There are no animal welfare laws in Egypt!

I have just completed a bit of research on whether there are animal welfare laws in Egypt. This is a major country where you would expect there to be animal welfare laws. But all the signs are - based upon my Internet research - that there isn't a single animal welfare law which generally protects the animals of Egypt. This brings to mind China which also shuns the idea of animal welfare laws.

Cat carrier smashed to bits by the Egyptian airline Egyptair. There was a rescue cat inside destined for America to be rehomed after rescue from the Egyptian streets. What a failure by Egypt. Image: Twitter.

It is a shock to me, to be honest, to understand that Egypt has no intention whatsoever of protecting their animals under the law.

The Wikipedia authors more or less confirm that there are "no strict laws against animal cruelty". That's rather vaguely worded but I think it means that there are no animal welfare laws.

And an article on an Egyptian website dated November 2017, is about Egyptian veterinarians trying to force the government of Egypt to create animal welfare laws. But the author of that article was extremely doubtful whether the government would entertain the veterinarians.

I can't find a follow-up article but it is highly likely that the Egyptian government dismissed the idea out of hand. It's about mentality and attitude and clearly the Egyptian government simply do not have the wherewithal and the attitude to think of animals are sentient beings to be protected from abuse by humans.

That is a very backward mentality it has to be said. And for me, interestingly, there was a case of gross animal cruelty in Egypt when in 2015 a dog was restrained and stabbed to death by butchers. It was a notorious incident and the perpetrators of that act of gross animal cruelty were brought to the criminal courts in Egypt, prosecuted and imprisoned for three years.

But we don't know under what law they were prosecuted. Nobody tells me that. If there are no animal welfare laws then why did these men do wrong? Perhaps they were prosecuted under laws appertaining to human property because perhaps the dog belonged to somebody. Perhaps there were prosecuted under what I would call "criminal damage" laws.

But when these criminals were prosecuted there was outrage outside the court room. They had to have armed militia outside the court room to protect the court from the masses. Clearly, the citizens of Egypt think that animal welfare laws are idiotic and they have no place in Egyptian society.

This points to a terrible lacuna to use a legal term. That means a hole in the fabric of the legal system in Egypt. And it is the reason why on Friday 29 September, 12 rescue cats from Egypt destined to be transported to America on Egyptair flight 985 were utterly failed through mishandling of their carriers to the point where the crates were damaged or broken open and five cats escaped. One was recovered and three of the five are still missing. One was fatally injured.

That is the handling of rescue cats by an Egyptian airline. Catastrophic. Everything about what they did was catastrophic and I can only presume that this complete failure by Egypt air staff to handle the crates properly comes down to a lack of animal welfare laws. That lack of a core piece of legislation which is present in most countries on the planet can only foster a desensitised attitude towards the sentience of animals in general. This is why the crates were thrown around and broken. Nobody cared a damn about the cats inside the crates.

Without wishing to sound racist in any way, it is probable that Egypt is similar to other countries on the African continent. They do seem to have an attitude towards animals which is similar to the attitude towards animals present in northern Europe in the Middle Ages. Yes, it's incredibly backward and uncivilised.