The end of life of so very many sheep is not natural, but human-produced. As example, in 2019 the number of sheep in the world ‘killed for meat’ was 602,319,130. (Data of FAOSTAT of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations given by Wikipedia in its ‘Animal slaughter’ article). Sourcing Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) information, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board slaughtering figures for the year to November 2023 in the UK are Ewes and rams 1,520,018 and Other sheep and lambs 11,157,372. 

The United Nations Climate Change Conference COP28 (Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC) has just ended. At COP28 last Sunday, during Food, Agriculture and Water Day, was launched Plant Based Treaty’s Report Safe and Just which looks at global food systems. The Report covers several matters key to sheep. Two dimensions are addressed in the Report’s Executive Summary (p 18) in these statements: 

‘If we combine all land required for farming animals for meat - including grazing pastures and land used to grow crops for animal feed - animal agriculture accounts for 83 per cent of global farming land.’ 

‘Transporting live animals is not only cruel and prolongs their suffering, but adds to the growing number of emissions associated with farming animals for food - a climate cost that is rarely factored in.’

It was a promising announcement last week, in the supporting document to the King’s Speech to Parliament (‘The King’s Speech 2023’, Prime Minister’s Office and OGL, 7th November 2023): the UK Government intends to ban live exports of certain animals - sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, horses - from Great Britain for slaughter and fattening. Method for delivery is to be the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill. But, as Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) reminded us, in its 7th November 2023 press release welcoming the announcement, ‘In May this year, the Government reneged on its manifesto promise to deliver a live exports ban when it dropped the Kept Animals Bill.’ In one of the press release’s Notes to Editors CIWF provided this expanded information: ‘In May 2023, the Government dropped the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which would have banned live exports for slaughter or fattening from Great Britain, despite the Bill having received cross-party support during previous Commons stages.’ An important context of relevance is provided in the same press release in the CIWF Chief Public Affairs Manager’s words ‘…it is vital that the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill is quickly introduced to Parliament, so it can be passed and implemented well before the next general election.’ The dimension is critical because dissolution of the current UK Parliament must have happened before or on 17th December 2024.

For sheep attending a sale, the experience is unlikely ever to be pleasant. The circumstance is unfamiliar to the sheep and of a type to - almost inevitably - bring stress to them and engender fear in them. The obligation of humans involved, therefore, is to see that they do everything they can to minimise unpleasantness for the sheep.

The impacts upon sheep who are in areas of war can largely only be guessed at. Media and other reports communicate what is happening to humans, but what is occurring to any sheep present is rarely spoken of. Sheep and their circumstances in a war situation are surely noticed, but it is as if the sight is edited out to be sight ‘unseen’. It can only be conjectured what the reasons are for the avoidance. Are sheep being dismissed by humans as of no importance? Or is it that, though humans are observing sheep, unconsciously they are not ‘clocking’ them in their minds? It can be noted that animals overall tend not to attract much attention when amid war, but there seems to be a hierarchy in the matter, with sniffer dogs and people’s pets at least getting some focus of attention from humans. 

Humans’ handling of sheep is often rough, unjustifiably and unnecessarily so. It would appear that rough handling stems from a mindset that a) perceives sheep as items rather than as living, sentient, creatures, b) does not have high regard for sheep, c) follows traditional practice without questioning it.   

How humans see non-human animals is what produces how they treat them. Speciesism is a word to mean an attitude of a species of seeing itself as superior to another or others. The word was first used in 1970 by Dr Richard D Ryder.

Last year in the UK, The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 gave legal recognition that non-human vertebrates (along with any cephalopod molluscs and any decapod crustaceans) are sentient. On 25th May this year the Animal Sentience Committee was launched.

So, sheep are sentient. No ifs. No buts. Sheep are recognised to have feelings - joy, fear, pain, distress, and so on. This recognition represents a ‘game-changer’. No longer can any human argue that sheep don’t feel. The law says that they do. No longer can anyone act towards sheep as if they did not have feelings. For anyone who is involved with sheep to profess ignorance of sheep being sentient is not acceptable. No longer can treatment of sheep that causes suffering to them be justified. No longer can it be ignored when a sheep is being made to suffer directly by human action or through human choices and decisions.

It has been reported that the shadow environment minister, Alex Sobel, has said that ‘Labour would legislate so that people visiting national parks have the right to wild camp’ (Helena Horton, The Guardian, 4th August 2023). Labour is a political party in the UK. The National Parks concerned are those in England.

Now is a time of the year when a lot of people in the Northern Hemisphere visit the countryside for purposes of relaxation and enjoyment. Many of them will be urban, or suburban, dwellers, and so they will not necessarily be arriving in the countryside with knowledge of rural ways and knowing about sheep.

In various parts of the world sheep must be feeling the heat. The Met Office says that last month was the hottest June in the UK since records began. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), depicting findings of the Copernicus Climate Change Service/European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said on 6 July ‘The world just had the hottest June on record’ (News section). In Headline Statements of the AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 (March 2023) of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change it is said: ‘Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020.’  And adding another dimension, WMO announced in a 4 July press release ‘El Niño develops in tropical Pacific. It will likely fuel further global temperature increase.’  

Disappointingly, on an Outer Hebridean island there seemed to be a dearth of Hebridean sheep. Apparently, they are ‘not economic’.

It can be understood that for all those who aim to earn a living from sheep farming - and its related activities - the endeavour must work economically. But are all, or too many, decisions made just on economic criteria? It seems that economics define, so much, the choices, activity and process in sheep farming. What about sheep welfare? Where does that sit in the hierarchy of priorities?