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Whatsapp Antoine Goetschel wants to change the legal status of animals to create a third category between human beings and objects

Despite wider concerns around animal welfare, it's often hard to reconcile issues of care and animal wellbeing with hard and fast legal principles. Antoine Goetschel is a Swiss attorney whose recent experience could shine a light on the future of animal welfare law in Australia. For three years he held the unique, publicly-appointed position of lawyer for animals.

It's difficult to talk about animal welfare without starting with a discussion about the extent to which certain animals feel pain, and their level of sentience—issues which are seemingly impossible to reconcile with hard and fast legal principles.

Enter Switzerland's Antoine Goetschel. He is the former animal welfare attorney of the Canton of Zürich.

The animal welfare attorney is a unique position that has existed in the Canton since 1991, and comes with the responsibility to act on behalf of animals in criminal cases against animal abusers.

‘I could speak for the animal as if the animal was a human victim,’ he says. ‘I had about 180 cases per year on my table, and I felt that policeman, state attorneys and politicians were much more interested in the field than when we started with this job in '91.'

The animal welfare attorney isn't a prosecutor, instead supporting existing cases and bringing new claims to the attention of authorities. But in some cases if the attorney considers that prosecutors are neglecting a case, he or she can go to court against them.

‘Statistically we found out that if we leave animal welfare issues only to the prosecutors, they do not care as much as we think they should,' he says. 'They have murderers, they have drug dealers.’

‘With this animal welfare attorney [we had] one who speaks for the animal on behalf of the prosecutor. So he did his role but I as animal welfare attorney supported him with similar cases. If he was not supportive and he wanted... to finish the case, I had the right to go to court against him.’

‘It's like making homework. If you say to pupils, "Do your homework, but nobody will control it by the end of the week," then they start not to do their work.’

Statistically we found out that if we leave animal welfare issues only to the prosecutors, they do not care as much as we think they should. They have murderers, they have drug dealers.

His time as animal welfare attorney saw him act in a number of high profile cases, including many that grabbed international headlines—like the time he acted for a four-foot long pike. The case came about after a fisherman in Lake Zürich, Patrick Giger, appeared in a photo and article with the pike, boasting about a 15-minute battle reeling the monster fish to shore.

‘The vice president of an animal welfare organisation saw the picture in the local press and she felt offended that it's kind of old-fashioned, like the old pictures of African hunters in the 1900s that put their foot on the head of the lion they just shot,’ Mr Goetschel says. ‘So she thought that what the fisherman did with reeling the fish in for 15 minutes was a very suffering phase and should have been either not made or made shorter or with other instruments and other hooks... She imagined if someone would make the same thing with a cat or a puppy, this would be scandal number one.’

Mr Goetschel heard their complaint and decided to make the issue a test case to explore the relationship between recreational fishing and animal welfare.

‘When does animal welfare start?' he says. 'Because we had similar cases in Germany where fishermen that put too much damage and suffering and stress to the fish were condemned.’

The court decided in the end that the fisherman had no alternative way to reel in the pike, and so he wasn’t punished, but the case has gone on to become legendary in animal welfare law for the precedent it sets around when animal suffering is legitimate. Mr Goetschel also acted in another (unsuccessful) case where contestants on a TV show jumped into a pool full of fish and tried to catch them with their hands, where he argued that the dignity of the fish had been violated.

Switzerland's law goes further than simply protecting animals from pain and suffering. These sorts of laws are possible because of an amendment to the Swiss constitution back in 1992. The amendments made animal welfare a state responsibility, and they also incorporated the idea of the dignity of animals into law.

‘The animal rights issue is a very complex one,’ he says. ‘This is why we changed the legal status of animals. I worked on the project for 12 years and it passed through in 2002, I started in '89, saying that animals are not objects any longer. We feel animals not being chattel, not being objects, they are part of our family. If we look at cows, also at fish, it's something different than just a car or a key. By changing this legal status, not being an object, we give it a third category between human beings and objects, and we changed the law concerning, for example, liability in animal cases. Lost and found pets are looked at differently. You cannot seize animals, if someone has no money you cannot take the dog away and sell the dog because of money reasons. In divorce cases they are looked at differently, and also in inheritance cases they are looked at a little bit differently.’

Legislation in Switzerland is three or four steps ahead of Australia in many other regards as well. For instance, bird cages and fish tanks have to have at least one opaque side so the animal feels safe.

‘We cannot prove that a goldfish or a bird is suffering because the proof of suffering is always a difficult thing at court,’ Mr Goetschel says. ‘But by these legal frameworks we admit that animals have an interest in privacy, that they should be best protected against being bored all the time, and that some animals that live a social life can no longer be kept as singles.’

‘So hamsters, for example, or guinea pigs, they are entitled and the owners must have them in couples. This sounds maybe…it's easy to make jokes out of that, but to admit that animals also have social interests and the legislator stands up and protects them in their social behaviour, I find this amazingly warm-hearted and wise.’

‘They do have souls.’

Despite a number of high-profile fish cases, Mr Goetschel says the lion's share of his work is prosecting farmers and pet owners: cases where farm animals are found in chains or dog owners have left their pets in poorly ventilated cars. Now that he's retired from the role, he’s spending some of his time spreading the message about Switzerland’s progressive approach around the world.

‘Australia could, let's say... adopt animal welfare as an important state duty in the constitution,’ he says. ‘They have a ban on eggs in cages, a ban of sow stalls in Switzerland and also in Sweden, also in the EU. So if making legislation in the farm sector, also in the animal experiment sector, please do have a look where the standards are really high, where the dignity of creatures is protected.’

Listen to this interview at The Law Report where you can also download it as a podcast.