Consultation on Cat, Dog and Equine codes

DEFRA has just issued a consultation on the proposed codes for the welfare of cats, dogs and equines. Once completed, these codes will operate in conjunction with the Animal Welfare Act to enforce the duties of animal owners towards their pets, so their contents are extremely important.

Draft Codes (all PDFs)

Cats

Dogs

Equines

I've only had time to read through the cat code so far and most of it looks excellent, although it goes a bit overboard on the idea that cats are completely solitary animals: that's true to some extent, but it's also true that female cats will raise their kittens in communal nurseries for protection from predators.

And again

Swayne & Partners phoned again this morning to say the last dog owned by the family with the original parvovirus infected puppy has started vomiting, and the one they saw yesterday has died.

Arguably the family have committed some kind of offence under the Animal Welfare Act by failing to provide adequate care for those five dogs, but frankly nothing we could do to them would punish them more than the consequences of their failure to get any of them vaccinated.