Green Party national spokeswoman on animal rights Sue Baumgardt is right when she says the Sea Life Centre's plans to build two pools at the entrance to its aquarium to enclose two seals or penguins is purely a money-making endeavour (The Argus, January 23).
I trust that Brighton and Hove City Council, when considering the centre's proposals, will consult its own Animal Welfare Charter and put into practice the five basic freedoms it believes animals have the right to enjoy. They are: Freedom from fear and distress, freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from pain, disease and injury, freedom from unnecessary constraint and freedom from physical discomfort.
It should then exercise its statutory power with a clear conscience that these five freedoms cannot be provided at a site which is completely inappropriate for keeping seals or penguins, even if they have been bred in captivity.
Nature did not intend them to be entrapped in a busy and noisy site in the middle of Brighton.
-David Hammond, Hassocks
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