Polish Party of Animal Protection

Polish Party of Animal Protection (Polska Partia Ochrony Zwierząt, PPOZ) is an animal rights party in Poland founded in 2018 by animal rights activists such as Andrzej Olszewski, Katarzyna Sowa, Dorota Strug, Andrzej Ochman, Andrzej Czerniak and Joanna Pawlikowska. The party brings together animal protection groups from all over Poland, initially coming from an animal foundation Pod Psią Gwiazdą in Kłodzko. The party cites the Dutch Party for the Animals as one of its inspirations and wishes to improve the animal protection in Poland by political activism. Apart from Polanica-Zdrój, the Polish Party of Animal Protection also has party structures in Gdynia, Wrocław, Katowice and Poznań, and the party does not rule out running in the next parliamentary election.

The party is made up of animal lovers and activists associated with animal protection and no-kill pet shelters. Main objectives of the party include improving the living conditions of pets and farm animals, as well as phasing out meat production in favour of vegetarianism. The party fields activists of animal advocacy organisations, arguing that the politicians of the Sejm had failed to bring about any change in terms of animal rights. The PPOZ wants animal owners to be more accountable and introduce harsher penalties for animal torture and abuse. The PPOZ mainly addresses and campaigns against chained dog abuse, mass cattle and poultry farming, fur farming, animal slaughter, animal use in circuses and laborations, climate change and hunting.

History
The party first emerged in Polish politics in 2011, when it became a social and political movement. According to Małgorzata Frąc, a pro-animal organisation activists that became the founded of the Polish Party of Animal Protection, the activists were motivated to found a party after a scandal at the shelter in Dyminy-Granice near Kielce, where dogs were found to live in gruesome conditions. The organisation sent multiple proposals to the Polish Ministry of Agriculture, which were either ignored or denied without debate. It was concluded that social organisations are unable to push through changes in the law, and so the PPOZ became a political party instead of a social organisation.

The main idea of the party was to promote vegetarianism and veganism, along with animal rights. Main objectives listed by the forming party in 2011 were improving the living conditions of pets and farm animals, promoting veganism and vegetarianism as sustainable source of nutrition and harsher penalties for animal abuse. Its first known action was posting posters attacking Polish President Bronisław Komorowski, who caused controversy by posting a gory photo of him standing next to a killed deer on his social media in 2011. The party distributed posters depicting a deer standing on the lying body of Komorowski with the caption "Komorowski has fallen" (Komorowski poległ). Some media accused the party of hate speech, asserting that the poster wishes death upon Komorowski. The party has been known for its harsh attacks on hunting, once stating that hunters should be treated in the same way as they treat animals. Komorowski abandoned hunting later in 2011.

The concept of the party was praised and supported by some Polish intellectual and professors, such as Bartłomiej Biskup from the Pułtusk Academy of Humanities. Formulating the concept of a party that would campaign for improving the living conditions of animals and promote vegetarianism as an alternative source of nutrition, the activists started collecting signatures needed to formally register the party. The Polish Party of Animal Protection was founded in June 2018, and was officially registered as a political party a few months later on 21 November 2018; the party authorities were appointed on 1 September 2018.

The party formally announced its registration to the media, and published the following statement: "This is a powerful mobiliser for us; a sign that things are moving forward, that there is a real chance for animal rights to start being enforced consistently in our state. We hope that we are not the only ones who are ready for this, because only together with you can we start the journey together towards change for the better. Let it become our common, beautiful goal: to change the fate of Polish animals for the better. Let us show the world that Poles love and respect native wildlife!"

In August 2019, the party endorsed the "Official Animal Rights March 2019" organised in Warsaw, on 24 August 2019. The march was organised by the non-profit animal rights organisation Surge, as well as "Poland for Animals" (Polska Dla Zwierząt). The march was attended by around 600 people, doubling the number of its participants in comparison to 2018. The main goal of the march was to protest against systemic violence against animals, which, according to participants, is still allowed and enabled by Polish law.

The party endorsed and praised the regulation on lawn-mowing in Wrocław, the capital city of Lower Silesia. In September 2019, the city council decided to stop mowing the lawn in parks and other green spaces around the city, a step taken in order to increase and maintain biodiversity. In the city's parks, signs with the following message were placed: "We do not mow the lawn, we feed the insects here". Commenting on the city's decision, the party stated: "An urban meadow is an ideal habitat for many species such as bees, shrews, lizards, hedgehogs and many, many other smaller members of our wonderful ecosystem. It is just as much an amenity for us humans. More plants, means cleaner air, a more beautiful landscape and more effective cooling in the heat of summer".

