Pics of the spiffy new signage at RSPCA Cambridge Burleigh Street Shop

"Pub sign" to make the shop visible to people facing
parallel to the frontage

Frontage

The whole ensemble 

Right-hand window with new displays

Left-hand window 

Close-up of mannequin

Display stand for bric-à-brac

Fantastic Monsoon dress

Rabbit interest group???

Would anyone in the Cambridge, Ely or Newmarket area be interested in joining a branch rabbit welfare group?

Our inspector has asked the branch if we can try to increase our rabbit fostering because of the growing number of rabbit welfare cases he needs to place for rehoming. 

We're looking for people who would consider fostering rabbits, and also for experienced rabbit carers who might be able to help and support new fosterers and anyone who could help with putting up rabbit runs.

Rabbits are very popular pets but they are extremely difficult to care for to a high welfare standard, so it's important that foster setups which adopters will be viewing should be setting a good example. If we're insisting that adopters must have runs which are at least 8 ft long we can't be seen to be keeping rabbits in smaller accommodation ourselves.

Unfortunately this means that any rabbit housing we provide to foster homes is likely to be of the hefty wood and mesh flat-pack variety and will need a fair amount of DIY skills to set it up and a suitable area of level grass or concrete for the site. Most of the best commercial runs were originally designed for poultry so will need under-wiring as rabbits will dig out of any run that doesn't have a base.

As we would order and pay for the hutches and runs used by rabbit foster carers we would request that anyone offering to help in this way intends to continue fostering for a reasonable length of time because this type of housing is difficult to dismantle and re-use elsewhere.

If you might be interested in helping with this, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

The nightmare that is the current dog breeding situation

We've had yet another dog owner whose pet needs an urgent operation likely to cost at least £250 in order to save her life at our clinic today. She has two week old puppies who are having to be hand-reared and her condition is causing her extreme pain (which could probably have been avoided if she'd been brought to us more quickly). 

He's made no provision at all for the possible costs of something going wrong during her pregnancy and if we weren't here it's likely that she would either have to be euthanased to end her suffering or would die miserably.

This kind of thing is mostly ignorance, not deliberate cruelty, but it is just so frustrating that it could have been avoided by a spay operation which would have cost just £55 via our clinic.

RSPCA Hospitals Appeal

Click the image if you'd like to donate towards one of the large national hospitals (in London, Manchester and Birmingham). If you're based in Cambridge, please consider donating towards our branch animal clinic.

Welfare v. Rights mark 3

As I've argued in earlier posts, treating animal welfare and animal rights as though they represented opposites is at best a mistake, and at worst an example of "bad faith" claims aimed at intentionally confusing people.

Animal rights is a theory about the ethics of the way we should treat animals, but it's more helpful to treat it as one of a number of possible theories about the moral status of animals and avoid using it as a slogan. Ethical theory is essentially about clarifying what we believe about our obligations and helping us to think about this in a clear and logical fashion. It's not primarily about practical outcomes, although most theories of ethics incorporate some requirements to assess whether the outcomes of following a theory are likely to be good or bad.

If pressed, I think I'd plump for Erskine's definition of rights as a legal term (so animals have some rights in the UK as the law protects them against sadistic cruelty and neglect).

Animal welfare is usually defined in terms such as "physical and psychological well-being" and animal welfare science is the corpus of evidence-based knowledge about how this may be achieved.

So, someone who has been convinced that animal suffering matters should be interested in knowing more about the practicalities of animal welfare in order to be successful in putting their beliefs into practice.

Someone who already cares about animals may well take an interest in animal ethics to clarify their thinking when difficult choices need to be made (for example whether it can be right to use vaccines which have been tested on animals in order to protect other animals from fatal diseases).

If you're interested in pursuing this, I suggest taking a look at the exercises and case studies on the free, interactive Animal Ethics Dilemma site. You might also read, Putting the Horse before Descartes by the philosopher Bernard Rollin.

What's gone wrong?

