Text: Guido Camps As a vet working in nutrition research, I think a lot about animal welfare and the role of animals in our food production. Although many Wageningen researchers work on these issues as specialists, as a vet (and a consumer), I deal with them too.
I’ve been following with great interest the court case between animal rights organization Dier&Recht and the farmers’ organization Agractie about the Stop Dairy campaign. On appeal, the court ruled that there were insufficient grounds for Dier&Recht’s claims in the publications it referred to. The court therefore ruled that in a publicity campaign against the consumption of dairy products, Dier&Recht is not allowed to present as a fact that separating calves from their mothers at birth causes severe animal suffering.
I suspect that confidence in the Dutch judiciary went up a bit in many a Dutch farmhouse, which I see as a good thing, whatever my personal opinion on the matter. However, this was not the end of the story, because in the Correspondent magazine, Rutger Bregman not only wrote of a ‘historic blunder by the Dutch court’, but also challenged the court’s ruling by ending his column with the prohibited words, followed by ‘Sue me’. You could dismiss this as poetic licence or hyperbole, but it didn’t feel right to me: it undermines the court’s verdict and encourages people to ignore it. Moreover, Bregman was full of praise for the same judiciary when it called Shell to order.
And that’s the problem, in my view. Court verdicts are not a menu from which you can pick and choose. At a time when the boundaries of democracy are being sought and crossed with increasing frequency, both at home and abroad, I hope that as many people as possible will do their best to respect all aspects of the rule of law, and that includes court judgments.
You can’t pick and choose among court verdicts
I wholeheartedly applaud debate about animal welfare in the food production chain, and just as I extended an invitation to Roos Vonk in this column some years ago, I would be happy to engage in a debate with Rutger Bregman about animal welfare, animal rights and consumption. After all, an open debate at the university is an expression of democracy, while pouring scorn on a court verdict is not.
Guido Camps (38) is a vet and a researcher at Human Nutrition and OnePlanet. He enjoys baking, beekeeping and unusual animals.
