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New Fellow Pioneers Animal Protection in China

17th July 2008

One of our new Fellows, Professor Deborah Cao, who teaches animal law at the Law School of Griffith University, Australia, is pioneering animal work in China. In 2007, she published Dongwu fei wu, Animals are not things: Animal law in the West (China Law Press, Beijing, 2007), the first comprehensive and detailed discussion of animal law in the West in Chinese. Animal welfare and animal law have only begun to attract attention in China in the last few years, and Dr Cao’s book is a pioneering academic work that documents the laws related to animals in major Western jurisdictions including the UK, Australia, the EU, and the US, and introduces many new concepts relating to animal welfare, ethics, and law to Chinese readers. As Professor Peter Singer writes in the Preface to the book: ‘I hope this book will be widely read and carefully studied, because as China becomes more and more economically prosperous, it will face very important choices about the treatment of animals on which the fate of many billions of sentient beings will depend.’ Dr Cao is also currently collaborating with Chinese law professors in promoting the teaching and research of animal law and ethics in Chinese law schools.