1. Bernard Rollin argues part of the problem is that good animal welfare and high productivity were at one time inextricably linked, simply because agricultural animals would die if their basic needs were not met. However, the advent of factory farming meant that animals could be kept in very poor conditions (overcrowded, dirty etc.) and remain productive through the use of technological aids like antibiotics. When animal protection organisations became concerned that animals were suffering in these systems, it was natural for the producers to counter this by claiming welfare must be good because productivity was still high. Gradually, through abuse of language, "welfare" became a term used by the animal industry to oppose better treatment.
2. Advocates of a strong version of animal rights are opposed to "welfarism" because it's seen as a way of justifying keeping animals to be killed for meat and excusing systems which are only a little better than the worst excesses of factory farming.
3. Fox hunting! Opponents of a ban on hunting find it a useful tactic to claim the RSPCA has been taken over by people who don't care about animal welfare because they want to destroy the RSPCA's credibility with ordinary people. (In fact this tactic tends to be used by any group that feels threatened by the RSPCA's campaigning activities—for example groups promoting exotic pets.)

"Bad Faith"

The problem with all this is that it makes it very hard to have a rational discussion about what needs doing in order to save more animals. It is absurd that an organisation whose supporters shoot around 10 million pheasants each year (Lees, A. C., Newton, I. and Balmford, A. (2013), Pheasants, buzzards, and trophic cascades. Conservation Letters, 6: 141–144. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00301.x) gets a respectful hearing when it claims that "the Hunting Act has not saved a single fox" or exclaims with faux indignation about the euthanasia of sick animals.

Incidentally pheasants make up a startling 30% of the total land bird biomass of the British Isles (presumably chickens are not included).

What is news?

The 90-odd percent of the RSPCA's activities which don't involve startling cruelty, heroic rescues or very cute/unusual animals are not "news".

Unfortunately this means that:

1. The public see quite a lot of the isolated newsworthy items but never really get a larger picture of what's going on.
2. It's easy to claim that only the photogenic incidents are being dealt with—the public don't get to view inspectors driving round collecting small, injured animals and ferrying them to vets, or all the help given by arranging treatment via the telephone because there's not really anything much to see. Confidentiality issues normally mean it's not possible to film situations where the inspectors are negotiating with owners who aren't irresponsible enough to be prosecuted and any film of prosecutions can only be released after any court case has concluded. This means they have no real way to judge what's actually happening unless they go to the trouble of reading the public Annual Reports.
3. Anything that can be made to look like a scandal of some sort is news, and modern newspapers are strapped for cash and very short of investigative journalists. This means it's easy for organisations opposed to animal welfare to write articles misrepresenting the RSPCA, then issue them as press releases or feed them as news to individual journalists and get them published pretty well verbatim as though they were news actually discovered by the paper.
4. Muddling  up the distinction between rights and welfare (and why people who care about animals should be interested in both) is just another tool to spread disinformation about the animal protection movement, with the added bonus of helping to divide the movement.

Cats and dogs and other animals

Lulu: signed over because she was kept permenently
in a shed and had untreated mange

While writing up the previous post I searched for statistics on saving pets in the UK; how the numbers changed over time, and what needs to be done to save more animals and discovered that reliable information is a) remarkably sparse, b) skewed towards an assumption that this is predominantly about healthy stray dogs, and c) probably unreliable although it may point up trends.

The situation is very different in the US because their equivalents of the UK's dog warden services collect cats as well as dogs and they will also take pets who are simply not wanted by their owners (including sick animals whose owners can't afford the cost of euthanasia at a vet). The result is extremely high rates of euthanasia—around 71% of cats and 56% of dogs compared with around 7% for stray dogs in the UK.

The largest organisation rehoming stray and unwanted cats in the UK is Cats Protection, and they fairly recently conducted a large-scale study of mortality rates in their adoption centres, which revealed an average of 4.7%, qualified by a warning that the study period did not include the kitten season and the death rate is probably higher then because young kittens are more vulnerable to infections.

(Murray, J. K., Skillings, E., & Gruffydd-Jones, T. J. (2008). A study of risk factors for cat mortality in adoption centres of a UK cat charity. Journal of feline medicine and surgery, 10(4), 338–45. doi:10.1016/j.jfms.2008.01.005)

Few of the cats who died or had to be euthanased were suffering from traumatic injuries (e.g. from traffic accidents), which is to be expected because fatally injured casualties would be likely to be euthanased by a veterinary surgeon before they could be admitted to a rehoming centre. 

