Support Needed: Speak Up for the Protection and Dignity of Great Apes in Spain

Professor Paula Casal, Co-Director of the Centre for Animal Ethics at Pompeu Fabra University, in Barcelona, has written to me as follows:  

The Spanish Government has opened a period of consultation July 17 - July 31, 2024, asking any individual, Center, Foundation or NGO to express their view on whether the General Directorate of Animal Rights, in the Ministry of Social Rights, should create a “Great Ape Law” or “Hominid Law” (the name is also to be decided) as the Great Ape Project Spain has advocated since 1998.

The Government says the purpose of this new law will be to

• Explicitly prohibit harmful or potentially harmful experimentation that is not in the interest of apes.

• Establish conditions for keeping apes that are optimal for their development and to regulate their custody strictly and always with conservationist purposes.

• Prohibit the commercial exploitation of apes in circuses, advertising and other purposes that conflict with their dignity.

• Incorporate in our legal framework the commitments Spain acquired with the Kinshasa Declaration and the work decided with the United Nations Program for the Environment (PNUMA) regarding the Alliance for the Survival of the Great Apes (GRASP), which involves the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and the countries with native nonhuman hominids.

I hope you can write to normativadgda@dsca.gob.es telling the Spanish Government that you support their enactment of this new legislation and would support stronger  measures too.

More than 30 years ago, Paola Cavalieri and I launched The Great Ape Project with the publication of The Great Ape Project, a book that included essays by Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, Roger and Deborah Fouts, Jared Diamond, Marc Bekoff, Tom Regan, and many other eminent scientists and philosophers. All the contributors supported a Declaration on Great Apes, included at the start of the book, that called for great apes to be granted the rights to Life, Liberty, and Protection from Torture. There have been some improvements in their situation since then - in particular, in both the European Union and the United States, the use of great apes in invasive medical research has ceased. (As far as I am aware, they are no longer used anywhere in such research.)  But this legislation will break new ground, by recognizing the dignity of great apes and prohibiting commercial exploitation that conflicts with that dignity.

The Great Ape Project Spain has been working for many years to improve the legal situation of great apes in Spain, and is supporting this legislation as the best achievable. 

I have written to the Spanish Government, as Paula suggests, to give my support to the new legislation, and if you support better protection for great apes, please do so as well, and as the period of consultation will soon end, please make sure your email is sent before the close of business on July 31st.