SPACE LAW (needs updating?)

[Sundance]

Between gimmicks, actual practice of certain sections of research, and the good fun of beating the shit out of monkeys; I'd say an animal abuse law would take more than it'd give. Since when does NT care about morality, anyway? Drug busts are cool, though.

If I was a space lawyer, i'd go down the rather dystopian route of viewing animals as NT property, and thus animal harm would be regarded as "destruction of property". Who owns what animal? The Captain could argue that any animal is his animal on the station as he's an NT official, but it could also be argued that each animal is owned by their respective department, i.e: The monkeys in Genetics, the Bees in botany, etc.

The 100's of animals the QM purchased could be viewed as QM's animals in that regard, but this is a grey area.


tl;dr: It seems fitting of space law to treat animals as property, whether it be for research purposes, or for leisure.