One of the most reliable sources relating to stray dogs is probably the Dogs Trust Stray Dogs Survey— in their conclusion:

"The number of stray dogs reported by UK authorities overall has decreased by six percentage points since last year. The grossed number now stands at an estimated 118,932 stray dogs across the UK. Reported figures suggest that the majority (70%) of these dogs were seized by the local authority as strays.

In line with last year, two fifths (47%) of the estimated stray dogs handled in the UK between 1st April 2011 to 31st March 2012 were reunited with their owners, and a quarter (24%) were passed on to a welfare organisation or dog kennel for possible rehoming. A further 9% were re-homed by the local authority.

The proportion of stray dogs being put to sleep across the UK remains an at estimated 7% of the total number of strays."

This was collated by surveying the UK local authorities, who are responsible for collecting and providing 7 days of boarding for stray dogs.

In total, 8,093 stray dogs were put to sleep, 40% of these because they were not considered re-homeable for behavioural or veterinary reasons or because they belonged to illegal breeds.

It's not clear which local authorities also accept unwanted dogs from their owners and whether these are added in with the stray figures or not, and the euthanasia figures probably don't include dogs handed over to rescue organisations after the 7 days and later assessed as not rehomeable, or dogs put to sleep when found injured and hence never transferred to the local authority pound.

Funds and rehoming costs

Calculation of a figure for total income divided by numbers of animals rehomed for some of the larger animal charities gives a very approximate idea of how funding relates to the numbers of animals.

These figures are not "the cost of rehoming an animal" or "funds available per animal" because a proportion of income will always have to be spent working to generate funds (e.g. rent paid for charity shops), and all of the charities do other welfare activities as well as rehoming (for example about half of the Blue Cross's welfare activity is devoted to provision of welfare hospitals and the Dogs Trust provides free veterinary treatment for dogs owned by homeless people).

The figures do help in understanding what's likely to be possible for the charities and when pressuring them will simply be a distraction that hinders them from helping larger numbers of animals (for example it wouldn't be possible for Cat's Protection to take on large numbers of cats needing expensive fracture repair). They also disprove the claim that the RSPCA rehomes disproportionately fewer animals than other welfare organisations: on the contrary their benchmark figure lies well in the middle of the range in spite of their unique rôle in investigation and prosecution of cruelty.

It's extremely short-sighted to say that all income should be diverted to rehoming because funds spent on making it possible for owners to keep the animals they have and on preventing the birth of unwanted animals will help to prevent animals needing to be rehomed. 

Cats Protection: £800 per cat rehomed (note that Cats Protection also does a very large amount of work on cat neutering)

Shelters responding to Nottingham University PUPS survey: £1,400 per animal

Wood Green Animal Shelters: £2,000 per animal rehomed

Battersea cats and dogs home: £2,300 per animal rehomed

RSPCA: £2,500 per animal rehomed (or released in the case of wildlife)

Blue Cross: £4,000 per animal rehomed (but note that the Blue Cross spends roughly half its income on provision of veterinary treatment)

Dogs Trust: £5,000 per dog rehomed (note that Dogs Trust provides free veterinary treatment for dogs owned by homeless people and runs a neutering scheme in certain areas of high need).

Animals who are not strays

Neither the cat nor the dog survey tells us how many animals are put down because their owners no longer want them or can't afford the cost of veterinary treatment they need and arrange euthanasia at a private vet, or who simply die because their owners don't arrange treatment or don't know how to provide proper care. However the frequency with which this crops up in veterinary forums suggests the number is significant, for example:

The dilemma in the September issue concerned a vet presented with a dog with dystocia (In Practice, September 2010, volume 32, pages 413–414). Clinical examination revealed an oversized puppy impacted in the birth canal and the vet advised an emergency caesarean. The owner said she was claiming benefits and had no savings with which to meet the cost. [...] 

If payment was not possible, it was acceptable to refuse to perform the caesarean without payment and prevent the suffering of the bitch through euthanasia. Experience suggested that, even with promises of payment, the debt would generally remain unpaid and the owner would never return to the clinic.  (In Practice 2010;32:459 doi:10.1136/inp.c5098)

What has changed since 1972? What has stayed the same?

Obviously, quite a few things, but some comments about my previous post about the RSPCA's welfare statistics in 1972-3 made me think it might be instructive to discuss some of them, particularly where change in the wider society has created knock-on changes in the way we work as a welfare organisation.

