Animal protection as animal welfare and anti-cruelty: a genealogical re-examination of the EU seal products ban
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231191290 |
| Author | Judith Renner |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178231191290
International Relations
2023, Vol. 37(3) 538 –563
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00471178231191290
journals.sagepub.com/home/ire
Animal protection as animal
welfare and anti-cruelty: a
genealogical re-examination
of the EU seal products ban
Judith Renner
Technical University of Munich
Abstract
This article suggests a way to inquire into animal protection politics as a specific field of
international politics which regulates human-animal relations. Based on a genealogical analysis of
the emergence of animal protection thinking in 19th and 20th century Great Britain, it argues
that animal protection is structured by two specific strategies, anti-cruelty and animal welfare,
that constitute our knowledge of what animal protection is and how it can be achieved. Whereas
animal welfare suggests that animal protection means the meticulous technical standardisation of
animal use along the scientific knowledge about particular species’ stress levels, anti-cruelty takes
a moral approach and suggests that animal protection can be achieved by taming the cruel human
subject by means of legal prohibition. The article uses these strategies as an interpretative lens
for analysing the EU’s behaviour in the seal products case. It argues that the ban of the trade in
seal products can be understood as the result of the anti-cruelty strategy gaining dominance in
the EU debates on its seal policy. Moreover, in the ensuing WTO struggle the moral undertones
of anti-cruelty made it possible for the EU to frame the ban as the protection of public morals
under Article XX (a) GATT and thus to establish animal protection as a legitimate ground for
trade restrictions. The antagonistic identity construction attached to anti-cruelty moreover made
it possible for the EU to constitute itself as a morally superior subject and to re-emerge as a
normative power in the context of animal protection. The article concludes by reflecting about
further avenues for research on international animal protection politics.
Keywords
animal protection, animal welfare, anti-cruelty, European Union (EU), genealogy, seal products ban
Corresponding author:
Judith Renner, Department of Political Science, TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, Technical
University of Munich, Arcisstr. 21, Munich 80333, Germany.
Email: Judith.Renner@tum.de
1191290IRE0010.1177/00471178231191290International RelationsRenner
research-article2023
Article
Renner 539
The international politics of animal protection
Animal protection has hardly ever been analysed as a relevant and specific field of inter-
national relations. While individual cases of animal protection politics, the protection of
whales being a prominent example, have been researched as illustrative case studies for
studying processes for example, of norm proliferation, discourse emergence or regime
building,1 the neglect of animal protection politics more generally is due to the fact that
IR as both, a field of knowledge and a political practice, is deeply anthropocentric and
has largely remained blind towards the non-human as a relevant object of inquiry.2
Animal protection is an important component of international politics however, as it is
here that human-animal relations are governed on a national, regional and global scale,
the animal is constituted as a relevant object of political regulation and a ‘proper’ human
conduct towards animals is negotiated. In order to make animals visible in IR, therefore,
a thorough analysis of international animal protection politics is an important step.
In line with the goals articulated in the introduction to this special issue, this article
sides with authors who have already called for a deeper engagement of IR with animal
protection,3 and sets out to propose a way how this may be done. Adopting a genealogi-
cal perspective, I argue that animal protection can be understood as a field which is
structured by specific strategies, in particular anti-cruelty and animal welfare, that con-
stitute our knowledge of what animal protection means, how it can be achieved and how
humans can and should more generally relate to animals. Taking these strategies into
account when analysing individual policies of animal protection helps to shed (new)
light on these policies and to reach deeper insights on how human-animal relations are
constituted and regulated in international politics.
Empirically, the article examines the workings of these animal protection strategies in
the context of the EU’s ban of the trade in seal products which, starting with a 1983
Council Directive, culminated in Council Regulation 1007/2009 which imposed a blan-
ket ban on all kinds of seal products derived from commercial hunting.4 The seal prod-
ucts ban has attracted considerable interest in the literature where it has repeatedly been
criticised as an ‘indistinct’, ‘blurry’, ‘unclear’ or ‘inconsistent’ policy which shuts down
the commercial seal hunt while doing nothing to improve the welfare of seals.5 I argue in
the following that the EU’s ban of seal products can be better understood when the spe-
cific strategies of anti-cruelty and animal welfare are used as an interpretative lens for
the analysis of the EU’s behaviour in the seal products case. Animal welfare and anti-
cruelty construe distinct ways of what the protection of animals means and how it may
be reached and thus, I suggest, represent distinct strategies of animal protection. Whereas
animal welfare suggests that animal protection means the meticulous standardisation of
animal use along the scientific knowledge about particular species’ stress levels, anti-
cruelty takes not a scientific but a moral approach and considers human cruelty towards
animals as the central problem. Subdividing society in problematic cruel subjects and a
morally superior part, anti-cruelty locates cruelty in the human mind and practice and
assumes that animal protection can be achieved not by regulating the technical condi-
tions of animal use but by taming the cruel human subject by means of legal prohibition.
In regard to the EU seal products ban I argue that animal welfare and anti-cruelty com-
peted in the debates of the EU Commission and the European Parliament and, against the
To continue reading
Request your trial