Party Policies

These are the animal policies in the Green Party manifesto. You can read the full manifesto online, with the ‘Transforming our Relationship with Animals section beginning on page 68.

On Animal Aid’s four election asks:

• A ban on the use of live animals for military training

Other key animal policies include:

• Guarantee the principle of animal sentience. This will mean that
  that regard for the welfare needs of animals as sentient beings is uppermost in formulating and implementing relevant government policy.
• Ban all hunting, including trail hunting, where dogs are used to track foxes who are then shot, and the commercial shooting of deer and game birds.
• End Government subsidies, used to maintain artificial landscapes designed only for hunting (such as grouse moors) and rewild the land where possible.
• Where necessary for ecological reasons, humane culling will be licensed by Natural England and carried out by trained professionals.
• A ban on the use of lead ammunition and outlawing all forms of snaring.
• Ending the badger cull and funding research into a sensitive test to enable cattle vaccination, as an essential, as well as humane, part of a meaningful strategy to control the spread of the disease. Investment in better farm bio-security and badger vaccination.
• Stop the use of primates, cats and dogs in research and the importation of monkeys for use in labs, and work towards an outright ban on all animal testing.
• Enforce tougher regulations on animal transportation, including a maximum limit of eight hours travel for animals in transit and an end to all live exports from our shores. Work to minimise all stress- causing practices during production of animal-based food products.
• Advocate for European legalisation to end factory farming, prohibit the routine use of antibiotics for farm animals, and ban the killing of animals for sport across the EU.
• Call on all nations to declare the waters under their control as havens from whaling, to provide sanctuary throughout those waters for cetaceans (whales and dolphins), and to co-operate in achieving global sanctuary for cetaceans in the longer term.
• Implement a complete ban on cages and close confinement and deliberate mutilation of farm animals.
• Help shoppers choose cruelty free food, with mandatory method of production labelling for meat, milk and dairy products.
• Protect animals that give companionship or support. Enhance regulation and controls on breeding, sale and import, with compulsory licensing applying to everyone working with animals. Those convicted of cruelty will be placed on an animal cruelty register and prevented from working with animals again.
• Create a new Commission on Animal Protection, responsible for overseeing all rules designed to protect animals from cruelty. This Commission will ensure that the highest standards of animal welfare are applied to companion animals, farm animals and wildlife. This will ensure that the right of all sentient beings not to be subject to undue suffering is always respected.