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Frequently Asked Questions
The Sentient Animal Law Foundation advocates for evolutionary legal reform that defines sentience by referencing animals’ negative and positive states in law, policy, practice, and international agreements. This reform creates a responsibility to provide opportunities for animals to experience positive states—such as comfort, interest, and pleasure—while continuing to protect them from cruelty.
This work matters to you because how we treat animals shapes not just their welfare but also our shared environment and economic and societal future. By supporting SAL, you’re advancing laws that create meaningful change for animals, people, and the world we live in.
The three-word law reform—"and positive states"—evolves existing animal welfare laws to create responsibilities for improving animals’ daily lives. This benefits animals by ensuring they have opportunities for comfort, interest, and pleasure, but it also strengthens sustainability, food security, and public trust in ethical care standards.
Your support helps drive this legal reform forward, ensuring that a sustainable economic, environmental, and societal future is built on responsible and ethical treatment of animals.
Many great organisations focus their resources on specific issues, such as rescue work, wildlife conservation, or farmed animal welfare. SAL takes a different approach—addressing the root of systemic challenges through legal reform that affects laws, policies, and international agreements.
By advocating for the three-word reform, SAL ensures that existing anti-cruelty laws evolve to create responsibilities for animals’ positive states. This is a fundamental shift in how we govern the human-animal relationship, benefiting not just animals but also people and society as a whole.
SAL ensures that kindness and responsibility are embedded into law, policy, and practice, not left to personal choice. The three-word law reform introduces a legal duty to provide opportunities for animals to experience positive states, shaping enforceable standards for housing, enrichment, and care.
Through engagement with policymakers, industry leaders, and international stakeholders, SAL’s advocacy ensures that evolving scientific understanding is reflected in enforceable, fit-for-purpose animal welfare laws.
SAL has already influenced the world’s first Positive Welfare law in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and contributed to Brexit negotiations to ensure the continued recognition of animal sentience in UK law. SAL has engaged with policymakers, industry leaders, and international stakeholders in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe to help them align their laws with modern science.
Additionally, SAL’s team has published, presented at conferences, and taught widely, influencing best practices across legal, academic, and policy fields. These achievements show that SAL’s vision is not just possible—it is already happening and can be replicated globally.
About SAL and Our Mission
Animal welfare has historically been measured by the absence of pain, distress, and suffering. However, less pain is not the same as more pleasure. Animals are sentient, and their well-being includes not just reducing negative states but also providing opportunities for comfort, interest, and pleasure.
The three-word law reform creates a responsibility to provide these opportunities, ensuring that laws and policies reflect a full and accurate understanding of what animals need to experience well-being.
Most countries already recognise sentience through anti-cruelty laws, yet these laws only protect animals from unnecessary harm. The three-word reform—"and positive states"—evolves these laws by adding a duty to provide opportunities for animals to experience positive states.
Recognition alone doesn’t create meaningful change—what matters is whether the duty of care evolves beyond simply reducing harm to include providing conditions for well-being. This is the critical shift that SAL is advocating for.
Laws that focus only on preventing pain, distress, and suffering set minimum standards but do not require conditions that improve an animal’s well-being. A duty to provide opportunities for positive states—comfort, interest, and pleasure—ensures animals experience a higher standard of care.
This shift reflects an evolved social licence, ensuring that laws and policies align with modern science and societal expectations.
Scientific knowledge confirms that animals experience both negative and positive states, yet most laws only assign responsibilities for minimising negative experiences.
SAL’s advocacy for evolving laws to account for both negative and positive states ensures that standards of care align with modern science and that the social licence for industries relying on animals is strengthened and fit for purpose.
SAL is not a lawmaker, but it advocates for the evolution of laws to create responsibilities for providing opportunities for animals’ positive states.
By working with policy advisors, industry representatives, and government stakeholders, SAL works to ensure that welfare standards evolve in a way that benefits animals, people, and their shared environment.
Understanding Sentience and Positive Animal Welfare
Animal welfare is not just about animals—it reflects our values as a society. The way animals are treated has direct implications for social responsibility, public trust, and ethical leadership. Humane treatment has historically meant "do not be cruel", but by evolving laws to also require providing opportunities for positive states, we move towards a more just and fair system.
Supporting SAL means helping ensure that kindness and fairness are embedded into laws, policies, and international agreements, making them part of the legal foundation that shapes how animals, and by extension society, are treated.
Providing animals with opportunities for positive states strengthens sustainable and ethical practices, benefiting ecosystems, food systems, and public health.
For example, evolving welfare standards in farming improves biosecurity, reduces reliance on antibiotics, and enhances environmental sustainability. In industries that depend on animals, ensuring well-being creates greater public trust and stronger regulatory compliance.
SAL’s work ensures that laws align with scientific, economic, and environmental best practices, leading to a healthier planet, stronger protections for animals, and a more sustainable future for everyone.
The way we treat animals is directly linked to environmental sustainability, resource use, and long-term planetary health. Outdated animal welfare laws often permit practices that contribute to climate and biodiversity loss, such as intensive farming methods that degrade land and require excessive water and energy.
Evolving laws to require opportunities for animals’ positive states creates a knock-on effect—improving sustainability, reducing environmental strain, and aligning agricultural, conservation, and climate policies. By supporting SAL, you help ensure that law and policy evolve in step with global environmental priorities.
The way we define animal welfare today sets the precedent for future generations. Laws that only prohibit cruelty reinforce a minimum standard, but by creating responsibilities for providing animals with positive experiences, we build a more ethical and sustainable framework for the future.
A world where positive animal welfare is the legal norm means stronger environmental protections, better food systems, and a society that values well-being, not just survival. Supporting SAL’s work ensures that future generations inherit a system that reflects modern science, ethics, and sustainability.
Animal welfare laws affect everyone. They influence public health, food safety, environmental sustainability, and international trade agreements. Laws that create responsibilities for positive states benefit society by ensuring:
Safer food systems—better welfare reduces disease risk and antibiotic resistance.
Sustainable industries—ensuring ethical treatment improves regulatory compliance and market access.
Ethical progress—a legal framework that reflects modern science creates a fairer society for all.
Even if you don’t work directly with animals, these laws impact the world we all live in. Supporting SAL’s advocacy ensures they evolve for the better.
Relevance to People, Animals and the Environment
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Getting Involved and Supporting Change
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Inspiring Action
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