of the World Federation for Animals
Sabine is legal advisor to the World Federation for Animals (https://wfa.org/). In 2014, she cofounded the Global Animal Law (GAL https://www.globalanimallaw.org/) Association and led work on the creation and update of the first complete Animal Welfare Legislation Database.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube https://youtu.be/OovrrbG1Crk.
We discuss:
0:00 Welcome
1:24 Sabine's Intro - Animal Law & International Governance for Animals
- Founding GAL, building the AWL Database, developing a 100 strong global animal law community
- The UNCAHP (United Nations Convention on Animal Health & Protection) https://www.uncahp.org/
- #OneHealth & #OneWelfare
- Working with the new World Federation for Animals to make animal protection a UN imperative
3:57 What's Real?
- Learning about the beauty & value of the natural world from Sabine's grandmother
- "I believe in what I can see but also in things I can't see that are obvious"
- Looking into the eyes of a cat & sensing it's "soul"
- Attending Catholic classes, but always preferring a more holistic, non-religious worldview
- Finding Catholicism restrictive, seeing the downsides of religion, deciding not to attend communion
- "We feel this notion of respect for all beings"
- Respecting all life is common to most religions
- Solidarity & compassion
- The commonalities between religious/naturalistic worldviews. "Souls" vs. sentience. Energy & information processing. Universal connectedness.
- "When I say 'soul' I mean that the being I see has a consciousness"
15:34 What Matters Morally?
- A mother who was a nurse, motivated by human compassion
- Developing a similar sensitivity for animal suffering from a young age
- A close relationship with a German Shepherd dog
- Being brought to a bull-fighting event in France at 4 years old. Seeing an animal being tortured to death - "feeling ashamed of my own species". "I wanted to intervene." Adults told me it wasn't real - then I saw the butchery behind the arena
- "These animals needed some people to defend them" - "I felt it was my moral duty"
- The challenges of going vegan in France
- Facing health concerns from parents
- At 18, asking a doctor how to go veg*an and being told "it's not possible to be healthy"
- Moving to Canada. Finding it much easier there to go vegetarian then vegan. Avoiding zoos & animal tested products
- Social context can make change hard or easy.
... And much more. Full show notes on Sentientism.info or YouTube.
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Thanks Graham for the post-prod.