The development of animal welfare science has had a fundamental influence on the development of public policy towards the treatment of animals, not only in individual countries such as the United Kingdom, but also within the institutions of the European Union. This has led to a new a body of legislation which is intended to promote welfare and to complement the traditional prohibition on causing cruelty. If this process is to continue, however, it is important that conducting research should not be regarded as the sole function of animal welfare scientists. It is essential that they are also fully engaged in ethical debate, policy formulation, regulatory mechanisms, and their enforcement.

In Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, the number of pets and pet owners has been increasing in recent years. The experiences people have with pets might impact their relationships with animals in general and especially attitudes towards animal protection and use. However, research on the impact of pet ownership on values and attitudes towards animals is relatively scarce. We analyse associations of pet ownership with different values and attitudes towards animals. We derived seven attitude constructs towards animals from three different datasets using Principal Component Analyses. Data were collected using standardised online surveys with German residents (dataset 1 = 1,049 respondents; dataset 2 = 414 respondents; dataset 3 = 1,048 respondents). All three samples are non-probability quota samples. The seven attitudinal constructs represent values and attitudes towards animals ranging from general values and attitudes towards, eg animal protection, to more specific attitudes towards, eg eating animals. We analysed the relationship of pet ownership, sex, and age with these constructs using ANOVA. Our results show that effect sizes are small to medium. Pet ownership has the strongest association with more general values and attitudes towards animals, with pet owners being, eg more involved in animal protection and more in favour of awarding fundamental rights to animals. In contrast, we found that more specific attitudes, such as the evaluation of current pig farming systems or attitudes towards eating meat, were more related to sex than pet ownership. Our findings indicate that having pets relates to their owners’ attitudes towards animals, but that this association varies depending on the specificity of attitudes.

Many animal and environmental activists think of international trade law as a block to the achievement of their goals and perceive the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a threat to animals. Yet, the first legal decision of an international tribunal to devote careful, sustained attention to animal welfare issues comes from the WTO, in the EC – Seal Products decision. This article argues that international trade law is currently an important, although under-acknowledged, locus for the development of global norms concerning the protection of animals, and that animal conservation and animal welfare can be seen as aspects of a single overarching principle of animal protection. International trade law contributes to animal protection in two ways. Firstly, WTO jurisprudence has recognized animal protection as a legitimate basis for invoking exceptions to trade rules (as in EC – Seal Products). Secondly, international trade negotiations enhance cooperation on the implementation and enforcement of existing conservation obligations (as in the new Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Environment Chapter).