The fourth international EGALS animal law conference took place on September 19, 2018 at the Åbo Akademi University in Turku (Finland) with participants from Europe - including Finland, Denmark, France, the U.K., Germany and Switzerland - and guest speakers from the USA. The aim of the event was to discuss the term "animal law" and what it stands for as a promising and independent field of jurisprudence.

The animal welfare lawyers demonstrated the diversity of the term "animal law" by talking about their respective projects and experiences and the orientation of their work. It turns out that the expectations placed on a corresponding university course can vary depending on the target group. For example, while LL.M. Sacha Lucassen from the University of Aarhus (Denmark) examined the interdisciplinarity and cultural differences among the students interested in animal law, Dr. Joe Wills from the University of Leicester (U.K.) addressed the prospect of restrictions on fundamental rights resulting from animal welfare regulations.

In her talk "Animal law in the public, academic and political environment", lic. iur. Vanessa Gerritsen, deputy executive director of TIR, presented TIR's various fields of work. She pointed out that an active involvement at the academic as well as the political and social level through legal and practical work contributes to the improvement of the human-animal relationship. She therefore called for a broad definition of "animal law" in a future university course that would address all aspects of human and animal coexistence in society.

TIR employees lic. iur. Katerina Stoykova and Beat Leutwiler also took part in the conference. For TIR, it is essential to involve the entire team in TIR's activities and to promote the exchange with other animal welfare lawyers in order to further advance our work.

We would like to thank the organizers, Dr. Soc. Sc. Birgitta Wahlberg and her assistant Minka Lindroos, for the perfect execution of the event including a surprise performance by a part of the Finnish-Swedish choir Florakören. We are already looking forward to the next EGALS conference, which is expected to take place in Denmark in 2019.