Tue, 25 Jan 2022
The Administrative Court shall today hear a permission application for a judicial review of the alleged failure of the Secretary of State to discharge his fundamental duty to protect life, public health and safety through the duties
- to establish a framework of laws, precautions, procedures and means of enforcement which will, to the greatest extent reasonably practicable, protect life, and/or human health; and/or
- to take reasonable steps to protect lives and human health from known (or that ought to be known), real, present and continuing risks posed by intensive and industrialised methods of animal farming; and/or
- to act rationally
by means of adopting appropriate, proportionate, reasonable, and necessary measures for assessing, informing and curtailing intensive and industrialised methods of animal farming which incur avoidable risks to public health.
The claim highlights the evidence that risks to human health arise from the methods of intensive farming that are being allowed and even encouraged by policies and inactions by the government. This could well prove the new source to the next pandemic, given the nature of the avoidable danger created. Those risks primarily, but not exclusively, relate to :-
- PANDEMICS triggered by zoonotic diseases emanating from large numbers of farm animals kept in confined and cramped conditions.
- ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT INFECTION triggered by the overuse and misuse (especially prophylactic use) of antibiotics on animals in those conditions.
- The impact on levels of GLOBAL WARMING by the substantial emission of GHG from these animal concentrations, and by the destruction of carbon retentive forests to provide the large quantities of animal feed required causing environmental harm injurious to human health by global warming.
Philip Rule, of No5 Barristers' Chambers, acts for the claimants, led by Michael Mansfield QC.
They are instructed by Lorna Hackett of Hackett & Dabbs LLP.
News reports available here:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/downtown-abbey-star-peter-egan-26035046