Far more women go out to work and nearly everyone has a mobile phone.

The 1972 RSPCA relied very heavily on getting two people for the price of one inspector's salary, with the inspector's wife acting as unpaid receptionist and animal carer. Today the inspector may be female and in any case will not have a spouse willing to take phone calls all day.

When I first got involved with the Cambridge branch in the early 1990s female inspectors had just started being recruited and, two years earlier, the Society had invested in regional control centres (one each for pairs of the 10 branch electoral regions) to take calls and task them out to the inspectors and/or branches.

This worked (although there were lots of complaints about not being able to phone the local inspector direct) on the basis that BT could provide a single RSPCA number which diverted to the relevant control centre depending on the area code of the calling phone. The control centre team were directly employed by the RSPCA and had some day to day contact with the inspectors and local management as they were based in the regional headquarters. Over time, they developed a fair bit of local knowledge although the areas they covered were large.

The most immediate outcome for branches was a huge increase in the demand for help with wildlife casualties and injured stray animals, because it was now possible to contact the RSPCA 24/7 whereas the inspectors' wives were selfish enough to eat and sleep occasionally. At that time, the branches had financial responsibility for the costs of any treatment for wildlife from their branch area which had been arranged via their Regional Control Centre. The BVA/RSPCA memorandum of understanding restricted this to some extent as vets were then (as now) supposed to treat small wild animals free of charge during normal working hours. In practice this created a considerable amount of heated discussion about the definition of "small" (a swan? a muntjac deer?) and whether the memorandum really applied to members of the public who had been told to come to the surgery by the RSPCA rather than simply turning up of their own volition.

A few years down the line, the National RSPCA recognised that it was unreasonable for the control centres owned by them to be able to run up charges on behalf of branches with the individual branch lacking any ability to say that they would simply not be able to pay. The system was modified to the one currently in place whereby the Control Centre authorises initial emergency payment from central funds and the onus falls on the vet to contact their local branch to ask for payment of continuing care costs.

Where do mobile phones come in?

The system of regional control centres depended on BT having the ability to detect the caller's location. Mobile calls might be from anywhere as the location is not passed through to the landline exchange. Once large numbers of incoming calls were no longer regional, the centre staff's local knowledge could be a positive hindrance if they assumed that Streatham was actually Stretham and so on.

This made it more cost-effective to create a National Control Centre in 2003; outsourced to a commercial call-handing company, but with a stable team who would gradually build up their own knowledge.

The comparative ease of access to make cruelty complaints via the NCC probably explains why their number has risen so dramatically since 1972 (although it may partly be explained by the wives being selective about which complaints they recorded and which they silently discarded as impossible to investigate or misguided).

Further developments

A few years later, there was a push to encourage branches to provide a more standard "kit" of services—MAWS, or Minimum Animal Welfare Standards. This had been preceded by various directives aimed at improving the proportion of animals saved by:

• Encouraging all branches to do at least some rehoming activity.
• Discouraging branches from taking on council stray dog contracts unless they could guarantee to save the majority of rehomeable dogs (so ending the situation described in Who Cares for Animals where some animal homes were no better than ordinary council pounds).
• Encouraging the neutering of all animals rehomed by the RSPCA (where medically appropriate) and the provision of neutering vouchers for kittens and puppies rehomed before they were old enough to neuter.
• Encouraging branches to get involved with trapping and neutering feral cats.

There was also continued roll-out of regional animal centres and wildlife hospitals, funded and run by the National RSPCA.

Cats and Dogs

Periodically a particular type of dog will be taken up as a kind of fad and this nearly always causes problems. When I first started volunteering with the RSPCA, the current fad type was the lurcher; a cross between one of the running breeds, such as a greyhound or whippet and either a different type of running dog or another breed altogether. This was originally done to produce a dog nearly as fast as a greyhound, but with more intelligence and trainability and hence a more efficient poacher's dog. There was also a fashion for Border Collies (likely as a side-effect of the TV show "One Man and His Dog") which caused some real suffering when dogs who craved an outlet for their intelligence were expected to cope  with nothing to do all day. 

