Commitment and Activities

The Foundation Animal in Law (TIR) was founded by Antoine F. Goetschel on 21 December 1995, following the dissolution of his joint law firm with Dr. iur. Hans H. Schmid, then President of Zurich Animal Welfare (ZT). Its predecessor, the association «Animal Welfare Is a Legal Duty» (VTR), had been led by Antoine F. Goetschel from 1986 to 1995. He served as managing director of the Foundation from 1995 to 2007. Upon his election as Attorney for Animal Welfare in Criminal Matters of the Canton of Zurich in 2007, he handed the operational lead to his deputy, Dr. iur. Gieri Bolliger — to avoid any conflict of interest with the cantonal office — and was elected to the Foundation's Board of Trustees, on which he served until 2010. Since its founding, TIR has advocated for the improved legal status of animals and promotes research, teaching, and practice in the field of animal welfare law in Switzerland and abroad.

Antoine F. Goetschel is founder and president of the Global Animal Law GAL Association. There, he is committed to the further development of international animal welfare law and to a better legal status of the animal at national and global level.

His work encompasses research, consulting, and exchange with international institutions. This includes co-developing the internationally acclaimed database on national and global animal welfare legislation. It also includes drafting a Convention on Animal Welfare, Animal Health and One Health for the United Nations, as well as creating a matrix with concrete proposals for improving the legal status of animals. These proposals relate to local through to global levels and to short-term through to visionary time horizons in the areas of legislation, law enforcement, and education.

From 2007 to 2010, Antoine F. Goetschel served as the official attorney for animal welfare in criminal matters for the Canton of Zurich. In this globally unique role, he represented abused animals in around 700 court and criminal proceedings.

Antoine F. Goetschel is the author of numerous specialist publications and books on law, ethics, and animal welfare. He works as a speaker and lecturer in Switzerland and abroad and regularly participates in academic and professional discourse. He devotes himself to veterinary law and the animal in law within the framework of the doctoral programme in Biomedical Ethics and Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich.

Alongside his legal practice, Antoine F. Goetschel advises organisations, institutions, and authorities in Switzerland and abroad. He is regularly invited to lectures, panels, and expert events.

A focus of his work lies at the interface of law and ethics around the animal. Antoine F. Goetschel engages with fundamental questions of responsibility and the effect of legal norms — also against the background of the Swiss constitutional principle of the «dignity of the creature» that he helped bring about — and brings this perspective into consulting, teaching, and public discussion.