Author: John Brookland

John Brookland is an animal welfarist, and amateur historian. He authors two popular blogs: animalrightsandwrongs.uk and animalrightsandwrongs.com with a monthly worldwide readership of thousands. He has written seven books on his exploits helping animals, also on social history and a book on the war horses of World War One. During his long and varied career which has taken him round the world, he has unfortunately witnessed most of the horrors of animal cruelty there is to see and has gained extensive insight into most animal welfare issues which he uses to write his blogs. He is now retired and still travelling the world with his partner to view wildlife and wild places before they and he disappear.

Want to report animal cruelty in the UK- who should you call?

Click on this link for all the contact numbers for reporting animal cruelty in UK

Reporting animal cruelty in the U.K can be confusing. Ask most people who they think of first when reporting animal cruelty in the U.K and you can almost guarantee they will answer RSPCA or Scottish SPCA. Ask them who they think is legally responsible for investigating and prosecuting animal abuse and you will probably get the same answer. But in reality this is not the case as they have only become the default agency because those who should be responsible show little appetite to get involved.

Many people do not realise that there are other official authorities they can contact.These include the police, local authorities and Department of Environment, Farming & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), who have all been happy to decry the RSPCA in the past but have shown little interest themselves, as it is an expensive and specialist area of law enforcement.

When the government introduced the all-encompassing new Animal Welfare Act 2006 they failed to appoint anyone to enforce it.

There is also a misplaced conviction that the Society has mythical powers of arrest, forced entry and seizure when the sad truth is that they have no powers at all. The other agencies do not have a statutory duty to bother only a moral one and because of this mindset the RSPCA have always stepped in to fill the breach. But not everyone is happy with this situation and many believe they should not be allowed to prosecute and police authorities, judges, the media and legal profession regularly condemn the RSPCA and state that there is a conflict of interest and they have muscled their way into becoming the default agency.

Ironically there would be little or no investigation or prevention of animal cruelty without their input as they prosecute over 90% of cases taken under the Animal Welfare Act, 2006 and they are the only organisation that collects statistics on cruelty, so without them we would not even know the level of animal abuse in the country. Basically the Police, our local authorities and DEFRA should in theory be playing a bigger role. Recently there has been a lot of hand wringing at suggestions of giving legal powers to the RSPCA even though most other countries have gone down this route successfully.

The National Police Chiefs Authority have stated that: ‘Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 there is no one agency that is held responsible or accountable for enforcement of animal welfare. This means there are inconsistencies, however the Police, local authorities and animal welfare charities do seek to work together to deal with serious cruelty to animals.’ 

reporting animal cruelty

So what is the real situation and who should you contact.

Reporting animal cruelty to the Police.

If you call a Police call centre they will usually automatically refer you to the RSPCA, but you should insist they attend if it is an emergency situation. The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) stated they are happy to: ‘signpost reports of animal welfare to the RSPCA and only provide a police response in emergency cases’.

In all fairness the Police are overstretched and in reality are out of their depth or comfort zone when it comes to animal cruelty issues. Many officers no doubt have the attitude that they have better things to do. They also admit that their front-line officers rarely use or even know about the Act and many forces rely on a few ‘specialist’ dog and wildlife crime officers to deal with animals.

Reporting Animal Cruelty to DEFRA.

You can report many aspects of cruelty to the local Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) who are tasked with most aspects of the care, welfare and transport of livestock, slaughterhouses and animals in general, but the number of inspectors and inspections is woefully inadequate.

In 2016 they only managed to visit  1,676  farms out of  362,151 that were due inspection for animal welfare – just 0.46%. The potential for missed cases of suffering is huge.

Reporting animal cruelty to local authorities.

Local government authorities, usually the environmental health department inspectors, are responsible for licensing animal premises and welfare in dog breeding, pet shops, riding stables and most places where animal are kept. Like the Police they have no statutory duty to enforce the Animal Welfare Act.

But the Animal Welfare Act has discretionary powers for national and local authorities to appoint ‘inspectors’, but because of the cost and training required only 60% did so when the law was introduced, with many withdrawing them over the last decade due to the costs involved, and of these only 17% had inspectors dealing with companion animals.

In May 2020, Tracy Crouch, M.P. asked in the House of Commons how many animal welfare inspectors there were in Kent and was told the Government did not hold any such data under the Act and it was up to local authorities to “prioritise their resources”, so it seems the situation hasn’t changed.

Other Animal Charities.

Straying into areas involving campaigning against and prosecuting animal cruelty is contentious as well as expensive and risks alienating donors so most animal charities steer well clear and prefer instead to concentrate on the aftermath of irresponsible ownership and ill-treatment of animals.

