Animal welfare organisations pull together to champion ban on dolphin shows.
As a member of Eurogroup for Animals, OneKind was pleased to respond to a call to action from colleagues in Greece in early January. The Greek parliament was about to debate a possible change to the country’s animal welfare law, potentially allowing a zoo to use performing dolphins in entertainment, under the spurious guise of “education”.
We’re always a little reluctant to pile into debates in other countries, bearing in mind that the UK has plenty of animal welfare failings of its own. In this case, however, it seemed legitimate to urge the Greek government to retain a reform that it had only introduced in 2012.
Articles 12 and 13 of the Greek animal protection law 4039/2012 prohibit the use of animals in “recreational games, car racing platforms, musical concerts, exhibitions, fairs or other artistic or entertaining festivities/events.”
This decision to outlaw all animal performances set an excellent example to other European countries, and one we could point to in the long-running fight to get wild animal circuses banned throughout the UK. However, the Attica Zoological Park in Spata, Greece, which exhibits a wide variety of exotic animals, sought a change in the law to amend or weaken the ban, on the basis that captive dolphin performances are “educational.”
It would be a hard claim to substantiate. An inquiry into dolphinaria in the EU by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Born Free Foundation and ENDCAP here summarised the problems of dolphin shows succinctly:
“No captive cetacean in the EU has the freedom to express normal behaviour, a guiding principle for animal welfare. Dolphinaria in the EU fail to meet the biological requirements of cetaceans in captivity or to provide an appropriate species specific enriched environment. Stress and stereotypic behaviour are common among captive cetaceans. Even where veterinary care is optimal, survival rates are lower among captive cetaceans than among their counterparts in the wild.”
We have heard today that the Greek Parliament voted to retain the animal welfare law unchanged. Once again, we congratulate the deputies for their support of animal welfare, and for refusing to accept what are essentially circus acts with dolphins as being “educational”. Once again, we hope that the UK administrations will follow the Greek example, and ban animal circuses without further delay.
You can read the OneKind letter to the Greek Ministers here.