Letter to the editor: SNP leadership race

Our letter to The Scotsman newspaper published today (2 March 2023) urging the Scotland’s next First Minister to make a commitment to animal welfare:

Vote for animals

Our organisation has followed the three candidates to be the next leader of the SNP, and almost certainly the next First Minister of Scotland, since their campaign launches. While we have no organisational preference in terms of the eventual winner, we do have a very real stake in what view they may take as an organisation which campaigns to end animal exploitation.

It has proven depressingly predictable that even now not one candidate has uttered a syllable about animal safeguards as they pursue votes from the rank and file. If you are mobilised by equalities and human rights, you most likely know where the candidates stand. If you care about animal welfare you are as in the dark as you were before they declared.

Our members and supporters, some of whom are card-carrying members, will want to know whether Ash Regan, Humza Yousaf or Kate Forbes are likelier to prioritise the needs of the hunting lobby over animal well-being. Will they take Scotland’s fireworks legislation the additional steps further it needs to be effective? Will they look again at the impact the cost-of-living crisis is having on pet owners facing food and vet bills that make giving up their companion animal the unthinkable possibility, and on the shelters taking them in if they do? Animal Concern itself is campaigning right now to protect wild, farmed, and domestic animals as well as our natural environment by seeking a prohibition on the release of sky lanterns and helium balloons. Can any of the candidates express a view on that?

And so over to the three of them, we want to know not what they have done but what we can expect.

Graeme Corbett, Animal Concern, Dumbarton