[vohvae]

I don't know much about UK politics, but it is good to see Animal rights being taken more seriously. But I am uncomfortable with the usage of the word sentient here since the word implies a lot more than stopping mistreatment which seems to be the actual intent here.

Taken to its logical conclusion, "Animals to be formally recognised as sentient beings" should outlaw their slaughter for food or other products and much more essentially including whatever rights humans have.

I personally feel words with strong meaning are thrown around too carelessly these days (maybe longer but I wasn't alive then) weakening their meaning and making it more difficult to capture nuance or clarity in conversation or writing.

[simonh]

Sentience just means the ability to perceive and feel things. It implies consciousness, but that's debated. You may be thinking of sapience, which is usually considered to comprise of a higher range of cognitive functions such as reasoning, self-awareness and perhaps theory of mind although some animals seem to have that last one too.

Fundamentally what this does is further recognise in law that some animals are able to suffer, and that we have some sort of responsibility to avoid inflicting unnecessary suffering such as for entertainment or through neglect.

[vohvae]

Thanks for pointing this out! Until now I had been under the impression that sapient and sentient mean very similar things with a very fuzzy boundary. This does clarify a few things regarding their usage.

[cheese_goddess]

> Taken to its logical conclusion, "Animals to be formally recognised as sentient beings" should outlaw their slaughter for food or other products and much more essentially including whatever rights humans have.

If I understand the article correctly the new law recognises (some) animals as sentient, not as humans. I can't see how "sentient" automatically means "has human rights".

In any case, I bet UK laws, those that are actually written down anyway, are written so as to grant rights to categories more strict than "sentient". For example, wikipedia says that in Common English Law, "murder" is the killing of one "person" by another:

> Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to cause either death or serious injury unlawfully.

In fact, from this definition it seems like "murder" is a kind of "homicide". So it seems that not only the perpetrator and the victim must be "person"s, they also must be "human" (species homo?).

tl;dr, I don't think "sentient beings" are currently extended the same protections in law as "humans" or "person"s and so slaughtering them for food is not prohibited by any laws (and therefore, is allowed).