News
Include Animal Welfare in Election Manifestos: Conservationists to Candidates
View(s):Six Animal Welfare and Conservation Organisations are calling upon all Presidential candidates to include Animal Welfare in their election manifestos.
The organisations are the Animal Welfare Trust, Animal Protection Trust, Cattle Protection Trust (CPT), Sathva Mithra, Species Conservation Centre and Wildlife Conservation Society.
Spokesperson for the these organisations, Attorney-at-Law Lalani Perera of the CPT, said that recent election manifestos in other countries have pledged to improve animal welfare, and that, they are either general commitments or specific ones relevant to issues in their respective countries.
“For example, the BJP manifesto for India’s General Election 2014, pledged to establish a foolproof mechanism to protect and preserve wildlife and strengthen and empower the country’s Animal Husbandry department, to protect the cow and its progeny. In the run up to Britain’s General election in 2010, several political parties including Labour and Conservative, pledged to deal with specific acts of cruelty in areas such as testing of household products on animals, fur factory farming, badger culling, illegal trading in ivory, proper enforcement of live animal transport regulations, puppy farms, etc, “ she said.
She added that the Mahinda Chinthana in 2005, pledged to amend, without delay, the nation’s outdated laws on prevention of animal cruelty.