The Government launched its long-awaited Animal Welfare Strategy for England this week. Here’s our take on what was in it.
What was good
- There’s no mention of pet bans (positive/permitted lists) as a way to curb pet ownership. Instead the strategy puts educating owners on the best ways to look after their pets as top of the list on how to improve animal welfare in companion animals. That’s something we’ve been saying and working to support for years.
- It finally seems like the Government has been listening to what we’ve been saying on ways to improve animal activity licensing. There’s a strong commitment to work with pet selling businesses to ‘reduce the administrative burdens they face, including in relation to record-keeping requirements’ and to look at the online sale of pets. In our interactions with Government we’ve been saying that all the paperwork requirements aren’t really contributing to better welfare standards – they can take time away from important husbandry tasks – and there are better ways to achieve this.
- Finally, it was great to see a commitment to work in partnership with a wide range of organisations – including trade representatives as well as welfare bodies – to achieve results and to use the best evidence to make decisions. We sit on an advisory council to Government called the Companion Animal Sector Council (CASC) which allows us to partner with Government to improve existing regulations.
What was missing
The strategy commits to carrying out a consultation on the licensing of rescue and rehoming organisations in England (this has already happened in Wales although nothing has happened as yet). The Government really needs to just get on with closing this loophole – and quickly. It is incredible that rescue centres remain unlicensed, uninspected and unregulated, yet are somehow seen as a ‘better’ place to get an animal, rather than a pet shop which must meet high standards set out in law. Animal welfare needs are the same, regardless of the physical place where the pet resides temporarily. Rescues should at the very least meet the same high standards that pet shops must meet (and have done for years!) We will certainly be saying this in any forthcoming consultation.
