In the EU, prohibitions on battery cages, gestation crates, veal crates, and cosmetics testing, and the adoption of the Five Freedoms as a basis for animal welfare policy. In the UK, Austria, Netherlands, Croatia, & Bosnia & Herzegovina, bans on fur farming.
As prohibitions on methods of animal exploitation—rather than just regulations which allow those forms of exploitation to persist if they’re more “humane”—I think these are different than typical welfare reforms. As I say in the post, this is the position taken by abolitionist-in-chief Gary Francione in Rain Without Thunder.
Of course the line between welfare reform and prohibition is murky. You could argue that these are not, in fact, prohibitions on the relevant form of exploitation—namely, raising animals to be killed for food. But in trying to figure out whether welfare reforms delay progress, we have to go on what evidence we have...and the fact that we do have these prohibitions on certain practices, in many cases based on the explicit recognition of animal interests that shouldn’t be violated (e.g. the Five Freedoms), seems to be about as good as it gets in terms of historical evidence bearing on the debate over welfarism.
“So welfarism did not prevent European countries from eventually adopting rights-like reforms.”
What do you have in mind when you mention rights-like reforms?
In the EU, prohibitions on battery cages, gestation crates, veal crates, and cosmetics testing, and the adoption of the Five Freedoms as a basis for animal welfare policy. In the UK, Austria, Netherlands, Croatia, & Bosnia & Herzegovina, bans on fur farming.
“prohibitions on battery cages, gestation crates, veal crates”
Those sound like welfare reforms?
As prohibitions on methods of animal exploitation—rather than just regulations which allow those forms of exploitation to persist if they’re more “humane”—I think these are different than typical welfare reforms. As I say in the post, this is the position taken by abolitionist-in-chief Gary Francione in Rain Without Thunder.
Of course the line between welfare reform and prohibition is murky. You could argue that these are not, in fact, prohibitions on the relevant form of exploitation—namely, raising animals to be killed for food. But in trying to figure out whether welfare reforms delay progress, we have to go on what evidence we have...and the fact that we do have these prohibitions on certain practices, in many cases based on the explicit recognition of animal interests that shouldn’t be violated (e.g. the Five Freedoms), seems to be about as good as it gets in terms of historical evidence bearing on the debate over welfarism.