Email MPs to support recognising animal sentience

Animals are sentient beings that consciously and subjectively feel joy, fear, pleasure and suffering. To the very vast majority of us, this is not a controversial statement - we have all interacted with animals and seen it for ourselves.

But in New South Wales, our laws are stuck firmly in the past. Currently, instead of recognising the inherent value of animals, our laws consider them animate property that can feel only pain or its absence.

That's why I have introduced a Bill to NSW Parliament to explicitly recognise animal sentience in animal welfare laws.

If passed, this law reform would not only recognise that animals are thinking, feeling beings with individual personalities and the capacity to experience a range of positive and negative states, from joy to fear, pleasure to suffering.

In recognising that animals have a range of positive and negative physical, mental and emotional experiences, this Bill would extend the existing duty of care of animal caregivers to ensure that animals in their care are free from unnecessary pain to also include the responsibility to provide the animal with the opportunity for positive experiences like comfort, interest, pleasure, and enjoyment.

This would lay the foundation for which we can build stronger and better animal welfare standards in NSW.

Will you join me in fighting for this reform by emailing the Minister and Shadow Minister responsible for our welfare laws?

Send an email to key MPs demanding they recognise that animals are sentient!

Animals are sentient beings that are capable of experiencing more than just pain, distress or suffering – they also subjectively feel joy, comfort and ’enjoyment’. To most of us, this is not a controversial statement - we have all interacted with animals, watched them, and seen for ourselves that each animal has its own fears and interests, favorite places, people, and comforts expressed in each animal’s individual personality traits.
The modern science is very much settled that animals experience more than just suffering. Thousands of robust and peer reviewed scientific studies have proven that animals experience negative states (i.e. pain, distress, suffering) AND positive states (e.g. comfort, interest, pleasures). Sentience simply means the ability to feel and experience - so our current legislation protecting animals from unnecessary suffering already implicitly recognises animals as sentient. In fact, recognising that animals are able to subjectively feel and experience (‘sentience’) is the very basis of having animal protection law in the first place.
But although the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act implicitly recognises that animals are sentient, it only applies a responsibility for half of their life experience, specifically their suffering considered ‘necessary’.
The Greens have introduced the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Amendment (Animal Sentience) Bill 2022 to fix the oversight in our laws to (a) explicitly recognise animals as sentient and, critically, to (b) legislatively DEFINE sentience so it creates a responsibility for their enjoyment, not just their necessary suffering. I am writing to ask that you support this Bill, so New South Wales has modern animal law that gives sentient animals a life enjoyed, not just one that’s endured.  
In recognising and defining animal sentience as 'the capacity to feel or experience negative and positive physical, mental and emotional states', the Bill extends the duty of care we already have for animals to prevent pain, discomfort, fear and suffering, to include a responsibility to also provide opportunities for positive experiences like comfort, interest, pleasure and enjoyment. 
All sentient beings deserve a good life, but less pain is not the same as more pleasure. Will you help ensure a good life for animals by recognising and defining animal sentience in our laws?

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EMAIL MPS TO SUPPORT RECOGNISING ANIMAL SENTIENCE