INTERVIEW - Dutch Animal Rights Party Says no Fad
AMSTERDAM - It's not every day the leader of a political party with seats in
parliament gives an interview with a goat nibbling at her coat and hair and
surrounded by chickens.
This is 34-year-old law graduate Marianne Thieme whose party for animal
rights aims to double its vote in the next Dutch election as people become more
sensitive to the plight of animals on factory farms and after recent food
scares.
"We are the first political party for animal rights in the world to be
elected to parliament," Thieme, who has been compared to movie star turned
animal rights icon Brigitte Bardot, said in an interview on an organic farm in
Amsterdam.
The Party for Animals, founded in October 2002, won two seats in last month's
Dutch general election, which saw the ruling Christian Democrats remain the
largest party.
She quoted Mahatma Gandhi to underline animal rights groups are more than
just a fad. "Like Gandhi said, the greatness of a nation can be measured by the
way it treats its animals."
"If we want to be civilised, then we have to do something about the way we
treat animals. If we mistreat them, then how can we expect society to be
civilised towards other human beings?" she said in the Reuters interview.
SINGLE ISSUE PARTIES
Many single-issue parties have sprung up in the Netherlands in recent years,
fuelled in part by the country's liberal roots and as people become more aware
of environmental issues.
Thieme said recent food crises -- bird flu, swine fever, mad cow,
foot-and-mouth and blue tongue diseases -- and the culling of millions of
animals made people more aware of where their food comes from and animals'
living conditions on factory farms.
The Netherlands, Europe's second-biggest poultry producer after France and a
top world poultry exporter, culled 30 million birds, about a third of its flock,
after the H7N7 strain of avian flu hit the country in 2003.
"We got a lot of animal diseases in the last years ... Millions of animals
were killed for economic reasons. I think a lot of people are fed-up with that,"
she said.
But experts said the party's single-interest focus could make it only a
short-term political success. "Many people are fed-up with the obsessions of the
main political parties, that is why they voted for Party for Animals. I don't
think it will last," said Marcel Boogers, political science lecturer at Tilburg
University.
Story by Foo Yun Chee
Story Date: 13/12/2006
