Michael Kelly: Four legs good, two legs better for man and beast

Animals don't have rights. Let's get that clear from the start. It is time to call a halt to the moral confusion our society is sinking into.

A poor old lady is harassed and abused like a Scottish referee for dumping a cat in a bin. The pain and shame inflicted on her by do-gooders will haunt her for the rest of her life while the cat forgot the experience the minute the lid was lifted.

Never mind the waste of police and court time, that was no way to treat a member of the human race which has dominion over the animal kingdom. She should have been told off and sent on her way. Yet an opinion-former this week called for the neutering of people who abandon their cats.

The view being promoted in our post-religious society, remote from rural realities, is that animals are not only the equal of humans but share the same emotional experiences. Dogs need "treats". Cats "love" a particular brand of tinned offal. Budgies bounce. Some people even claims their pets "know" what they are thinking. It's all exaggerated nonsense. A two-year-old child is more aware of the world around it than any animal.

But there is big money in encouraging this view of domestic animals. Pet food manufacturers make a fortune. Vets who should be putting their state-funded skills to the care of those animals that are really important to society - the cattle, pigs, sheep that provide our meat, or the racehorses whose sales boost our foreign earnings and whose prancing entertains the punters - instead set up urban practices to exploit the paranoia of middle-class pet owners with nothing more to worry about than their animals' mood swings.

While men and women with serious back problems in Argyll have to travel to Middlesbrough for treatment, Glasgow has sophisticated scanners and operating theatres that diagnose doggy cancers and repair broken paws to extend the lives of animals any balanced society would put down.

In a world of starving masses, in a country with more that its share of the deprived, this is an immoral diversion of resources. Buying your pet a Christmas present is the first sign you have lost touch with reality. Putting a (mock) fur coat on a dog whose natural habitat is out in the open is the sheer indulgence of the over-rich.

As for buying a dog a pram to take it for a walk, this demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the animal. Do these spinsters imagine that an ill or ageing dog in the wild drags itself out of its lair every day for a bit of fresh air? These pram pushers are, of course, the same people who have their pets deprived of their basic drive to reproduce.You can't get a more skewed set of priorities than that.

Well, maybe you can if you buy an "edible Easter card" for your dog, or a pet travel set "with elevated eating platform" so your cat doesn't have to stoop - only 69.

This is not a manifesto for abuse. Cruelty to animals is wrong and should be condemned by every civilised society. Cruelty demeans man and it is difficulty not to suspect he who would kick out at a dog for getting in his way would not hesitate to do the same thing to a child. That foreign-based criminal who flew in to bag Britain's largest land animal for his antlers should be on community service for life for depriving Britain of the tourist income from people who only want to look.

But this aversion to cruelty is not based on any rights animals may be thought to have. It is because human beings have duties - duties to society to protect animals and to use them responsibly. And when it comes to animals abusers, the list starts long before those who drown a litter of unwanted kittens.

What about the fishermen who have exploited every last bit of technology to hoover up the oceans and still protest that stocks are viable? Politicians fight their corner. Or those who breed genetically unsound domestic animals to create exotic pets? Yet we have legislation which outlaws silly people who chase foxes - largely unsuccessfully - with dogs. And even some Spaniards now frown at that magnificent test of male courage that is the corrida, yet encourage the loutish, drunken and promiscuous behaviour of their tourists.

But let me confine my solution to making the market for pets work for society. Clearly, too many of the wrong type of people harbour these creatures. It would be unjust to attempt to separate them by normative criteria.

So, in these straitened times, let us use the impersonal fiscal system to try to restore the balance. Reintroduce the dog licence. Not at its former level of 7s 6d, which now merely indicates a massive golf victory, but starting at a sensible level of 500. And let us apply it all pets. So the 500 is for a hamster. What a benefit to unwilling parents having to tolerate these rodents because the kid next door has one! This would cut demand at a stroke, as it would for budgies and rabbits and other pests.

The 1,000 dog and cat licence would be much more of a money spinner because I suspect the demand for these is inelastic. People who subscribe to a service which reminds them of their pets "special and memorable dates" deserve to be taken to the cleaners by the taxman. You'd have to send the messages ever quarter hour to remind a dog - two minutes for a parrot. As for a goldfish?

Finally, ban bequeathing to animals or animal charities. Those defying this edict would, posthumously, have their estates redirected to the nearest living relative who should have got it in the first place.If no-one is found it would go to feed the Third World whose least resident is worth more than all the animal rescue centres in the UK.