Criminality
Some practitioners of open rescue claim to not be guilty of any crime, claiming to have acted in defense of others, especially if the rescued animals have not been kept in accordance with laws regulating animal husbandry. Similarly, others cite the disregard of the owner's violations of such laws as sufficient justification, and point out the hypocrisy of the strict enforcement of the law against open rescue activists.
Majja Carlsson of Räddningstjänsten The Rescue Service, a Swedish open rescue organisation, was one of four activists that rescued 120 hens in the largest open rescue operation to date. In her description of the action, she writes the following (translated from Swedish):
- Quite possibly legal ramifications will follow this action. Naturally, I realize that some will label this as a crime even though I disagree with them. It is sad that we are the ones considered criminals in this society, and not the egg industry which has in fact violated the Swedish Animal Protection Act for over fifteen years. That the law intended to protect the animals is widely ignored while crimes against the right of ownership are seen as serious offences.
Similarly, Räddningstjänsten writes in a comment to the legal proceedings that followed the action (translated from Swedish) "We acted and saved 120 individuals from unnecessary suffering and certain premature death. The real crimes are not committed by us, but by the animal industry."
Read more about this topic: Open Rescue
Famous quotes containing the word criminality:
“There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)