A very young David Grant makes an appearance in Who Cares for Animals and here he is, just before his retirement, talking through some of the issues of the latest fad for "bull breed" dogs. Note that the dogs shown in the video do have owners, although not very competent ones.

The reason why the 1972 RSPCA put down so many healthy dogs in some areas was uncontrolled breeding by bitches who were allowed to roam and produce unwanted puppies. Over the next three decades it became socially unacceptable to allow this to happen (although rather in the sense that drunk driving is socially unacceptable—some people still do it). Street markets are now barred from selling pets, but too many buyers are still silly enough to accept a seller's offer to meet them at a motorway service station with their pup. Most of the time the 2013 dog problem is not unexpected litters of unwanted puppies but pups who have been produced purely for their commercial value and dogs whose owners didn't understand the financial or practical implications of dog ownership (or even that a mastiff is harder to carry in an emergency than a terrier).

In the case of dogs the welfare issues are like the hydra's heads: no sooner is one set of problems solved  than the situation mutates to throw up different ones. The situation for cats is much brighter: widespread availability of affordable spaying and neutering has reduced kitten production to a level that means nearly all healthy and friendly cats can be rehomed, but the cats themselves haven't changed in the dramatic way we've seen with dogs.

Who Cares for Animals gives the total number of animals humanely destroyed in 1972 as 240,509 (roughly 3 times the number of animals rehomed). I'm not totally convinced this can be meaningfully compared with the 64,295 figure for 2012 because the 1972 figure doesn't seem to include animals put down after admission to animal centres and the 2012 figure doesn't include terminally ill owned animals.

Branches had been urged not to take stray dog contracts unless they had a realistic prospect of rehoming most of the dogs as early as the 1990s (the point being that RSPCA resources should be spent on saving animals, not on killing strays for the local council).

In 2009/10 this was made slightly more hard-line with the introduction of "RSPCA-generated"—basically a policy that priority should be given to those animals for which the RSPCA had a moral responsibility, either because there was a specific concern that they would be subjected to suffering if not taken in or because they had been taken in as a result of an RSPCA investigation.

This meant that branches might still accept stray dogs whose time was up at the local authority pound or take on stray dog contracts but should only do this provided no rehomeable RSPCA-generated animals would be put to sleep to make space for them. Regional animal centres could only take unwanted animals from the public on the same basis of not depriving a neglected animal of a place in favour of a potentially more rehomeable one whose owners would be capable of seeking a new home themselves.

It might be helpful to benchmark the RSPCA's current performance by comparison with the  Dogs' Trust, whose intake policy is also perfectly sensible and aimed at maximising their ability to help dogs.

As might be expected, far more of the RSPCA intake have to be put to sleep for medical or behavioural reasons because the Dogs Trust are taking in predominantly healthy dogs of good temperament, while most of the RSPCA animals come in precisely because they have been neglected or injured. In spite of this, the RSPCA managed to rehome nearly as many dogs (11,356) as Dogs Trust (12,822) in 2012.

Total RSPCA income is about twice that of the Dogs Trust, so considering that the RSPCA also rehomes other animals it looks as though the RSPCA rehoming program is at least as efficient in terms of placing dogs in new homes.

Animal Populations

The size of any animal population ultimately depends on the carrying capacity of its habitat; in the case of domestic animals usually determined by the amount of food resources provided by humans. Where the population's production of offspring exceeds this the supply of resources must be increased or else numbers must be reduced. Providing more animal shelter places is a short-term way of increasing available resources, but the shelters will ultimately become overwhelmed unless production can be limited.

If resources increase in the wider society (for example there is some evidence that cats are becoming more popular as pets, probably because they can be left alone during the day), then the population can increase until it runs up against the resource limit once more.

This is why talk about "pet over-population" has to be treated with some care. Increase in the number of people keeping a particular species means the number of animals needing to be rehomed will rise (because there will always be a percentage of people who can't keep their animals for one reason or another and need help), but it doesn't necessarily mean those animals can't be rehomed (because the number of homes has increased in proportion). Production of offspring beyond what's needed to replace the existing adults in a population with a limited resource base will always mean some of them can't be rehomed (because the homes aren't there).

