Outspoken and respected Limerick animal rights campaigner John Carmody believes the next referendum should be to establish rights for animals.
“After years of mooting around the issue of rights for Ireland’s LGBTQ community and women and girls, Ireland and the vast majority of its people finally agreed to the issues of equal marriage and bodily autonomy. However, Ireland has just turned a corner with its views on animal rights,” he told the Limerick Post this week.
“Animals are not looking to vote or to take over the world, and heaven knows if they could do just that, they would do a better job than us,” he maintains.
The passionate Limerick campaigner feels strongly that Irish people should support efforts to establish rights for animals.
“We’re not asking people to go to the voting booth but what we are saying is that surely we should unlock the cages to animals on Irish fur farms, emptying the pounds of dogs waiting helplessly for a loving home, ending our obsession with shooting and hunting down innocent wildlife, and so much more?”
He recently brought presidential nominee Gavin Duffy to task and made national headlines in exposing his support of hunting of Irish wildlife. While Duffy had to explain his differences to US President Donald Trump, Carmody sees Duffy in a similar light as Trump, claiming he has a similar “lust for hunting down animals and vies for power”.
“The highest office in the land should never be given to someone who supports such grotesque forms of pastime. Thankfully Michael D Higgins is a supporter of animal welfare and opposes blood sports,” he declared.
Mr Carmody is now focusing his more than 20 years of campaigning on new initiatives to outlaw Ireland’s remaining fur farms through a Bill being introduced by the Solidarity party. He is urging Limerick people to contact Fine Gael and Fianna Fail representatives and he welcomed support from Sinn Fein and Labour Party who have pledged to support the passage of the Bill.
He was instrumental in leading the successful campaigns for progressive legislation and acknowledges that Ireland is now a “kinder” country.
“We no longer have wild animals in circuses, there’s now more humane badger control, more people are adopting animals instead of buying them and more people are buying cruelty-free cosmetics.”
But he believes that more needs to be done.
“People need to look beyond the cute beady-eyed dogs and cats, and realise there’s still a world of suffering going on out there, and that with each act of kindness the referendum to establish rights for animals can be one that happens each time we sit down to eat, seek entertainment, wear clothes, and other such use of animals,” he concludes.
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