The party was deregistered from the register of political parties on 18 November 2019, nearly one year after its registration. However, the party was then registered again on 15 April 2021. The party leadership is composed of Lower Silesian animal rights activists - Andrzej Bogdan Olszewski was elected the chairman of the party, Katarzyna Beata Sowa became the deputy chairman of the party, while Andrzej Ochman was announced as the deputy chairman of the party's board.

Program
The Polish Party of Animal Protection defines social justice and ecological sustainability as its main priorities, and at the same time the party wants to fight "any harm done to defenceless creatures and senseless cruelty to animals". The party supports pro-animal non-governmental organisations to fulfill the role of monitoring and moderaing the activities of the state institutions. The party wants to implement local and regional projects to provide financial support and training for local initiative to build a new culture of animal rights. The party wants to place particular emphasis on reforming education to teach and warn about the abnormalities in the treatment of animals, as well as their economical and cultural causes. The PPOZ intends to focus on the fight for legal regulations and securing the rights of animals, and preventing both their exploitation and slaughter, especially when done for economic reasons.

The party compared the meat industry and the current industrial use of animals for commodities to slavery and concentration camps. The party believes that it is necessary to stop the slaughter on animals not only because of its immorality, but also because of the significant amount of pollution that the industry around it causes. The party states: "We despise all forms of slavery practised by our ancestors. We despise the concentration camps and the bestialities committed by humanity of the past. Do we want future generations to despise us when one day science wins out over economics and old-fashioned beliefs about animals' supposed lack of sentient capacity? Do we really want to build the world to come with the prospect of inflicting suffering and all the consequences that modern mass breeding will bring with it? Because, after all, we have to remember that not only do we contribute to the torture of animals, but also to the emission of a macabre amount of pollution due to the chemicals and antibiotics used in farming, but we also affect the quality of the meat we eat (it is hard to demand that meat from a stressed and unhappy animal should be of satisfactory quality, because it involves a series of chemical reactions taking place in the body and affecting it)."

According to the party, Poland has become "the moral dustbin of Europe" on animal issues, and wants to cooperate with other pro-animal groups in order to secure the right to life and well-being of animals, criticising the current animal protection in Poland as insufficient and appallingly low. Polish Party of Animal Protection particularly highlights the pervasive lobbying in Polish activists, highlighting that "pro-animal bills do not even reach the parliamentary drafting stage, because they are effectively fought against by the lobby of fur farmers, industrial meat producers or hunters". The party believes that because "treating a horse as a friend rather than an object has historical roots in Poland", this kind of care should be extended to other animals as well, instead of drawing arbitrary line between "a friend or food".

The party is particularly critical of hunting, which it calls "completely ill-considered venture, consisting more of a kind of violent fun and drunkenness rather than controlling the population in a wise and informed way". The party highlights the high-profile case of wild boar culling in Poland, which indiscriminately killed both strong and weak, and pregnant boars. The party highlights that hunting fails to stimulate natural selection as only the strongest and largest animals are being hunted down, thus weakening the genetical strength of species instead of improving it. The party also states that "consumerism is the parent of cruelty" and wants to end animal slaughter, which it forces to slavery and concentration camps; the PPOZ argues that by eating meat, one not only contributes to torture of fellow sentient being, but also to the "emission of a macabre amount of pollution caused by the chemicals and antibiotics".

However, the party argues that a change is a cultural process, not a simple legal imperative. To this end, in addition to legislative initiatives, the party proposes referendum actions and organisational activities, as well as events that will promote awareness of ethical violations in areas of particularly common animal rights violations in Poland. The PPOZ wants to initiate cooperation with Polish and international associations and foundations and institutions defending the rights to quality of life of farm animals and protecting the life and safety of natural eco-environments. The PPOZ argues that the Polish climate and energy policies need to be thoroughly reformed, stating that renewable and green energies are being displaced by coal, further contributing to Polish pollution. The party demands a policy that will maximise the common good and sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In its program, the party highlighting six main points:
 * Stop chaining dogs;
 * Stop animal slaughter;
 * Ban hunting;
 * Protection of endangered and dying species;
 * Decisive climate policy, replacing coal with green energy;
 * Ban animal use in circuses and laboratories.