66: ”Time has come for animals to be globally protected in UN-iversal law” - Sabine Brels of the World Federation for Animals

Sabine is legal advisor to the World Federation for Animals (https://wfa.org/). In 2014, she cofounded the Global Animal Law (GAL https://www.globalanimallaw.org/) Association and led work on the creation and update of the first complete Animal Welfare Legislation Database.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube https://youtu.be/OovrrbG1Crk.

We discuss:

0:00 Welcome

1:24 Sabine's Intro - Animal Law & International Governance for Animals

- Founding GAL, building the AWL Database, developing a 100 strong global animal law community

- The UNCAHP (United Nations Convention on Animal Health & Protection) https://www.uncahp.org/

- #OneHealth & #OneWelfare

- Working with the new World Federation for Animals to make animal protection a UN imperative

3:57 What's Real?

- Learning about the beauty & value of the natural world from Sabine's grandmother

- "I believe in what I can see but also in things I can't see that are obvious"

- Looking into the eyes of a cat & sensing it's "soul"

- Attending Catholic classes, but always preferring a more holistic, non-religious worldview

- Finding Catholicism restrictive, seeing the downsides of religion, deciding not to attend communion

- "We feel this notion of respect for all beings"

- Respecting all life is common to most religions

- Solidarity & compassion

- The commonalities between religious/naturalistic worldviews. "Souls" vs. sentience. Energy & information processing. Universal connectedness.

- "When I say 'soul' I mean that the being I see has a consciousness"

15:34 What Matters Morally?

- A mother who was a nurse, motivated by human compassion

- Developing a similar sensitivity for animal suffering from a young age

- A close relationship with a German Shepherd dog

- Being brought to a bull-fighting event in France at 4 years old. Seeing an animal being tortured to death - "feeling ashamed of my own species". "I wanted to intervene." Adults told me it wasn't real - then I saw the butchery behind the arena

- "These animals needed some people to defend them" - "I felt it was my moral duty"

- The challenges of going vegan in France

- Facing health concerns from parents

- At 18, asking a doctor how to go veg*an and being told "it's not possible to be healthy"

- Moving to Canada. Finding it much easier there to go vegetarian then vegan. Avoiding zoos & animal tested products

- Social context can make change hard or easy.

... And much more. Full show notes on Sentientism.info or YouTube.

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Thanks Graham for the post-prod.