Our Interview with Wendy Adams
1. How did you become involved in the field of animal protection law?
My main research area for many years has been intellectual property, particularly patent protection in the field of biotechnology.  I became interested in the legal and ethical issues involved in the patenting of the Harvard Oncomouse, and started writing about animals and ownership.  When I came to McGill from Western, I took over teaching a course on animal law, and became gradually more involved in the field.  My research and teaching eventually led to advocacy; I was approached by a former student who was working with a rescue organization, trying to get a puppy mill shut down.  I picked up the phone and started making calls, and one thing led to another, and then another, until one day I found I was indeed involved in the field of animal protection law.

2. Some of your current advocacy efforts are directed towards enforcing animal welfare legislation against puppy mills.
a. Can you explain what a puppy mill is for the benefit of our members who might not be familiar with the terminology?
I don’t think an agreed-upon or legal definition exists, but I would describe a puppy mill as a facility that engages in excessive breeding, sub-standard care and often outright abuse of animals in an effort to make as much profit as possible from the sale of puppies to pet stores and consumers.

b.   What kind of cruelty issues do they present?
The most obvious issue is that of neglect, in that the dogs are given only enough of the necessities of life for survival, because survival is necessary for profit.  The dogs are confined in small spaces such as cages with wire floors.  The more dogs the operator can cram into the space, the more profit per square foot of space.  The dogs are fed the cheapest food possible, and as little as possible.  They are often denied basic medical care.  They may be kept indoors for their entire lives, never having a chance to see the outside, let alone have access to exercise.  Often these conditions lead to the dogs turning on each other.  One of the most horrific sights I have seen is dogs in these conditions eating other dogs.

Apart from neglect, these facilities are often operated by people lacking in the most basic level of empathy for the feelings of others, whether human or animal.  In these cases, neglect is accompanied by outright cruelty.   If a dog is making too much noise, the dog is beaten.  If a dog acts aggressively, the dog is beaten.  Any dog that is sick is killed rather than given medical treatment, and the method of killing is most often beating the dog to death.  I have spent hours going over documentation for evidence that includes photographs of dead dogs, covered in maggots, in wire cages pushed up against the other dogs, of dogs with multiple, open sores, of dogs so thin their ribs do not simply stand out – you wonder how they can even stand up.  I have seen a pile of bodies, half-burned, in an incinerator. 

I do not think it is hyperbole to say that these are pictures of horror, of atrocities.  Whenever anyone suggests that I take this ‘too seriously’, I always ask them if they are willing to look at a set of photographs I keep in my office.  The answer so far has always been, no.

c. Do you see confining ‘pets’ for breeding purposes as comparable to the factory farming of other animals?
Yes, absolutely.  Conceptually, the two are identical in that in each case, a sentient being is treated as an input within a process of production.  I want to be clear here that I am not talking about everyone who breeds dogs, such as those involved in breeding pedigree dogs.  I am talking about facilities in which an animal is treated as a commodity, and given only the bare necessities of survival so that a profit can be realized at the expense of their pain and suffering.

3. Legislation has recently been proposed in New South Wales (Australia) which will ban the sale of certain mammals in pet shops.
a. Does Quebec have such a law?
Sadly, no.

b. Do you think laws like this help address the puppy mill ‘problem’?
Absolutely.  The puppy mills can only profit by the presence of a market for these dogs.  If you take away the market, you take away the problem.  Basically, I teach my students that every legal problem has at least two different types of strategies.  On the supply side, you can regulate the providers, such as those who operate puppy mills.  But enforcement is expensive, and often the political will is lacking.  On the other hand, if you work through the market on the demand side, and reduce demand to zero, using a combination of laws banning the sale of certain mammals in pet shops, and increasing public awareness of and access to adoption services, you can achieve the same result, arguably using less resources.  You will also have educated the public in the process, which means that the mills aren’t likely to be coming back.

