It was a sight guaranteed to set the teeth on edge: a toff with a shotgun over his elbow raising a stick to a cowering dog. Photos of Prince Edward apparently lashing out at his labradors who were fighting over a dead pheasant on the Sandringham estate couldn't fail to provoke growls of annoyance, and not just among animal lovers.

Now, far be it from me to come between anyone and their inverted snobbery, but there was more than a hint of irony about the protests. A "pathetic, cowardly and vicious act", thundered one animal charity spokesman.

"He has set a truly sickening example," declared another. Apt comment, you might say, on blasting birds out of the sky for "sport".

But, on that point, the prince's critics were silent.

His great crime, the real moral outrage, was his treatment of man's best friend (even though it has not been established whether he actually hit his dogs or just threatened to); frightening birds into the sky, then taking shots at them, perhaps killing them, perhaps causing them agonising injury, is apparently beside the point.

Such is the confusion and inconsistency about British attitudes to animals, a confusion that comes from the peculiarly emotional relationship we have with our pets.

Is there anything wrong with adoring our cats and dogs?

Not really, except for those strange cold-eyed souls you come across from time to time who begrudge a quid for Oxfam but would remortgage their homes for the sake of their local cats' sanctuary.

No, on the whole, our empathy with and respect for our pets is officially a good thing, without which animal cruelty would still be a blot on our national character instead of a nasty, furtive fringe activity pursued by a twisted minority.

Struan Stevenson, the Scottish MEP who has campaigned for nine years for a ban on the trade in cat and dog fur from the Far East, has helped draw an important line in the sand by pushing for an EU-wide ban on cat and dog fur imports (it comes into force on Thursday).

The stomach-turning cruelty meted out to millions of animals in China, where cats and dogs are routinely kept in overcrowded enclosures and transported without food or water, and some cats are skinned while still alive, is a moral outrage.

But the difficulty is that an unspoken hierarchy of animals exists in human eyes. The moral outrage of the trade in cat and dog fur is surely that sentient animals are being treated with barbarity, not that they are cats and dogs.

Yet it's interesting to note that here in the UK, there is evidence of broiler chickens being kept in overcrowded conditions, overfed so that they become lame, and suffering burns on their legs from the ammonia in their copious uncleared droppings. Hard luck for them that in the evolutionary lottery they ended up with feathers instead of fur: a British broiler shed full of cats would be unimaginable.

We simply cannot stomach the notion of cats and dogs being treated like commodities, as other animals are. Even if cats on fur farms were raised on velvet pillows and fed only fresh sardines and the top of the milk, there would still be support for a trade ban in the UK.

I confess that I would add my support. But that's not a rational view - it's an emotional one which isn't a sound basis for advancing animal welfare.

The only workable approach has to be reasoned and evidence-based; any other is bound to be inconsistent.

It shouldn't matter what species an animal is, only whether it is suffering at human hands.

It's tempting to seek evidence showing that cats and dogs feel pain more acutely than other creatures, but the research doesn't support that view.

All animals feel pain to some extent. If we are outraged by animal cruelty and neglect, we should be outraged on behalf of all animals, not just the tame, photogenic ones.

The debate, of course, does not end here. Vegetarians see no justification in killing animals for their meat; anti-vivisectionists see none in killing them in the pursuit of medical research.

There is nothing like consensus on these matters, but at least one is emerging on the question of harming animals for the sake of human vanity.

Not only has the EU enacted a ban on cat and dog fur, but it's poised in 2009 to ban sales of almost all cosmetics tested on animals. Good.

The logical next step would be to outlaw the trade in all fur, mink and raccoon included. The ban on royal shooting parties might take a bit longer.