Centre for Animal Welfare Speech: University of Winchester, Saturday 21st May 2016
Heather Mills is renowned as an animal rights campaigner and activist and has been for many years.
Heather came to be at the forefront of animal rights campaigning after she played an integral part back in 2001 in initiating the EU parliament to change the law, banning the illegal import and export of dog and cat fur into the EU from China.
Andrew Knight, Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics at the University of Winchester has been a long-time admirer of Heather’s work supporting animal rights and their welfare. Andrew invited Heather to be a keynote speaker at the official launch of the University's ground breaking new Centre for Animal Welfare.
Andrew is looking to progressively promote the welfare and protection of animals within society and having Heather speak at this event greatly contributed to establishing the Centre’s reputation as a leader in this field.
Heather gave a captivating speech, addressing the audience for an hour. She covered animal related topics of how she became concerned about animal welfare, the projects and issues she’s currently concerned about and is focusing on and Veganism.
Heather spoke passionately about why she thinks animal welfare is increasingly important to society at large, and why it’s of great significance that Universities such as Winchester are leading the way to positive change in this important arena..
Heather also integrated in her talk, the importance of understanding the principals of veganism. She relayed, not only how it has a huge influence on human wellbeing, but additionally how we must not dismiss the plight of those animals that suffer unnecessarily for the sake of meat and dairy consumption.
Heather is an avid well known advocate of animal issues. Two of Heather’s most famous campaigns made headline news across the globe.
After an 11 week boycott to stop wearing the fur of dogs and cats, the American clothing company JCrew, ceased selling fur across it’s stores all over America due to Heather’s intensive campaigning. Heather also played a key role in getting the European Parliament to Ban the import, export and trade of dog and cat fur, by raising awareness, intense negotiations and the gathering of 250,000 petition signatures, creating the new EU law, banning dog and cat fur imports and from China.
Andrew said:
“I would like to thank Heather for helping make our launch event such a smashing success! This was the premiere event for our new centre and it was so important for our Centre and the University that it was successful, and Heather's presentation was integral to that. Ultimately we must never forget animal welfare and animal ethics are profoundly important both morally and to society at large”.
Also speaking at this event was, Philip Lymbery, CEO of Winchester’s partner organisation, Compassion in World Farming and the actor, Peter Egan, who spoke about his personal concerns for animals, the projects he’s involved in and why he thinks animal welfare is important.
The new Centre has an exciting future planned. Rather than remaining cloistered within academia, it will take an active role in participating in some of the most important animal welfare issues of today.