This means that rehoming alone can't solve the problem of unwanted animals without education and increased provision for spay/neuter and it's why commercial production of animals who are poorly suited to life in human families is a welfare disaster because it encourages people to acquire animals, discard them and replace them, thus increasing the population beyond carrying capacity.

The Inspectorate

In 1973 there were 221 inspectors, 36 market inspectors and 1 docks inspector. Today there are 278 fully trained inspectors, 57 in training, 82 animal welfare officers and 58 animal collection officers (the last two classifications reflect an experimental attempt at division of labour between staff investigating cruelty or neglect, animal rescues and collections of sick or injured animals needing to be transported for treatment which took place a decade ago).

Veterinary treatments

Veterinary treatment numbers have gone up from 174,577 in 1972 to 263,267 (including spay/neuter) in 2012. This is something of a Cinderella area of welfare (probably because it's seen as help provided to the owner rather than the animal) but is crucially important in preventing cruelty due to neglecting to get treatment for sick or injured pets. Notice that the dog in the video had injuries which had gone untreated for long enough to become infested with maggots.

Wildlife

The 1970s RSPCA did try to provide treatment for wildlife, most notably for oiled sea-birds, following the Torrey Canyon incident but it was a bit ad-hoc and investigation of survival rates after release was just beginning. Today it's more organised, with four dedicated wildlife centres funded by the national RSPCA and programs of post-release tracking to study survival rates (this is important because wildlife rehabilitation attempts are worse than useless if they're simply prolonging the process of dying).

Heathrow Airport Hostel

Who Cares for Animals describes the RSPCA Airport Hostel at Heathrow during the period of its activity. Fortunately campaigns against the trade in wild animals finally succeeded in reducing the need for this facility and it was closed in 1981.

Farm Animal Welfare Scientists at the RSPCA

I thought you might like to take a look at these videos showing some of the science behind the RSPCA's Freedom Food welfare standards.

Blackmail

Clarissa Dickson-Wright has called for people to stop donating to the RSPCA until we stop enforcing the Hunting Act or opposing its repeal.

In some ways this is fair enough; if you enjoy hunting you're probably not going to want to support the RSPCA and we can't expect it.

What's currently going on is rather more—a campaign of misrepresentation that's aimed at discouraging  people who love animals and have no interest in hunting from donating. 

The RSPCA is the only charity which provides 24/7 help for animals over the whole of England and Wales; OK, not perfect and with a call centre that's always over-stretched, but at least some help and advice and a source of funds to get injured animals at least first aid.

It's the only charity that runs a farm assurance scheme with enough clout to have a realistic chance of driving up welfare standards.

It's the only charity that prosecutes cases of animal cruelty; and bear in mind that some of the most vociferous complaints about the RSPCA are that it is too reluctant to go down the route of prosecution rather than giving advice.

It rescues and rehomes thousands of animals each year.

It provides low cost treatment for thousands of pets whose owners cannot afford private vets.

So, should we give up? Accept that some people really are so powerful that they're untouchable if the alternative is possibly being unable to carry on the practical welfare work that is the bulk of the RSPCA's activity? 

Good old days? The RSPCA in 1972

In 1972 Liverpool branch alone had to put down 7,240 stray cats out of a total of 8,000 taken in

30 years later only 812 cats were put down for lack of homes over the whole of the RSPCA including all the branches.

New homes found	1972	2012
Cats	28,156	30,202
Dogs	45,997	11,356
Miscellaneous	7,062	29,192

Cruelty complaints	1972	2012
Complaints investigated	23,864	150,833
Cautions/improvement notices	4,028	78,090
Convictions	960	4,186

The ratio of convictions to cruelty complaints has actually gone down over the 30 years between 1972 and the present day. The most striking difference is the proportion of complaints which were resolved by issuing improvement notices in the 2012 figures.

Many aspects of life in the 1972 RSPCA are very familiar. The Society was engaged in a very active (and for a time successful) campaign to stop the export of live food animals. The British Field Sports Society (forerunner of today's Countryside Alliance) was threatening to challenge the RSPCA's charitable status if it proceeded with a campaign against coursing of hares. And everyone was desperately promoting neutering to reduce euthanasia of healthy animals.

(Source: Anthony Brown, Who Cares for Animals: 150 years of the RSPCA, (London: Heinemann, 1974)

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 10: Rights or Welfare?

