Not all animals need to have our protection

After reading the excellent article by Nicholas Humphrey last week opposing the Animal Welfare Bill, I have a question for the organisation supported by Carrie Johnson.

If all the animals she wants to protect have sentience, which implies they have feelings like humans, why do those animals spend their waking hours hunting other sentient animals, tearing them apart and devouring them while they are still alive?

The day that my questions are answered satisfactorily will be the day I stop eating meat and seafood.

Roy Kennedy, Devon

Has the Government given enough thought to the new Animal Welfare Bill provisions, based on the nowpresumed sentient nature of all animals? If it is passed into law, surely ritual slaughter of animals would be banned.

D. Boyes, Leeds

Why are MPs busy with legislation like this when they should be focused on police and judiciary reforms to reduce crimes, reforms to the Human Rights Bill, reform of the BBC and so many other issues. It seems just because Carrie Johnson is married to the Prime Minister that she is pushing through Bills that just aren’t important right now.

B. Young, London

Nicholas Humphrey opposes the Animal Welfare Bill and argued last week that it would be wrong to ‘give lobsters, squid and herring the same protection as hedgehogs and swans’ because the first group don’t feel things in the same way as the second group – or as people do.

But the Bill takes into account that animals are different.

The animals that Mr Humphrey mentions are clearly sentient, so need protection.

Iain Green, Kent

If lobsters and crabs do not feel pain when being boiled alive, how come my husband, when he was a boy, witnessed a large crab squealing and trying to lift the weighted lid off the boiler pot that it had been dropped into?

This happened many years ago at the St Peter Port fish market in Guernsey. Of course these creatures feel pain. Because of this, I never have, nor ever will, eat them. Scientists are not God.

Lynne Birkett, Wakefield

I have heard it said that when you put a lobster into a boiling pot, it screams.

I have also heard that the screaming sounds are the displacement of escaping air.

I’m not sure which statement is correct, but I would like to think that the latter is true.

W. Evans, Salisbury

I support the Animal Welfare Bill that Nicholas Humphrey opposes. Ethics dictate a duty of care and compassion. Should crustaceans be boiled alive? The moral human duty answer is no.

John Cosway, Shipley, West Yorkshire

Just imagine the agony of being boiled alive.

Even if there is doubt as to whether a creature such as a lobster is sentient, we cannot take the chance and inflict such pain.

A. Jacobs, Motherwell