4. You have previously written about intellectual property rights relating to animals. Can you highlight some of the issues that you have tackled in this area? For example, do you think that the ability to own intellectual property rights in an animal will further entrench their property status?
Yes, I think this is indeed the case.  I have argued that patent rights are not neutral, that patenting higher life forms has a signalling function that goes beyond the scope of the exclusive right that allows the patent holder to keep competitors out of the field for a fixed period of time.  The grant of a patent is a signal of social approval for the instrumental use of animals in general, and for the invasive techniques of genetic modification specifically.

On the other hand, I have also argued that it may be possible to achieve proper consideration for the interests of animals even though they are classified as property, depending upon how a particular legal system or tradition views property rights.  This work is theoretical, in that I am not saying that right now, the legal status of animals as property is irrelevant.  I am merely saying that if we had a different conception of property, the situation might be different.  For example, I am doing some research right now on property and virtue ethics – what type of world would we have if property rights were limited by the requirement that owners be virtuous, and what would that mean for animals?  Would ownership be more akin to a notion of stewardship, and would this result in improved treatment for animals?

But most importantly, I think that the problem is that the dominant legal traditions of civil and common law throughout the world are human-centric.  Animals are not property, but neither are they persons.  The challenge is to admit animals into a human-centric legal system on their own terms, and in the process, to modify the legal system accordingly.

5. Are animals treated differently at law in Quebec compared with other provinces of Canada? If so, can you highlight some of the differences?
I do not think significant differences exist in legal terms in the treatment of animals in different provinces across Canada.  The Criminal Code provisions against animal cruelty are federal, and thus apply across the country.  Some provinces might have higher standards of protection in some areas of law or in relation to particular industries, but these differences are more a matter of degree, not kind.

I think the specific problem in Quebec, and one that differentiates Quebec from other provinces, is that the legislation on the books is simply not enforced.  Quebec’s official approach to animal welfare in general, and to puppy mills in particular, is to work with the operators of puppy mills to educate, with prosecution being a last resort.  As a regulatory strategy, this may make sense for some types of problems, but arguably the issue of animal welfare is not the type of issue where education should be privileged over enforcement. 

I like to use the parallel of child welfare legislation.  When child welfare authorities start to focus too much on educating parents rather than rescuing children from harm, on the concept of families at risk rather than children at risk, we start to see the kinds of stories in the headlines where a child has been left in the care of the people who severely harm or even kill the child.  I think this analogy applies with equal force to animal welfare legislation.  While Quebec authorities focus on trying to educate the kinds of people who can, without any moral hesitation, beat, starve and otherwise abuse an animal, you have to wonder about whether such education can ever be effective, let alone the fact that as part of the education process, animals are left in harm’s way.

6. To what extent do you think animals can be protected (e.g. through litigation or legislation) within a system that classifies them as property?
I always say the same thing when this subject comes up; animals are not treated badly because they are classified as property – they are classified as property so that we can treat them badly.  For that reason I wonder whether provisions such as Art. 90a of the German Civil Code will introduce radical change (animals are not things, but they are governed by the laws applicable to things unless legislation provides otherwise).

I think it is possible to conceive, in theoretical terms, of models of property law in which ownership actually negates abuse, in which ownership imposes positive obligations of stewardship.  For that reason, I am involved in research of other property models such as a concept of ownership based on virtue ethics.  But in the present, right here, right now, our willingness as a society to treat animals as property is evidence of our willingness to grant them less consideration than we do to members of our own species.

7. Do you have any words of wisdom to share with Australia's budding animal lawyers?
I don’t think I have any words of wisdom, in that I think we have much to learn from each other.  At the risk of becoming more personal than perhaps the occasion warrants, I would encourage anyone interested in this area to think carefully about what type of emotional support system they have in place.  You need to be coming from a strong emotional place to deal with the reality of animal abuse on a regular basis, particularly since the issue receives very little social support.  If you tell people you work with victims of torture or survivors of genocide, people ‘get it’, they understand the difficulty of the work and how hard it can be to move between such horrors and the often mundane reality of the everyday world.  If you tell people you work with victims of torture and abuse, but these victims are animals, not human beings, most likely they will not ‘get it’.  People just don’t want to hear about it, so you need to know that you have people around you who do understand, and who support the work you do.  It’s far too difficult to do this work alone.