New Zealand Puts Animal Sentience Into Law

On 9 May 2015 the Animal Welfare Amendment Act (No 2) 2015 received royal assent in New Zealand, almost two years after National MP Nathan Guy introduced it and nine days after its third reading passed Parliament. The Act rewrote the long title of the Animal Welfare Act 1999 to state that animals are sentient, and it banned testing finished cosmetic products, and ingredients meant only for cosmetics, on animals. Officials described it modestly, as a bill meant to improve the enforceability, clarity, and transparency of the country's animal welfare system, but its real weight sat in a handful of words near the top of the statute. Dr Virginia Williams, who chaired New Zealand's National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee, framed the change as one of explicitness: the law had always assumed animals could suffer, now it said so in writing.