Reporting animal cruelty in Scotland

Scotland approaches the subject differently and the Scottish SPCA (SSPCA) is designated a ‘Specialist Reporting Agency’, who report the facts of a case of cruelty to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. And it is they who decide whether the evidence warrants a prosecution and is in the ‘public interest’. In this way it protects the SSPCA from any criticism or blame of victimisation or conflict of interest.

Many believe this is the way forward and ensures an independent and unbiased approach, but in reality, with all agencies already giving cruelty a low priority because of funding restraints and staffing, plus having a differing viewpoint on what constitutes abuse from those who deal with cruelty daily, it would undoubtedly result in very few prosecutions being taken and remove any deterrent to those who harm animals.

The easy solution would be to give the RSPCA more powers following extra police training and other safeguards, the road many other countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the USA have gone down, but in our land of animal lovers we don’t seem to be able to get our head round the idea.

A Guide to Reporting Animal Cruelty in the UK
Paranoia over RSPCA powers.

The animal compassion test.

Dog meat trade, dogs

Be honest: which of these two photographs arouses more or all of your compassion.

Both photographs are of overcrowded animals heading for slaughter to be eaten for their meat. As genuine ‘animal lovers’ we should have an equal reaction to both photographs, but most of us will be more concerned at the plight of the dogs because we are more familiar with them. The general rule is that our conscience is more aroused when we see images of companion pets, but accept cruelty to many other animals, particularly livestock as less of a concern or even inconsequential. We are guilty of having preferences when it involves animal suffering and unconsciously grade our level of empathy and compassion towards an animal’s well-being depending on the type of animal and the circumstances involved.

We manage to compartmentalise our compassion.

Our behaviours are rather perverse and hypocritical in the way we view animal suffering and cruelty.We have this peculiar in-built capacity to group certain sections of the animal world into being less worthy of our compassion. This makes it easy for us to use them without being racked with guilt at the way we treat them.

This ranking goes along the lines of dogs and cute baby animals first, followed by cats and horses and then spirals down to those we have little consideration for such a fish and insects, and those we hate like spiders and rats.

We see no problem in confining intelligent free flying birds in small cages.

Battery farm battery chickens, cruelty to chickens, hens
Many of us get upset about chickens and hens being confined…………………..
but see no problem in confining intelligent free flying birds in small cages for our entertainment.

For instance, there are no campaigns against  keeping intelligent, social, free flying birds like parrots and macaws in solitary confinement in small cages, but we consistently argue against battery farmed birds which are unable to fly.

We make it worse in the case of parrots by often taking away their ability to fly by clipping their wings and ignoring their mental suffering. Such is our bizarre attitude of feeling sorry for certain animals in one situation but not in others.

Many children adore keeping rats and mice as pets and they become part of the family, but if a wild one should have the cheek to invade our home we exterminate it by any means possible, whether humane or not. Our lives are full of these contradictory attitudes.

“we have this capacity to unconsciously distance ourselves from any mental discomfort or anxiety certain animals might suffer”

Farm animals are another case in point as we appear unconcerned about the conditions they are kept under but make a great display of emotion when a dog is treated in the same way.

mouse, human hand
Pet or a pest?

Worse still we label farmed food animals with the unflattering title of livestock, ‘stock’ being defined as a ‘commodity for use or sale’ which when combined with ‘live’ becomes ‘farm animals regarded as assets’. This further distances ourselves from looking upon them as animals with personality or individuality. It re-enforces the conditioning that we receive during childhood that they are just meat producing machines, voraciously eating in the fields to fatten up for us to consume.

Scientific research uses huge numbers of animals and yet again we have this capacity to unconsciously distance ourselves from any mental discomfort or anxiety about the way we use them. This is because most animals used are mice, rats and fish which we have little interest in, but what about dogs and cats?

dog, cage

Our irrational attitude kicks in once again because we even view their suffering as essential to our well-being and so we allow ourselves to condone the use of our beloved dogs, cats and horses, which under other circumstances we would never contemplate and vehemently protest against even though 1,079 of the dogs used in the UK in 2016 suffered moderate to severe pain.

Number of Dogs and Cats used for experiments in 2016
2016               U.K            U.S.A     AUSTRALIA
DOGS             4,607           60,979             7,698
CATS                143           18,898             2,015

What makes these poor dogs and cats any different?

The answer is that we may not want them tortured and sacrificed on our behalf, but we cannot contemplate putting their welfare before ours. We believe that the research might help or even save our lives at some stage and so they become beyond our capacity to feel any sympathy towards. They are out of sight and mind and their use doesn’t impact on our lives.

We are all guilty of viewing and treating animals in a different way dependent on the type of animal involved, what we intend to use them for, the circumstances we meet them under and the many influences of our lifestyles, upbringing and attitudes. For all these reasons animal abuse continues unabated and must be inevitable.

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Updated February 2020