Tag: RSPCA

Top animal charities spend £500 million a year saving unwanted animals.

Are animal re-homing charities failing animals?

We all know that the thousands of animal “re-homing” charities in the UK and around the world are doing wonderful work in finding new homes for hundreds of thousands of animals each year, because they are quick to tell us so and we see their great work depicted on television documentaries and in the press. As donating public we revel in the glow of sad stories and happy endings of animals finding “forever homes” and for this reason we throw millions at these charities to enable them to continue.

The top eight UK charities spend £500,000,000 each year to support the infrastructure to “save” and “rescue” animals from us humans. In the case of the Dog’s Trust, the UK’s leading dog charity, this works out at £8,100 per dog to care for and re-home the 13,141 dogs (2017 figures).

It would seem on the surface that the animal re-homing charities are doing a really good job and making the most of the money we give to them, but should they judge their success by the number of animals they take in and re-home or by what they are accomplishing in reducing numbers in the first place.

The Humane Societies of the United States (HSUS) is constantly criticised for not giving enough of their funds to animal shelters, but they once succinctly responded by declaring that their aim was to “prevent cruelty and stop animals entering animal shelters in the first place”. It could be argued that the re-homing charities are perpetuating the problem of irresponsible pet ownership by offering a free service to accommodate and re-cycle unwanted pets, strengthening the creed that they are disposable objects.

Each year the number of unwanted and abandoned animals never seems to decrease.

Are animal shelters just re-cycling plants for irresponsible owners.

Each year the major UK animal re-homing charities take in tens of thousands of unwanted dogs, over a hundred thousand cats, thousands of horses and donkeys and hundreds of thousands of rabbits and other small animals. All these figures could probably be doubled, trebled or even quadrupled if you consider the numbers taken in by the hundreds of smaller UK charities.

Local authorities supposedly dealt with 7,000 stray, abandoned and unwanted dogs in 2017 of which over 2,000 were put to sleep although these figures seem far too low. The Cats Protection charity alone cares for nearly 50,000 cats annually.

If official figures are correct, we are supposedly getting on top of the abandoned and stray dog numbers on the streets, but half of the dogs that the Dog’s Trust accept, 6,500 (2017 figures), are strays from local authorities. Any slight decrease is more than matched by the increasing number handed into animal rescue centres by fickle owners so the status quo remains despite continuing campaigns and free neutering. This results in more facilities opening to cope with the continual flood. To make matters worse we are increasingly importing other countries’ stray and unwanted animals. We have had a cat and horse crisis for several years now and an increasing problem of unwanted exotic pets which has resulted in even more charities to rescue them.

While charities are happy to continue picking up the burden there is no incentive for the government or the law to intervene or take notice. The UK Government almost entirely washes it hands of the subject and even relies on animal charities to collate figures on the state of our animal keeping habits such as the RSPCA with their cruelty figures and the PDSA with their PAWS survey otherwise we would have no idea of the problems.

Kittens, rescue, animal rescue,, abandoned, unwanted
The number of stray and unwanted cats in the UK is incalculable.

There must be more to animal welfare than just re-homing dogs and cats.

The charities will argue that they only exist for this purpose, but surely this is a short-sighted outlook and instead of proudly proclaiming the increasing numbers they are finding homes for, they should strive to decrease the numbers becoming unwanted in the first place.  There must be more to animal welfare than just re-homing dogs and cats, but most charities seem happy to just tread water, accept the status quo and never make inroads into solving the major welfare problems. Do we just accept this as a fact of life and money well spent or should we expect more from them? Perhaps it is time for a completely new mind-set.

Do we treat animal cruelty offenders too harshly?

Defense lawyers, cruelty prosecutions

Some defence lawyers believe we do.

Some UK lawyers appear on a crusade to curtail animal cruelty prosecutions in the UK. The rights and interests of the abused animals to get protection seem to get lost in attempts to make us feel sorry for the offenders. Some lawyers advertise themselves as specialist defence lawyers against the RSPCA and arguably publish a lot of misinformation to muddy the waters.

By advertising themselves as specialist defence lawyers it obviously provides them with clients and publicity in this niche market. The situation is similar in other countries such as Australia and the USA. They declare that they are there to defend you against the dastardly RSPCA, who they ironically accuse of using ‘specialist animal welfare prosecution lawyers’, when of course they are acting in the same way.

Extreme and lurid viewpoints.

At least one firm posts quite extreme and lurid viewpoints about the charity on their websites. One goes as far as to show an RSPCA sign dripping with blood stating the charity has ‘increasingly taken over the investigation and prosecution’ of animal cruelty in the UK and accuses their inspectors of being “sheep in wolves clothing“ by dressing in police style uniforms to dupe the public.

Website sign, RSPCA, blood
Some sections of the legal profession are obviously not fans of the R.S.P.C.A – from a law firms’ website.

They also cite the RSPCA of slaughtering 1000 healthy dogs and cats annually and state that ‘there are few prosecutions that cause more anxiety and trauma than RSPCA prosecutions’. 

Their advice to owners being investigated by the RSPCA is to rush their pet to a vet to get a report on its good condition, but of course this is mostly nonsensical as most neglect results from not visiting a vet in the first place. RSPCA Inspectors are hardly likely to waste their time chasing owners of healthy and well looked after pets as there is obviously no point.

Unfair to brand people who ill treat animals as criminals.

Some defence lawyers seem to feel the use of the Animal Welfare Act is too severe and  its application often controversial believing that it would be better to warn or educate owners rather than prosecute them. But this is mostly the line the RSPCA takes and prosecution is only used for severe cases. It also has to be remembered that they are not driving around looking for owners to pick on but responding to concerns by the public. The consensus among some is that offenders cannot be treated fairly in court due to emotive public reaction and media interest. There also seems an attitude that people who ill-treat animals to the point that they break the law, should not be branded as criminals, but rather as misguided souls only guilty of a misdemeanor at most and deserving of lenient treatment.

I obviously uphold everyone’s right to have a legal defence but not at the cost of removing the right to prosecute those that have committed an illegal act. The message at the moment seems that it is better to ignore acts of animal cruelty in respect of the law because at the end of the day animals do not really matter.

The point that appears overlooked by many is that the RSPCA cannot pursue a prosecution unless a vet confirms an animal has been cruelly treated beyond what is defensible, so realistically it is the veterinary surgeon who is instigating the prosecution and for good reason.

Another comment by certain sections of the legal profession is that ‘the RSPCA use their own vets and docile police officers’ to aid them. In fact they are mostly independent veterinary surgeons.

There are thankfully other Lawyers who feel different.

Luckily there are other groups to help counter these legal attitudes within the profession. The UK Association of Lawyers for Animal Welfare (ALAW) has commendable ideals in trying to make more of their colleagues interested in animal protection and use a range of law-related techniques to secure better enforcement of existing protection laws, but many accuse them of furthering RSPCA goals.

There are similar groups elsewhere such as the Animal Legal Defense Fund in the USA operated by lawyers to ‘protect the lives and advance the interests of them [animals] through the legal system’ by filing high-impact lawsuits, providing free legal help, training prosecutors and pushing for stronger enforcement of State anti-cruelty laws and more humane treatment of animals in every corner of American lives.

Many suggest that the UK government prosecuting authority, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), should only pursue such cases, knowing full well that this would be the death knell of prosecuting people for animal cruelty in the UK. The CPS of course, like all other government authorities, has more pressing concerns and financial constraints and as the Police know well, it is a battle to get any case through them. So what chance a case of animal cruelty.