Let’s work together to make things better for animal welfare

There was a great deal of focus on the role of the RSPCA in enforcing animal welfare legislation following the publication of the EFRA Select Committee report on domestic pets.  Yet little note of the majority of other conclusions and recommendations which could make a real improvement to animal welfare in England.

The criticisms of the RSPCA are well documented both in the report and online.  However the RSPCA urges politicians and decision makers not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  We have never claimed to be a perfect organisation that gets everything right all the time.  We have a 92% success rate on prosecutions which of course means that sometimes we get it wrong.  But we are committed to improving our processes and in particular improving our transparency.  We have already completed 24 of the 33 recommendations from our independent prosecutions review in 2014.  Of course there is always more to do and we will study the report closely and where necessary review our practices.  However, at a time when resources are scant in the public sector we still raise the questions: if we stopped prosecuting, who could realistically take it on, and how would this better animal protection?

It is a shame that the other 29 recommendations made in the report got forgotten as we agree with the vast bulk of them.  As it is inevitably the RSPCA that has to pick up the pieces of poor animal welfare we applaud the recommendations to improve dog breeding practices and get better monitoring and regulation.  This is something we have long called for and stand side by side with the Committee calling on the Government to take the necessary action.  They can do this as early as next year when they issue their licensing legislative proposals.

Likewise we are extremely pleased the Committee has picked up on the issue of equine identification - something many put in the ‘too difficult pile’.  Horse welfare remains a serious problem and not being able to identify who owns them is a major problem for us and other horse welfare charities.  We recognise the Government are taking steps in this area but it is long overdue and from an animal welfare perspective we hope the recommendations in the report help to ensure measures are put in place so horses can be traced more easily.

A recent debate in Westminster highlighted the interest and support for tougher sentences for those convicted of animal cruelty.  The RSPCA is well aware of the number of members of the public who express their dismay as seemingly small sentences for some abhorrent acts of cruelty against animals.  Once again the Committee has identified this as an important issue and put its weight behind those calls.  Again the RSPCA supports these recommendations and we know from the recent Commons debate that the Government is looking seriously at this issue.

So while the media has inevitably focused on the areas of disagreement the RSPCA very much hopes we can move forward on the areas where we do agree as they are far greater.  It would be a real backward step for animal welfare if all the positive recommendations supported by the vast majority of MPs and animal welfare organisations were overshadowed and ignored because a few controversial recommendations stole the headlines.

The RSPCA hopes to sit down with politicians and decision makers in the coming months to discuss this important report.  We are of course happy to listen to concerns about how we work and if there are areas we can improve on then we will look at those.  But the bottom line for us is we want to work with our partners in the animal welfare sector, the veterinary world, the enforcement world and government to improve animal welfare.

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