The legal and ethical challenges of gifting animals

The slogan “an animal is not a gift” seems quite obvious nowadays. However, the obviousness of this claim is not accompanied by a change in social practices, including the law. Indeed, the law does not prohibit the donation of an animal as a gift – animals can therefore be the ‘object’ of a donation contract. This leads to a number of legal and ethical challenges: with the acceptance of the ‘gift’ the recipient becomes responsible before the law for the animal’s fate. In turn, the giving of a gift is not necessarily accompanied by an explicit ‘acceptance of responsibility for the gift’ – traditionally, the giving of gifts is not associated with ‘responsibility’ but pleasure of recipient. The paper aims to present and evaluate the legal and ethical challenges of treating animals as a gift (as the object of a donation contract). To this end, the authors present key challenges posed by the application of contract law in such situations, specifically the donation contract, and then juxtapose the legal findings with an ethical view of the status of animals and their relationship to humans according to care ethics approach.