"Who can dispute the inhumanity of the sport of hunting, of pursuing a poor, defenceless creature for mere amusement, till it becomes exhausted by terror and fatigue...?"

Lewis Gompertz, co-founder of the SPCA.

"Nothing is more notorious than that it is not only useless, but dangerous, to poor suffering animals, to reprove their oppressors, or to threaten them with punishment. The general answer, with the addition of bitter oaths and increased cruelty, is, What is that to you?—If the offender be a servant, he curses you, and asks if you are his master? and if he be the master himself, he tells you that the animal is his own. Every one of your lordships must have witnessed scenes like this. A noble duke, whom I do not see in his place, told me only two days ago, that he had lately received this very answer. The validity of this most infamous and stupid defence arises from that defect in the law which I seek to remedy. Animals are considered as property only: to destroy or to abuse them, from malice to the proprietor, or with an intention injurious to his interest in them, is criminal; but the animals themselves are without protection; the law regards them not substantively; they have no rights!

... their rights, subservient as they are, ought to be as sacred as our own. And although certainly, my lords, there can be no law for man in that respect, but such as he makes for himself, yet I cannot conceive any thing more sublime, or interesting, more grateful to heaven, or more beneficial to the world, than to see such a spontaneous restraint imposed by man upon himself." 

... even in struggles for human rights and privileges, sincere and laudable as they occasionally may have been, all human rights and privileges have been trampled upon, by barbarities far more shocking than those of the most barbarous nations, because they have not merely extinguished natural unconnected life, but have destroyed (I trust only for a season) the social happiness and independence of mankind, raising up tyrants to oppress them all in the end, by beginning with the oppression of each other. All this, my lords, has arisen from neglecting the cultivation of the moral sense, the best security of states, and the greatest consolation of the world." 

Thomas, Lord Erskine, CRUELTY TO ANIMALS BILL.

HL Deb 15 May 1809 vol 14 cc553-71 553

§ On the order of the day for the second reading of this Bill,

§ Lord Erskine

Erskine's original bill extended protection to all domestic animals (with an expressed hope that wild animals would also benefit from increased awareness of animal suffering). He further amended it to limit protection to working horses and oxen following objections at the committee stage but the amended bill also failed and animals did not receive legal protection until the success of Richard Martin's Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle Act in 1822. The infant SPCA which later became the RSPCA was founded by a group of men gathered together by the reverend Arthur Broome for the purpose of enforcing Martin's Act (just as today the Hunting Act serves no purpose without enforcement).

At its inception the RSPCA was primarily about securing rights for animals—something that was probably more straightforward at a time when there was fairly universal agreement that all humans have rights but that all humans do not have the same rights. Erskine is quite clear that rights are things which are conferred by legal agreements, not truths that can somehow be discovered and he doesn't find any difficulty in believing that animals should have some rights but not identical ones to the rights which ought to be given to humans.

Many of the activities of the early society are familiar from the work of today's RSPCA—for example the training of magistrates.

Welfare work came later; initially mainly educational, for example publication of advice for horse owners and drivers and promotion of quick-release harness that would enable a fallen horse to be disengaged from a vehicle and allowed to stand.

Campaigning activities continued throughout the period which is sometimes held up as a golden age in which the RSPCA confined its activities to practical welfare work and prosecutions (or, depending on your point of view, a disgracefully stagnant period in which the Society hindered the work of more progressive organisations.)

Examples of this include the introduction of humane stunning in abattoirs, restrictions on the use of stray dogs in experimentation and greater protection for sea-birds.

What an enquiry might comment

The RSPCA has been involved in lobbying Parliament for animal protection measures and in enforcing protection legislation since its inception, and before charitable bodies were regulated by the Charity Commission. Under current Charity Commission rules, charities may take part in lobbying and provision of advice to MPs provided this is done for the promotion of their charitable objects and provided lobbying and campaigning is not party political and does not involve expressing an opinion of the relative merits of the different parties.

There appears to be a confusion which has caused animal welfare and animal rights to be discussed as though these were opposites (with further confusion because Singer, the most prominent advocate of philosophical interest in the moral status of animals does not believe in rights at all as he is a utilitarian.) This is rather as though someone were to argue that it is incorrect for a country to possess a judiciary or a police force as well as a health service and there can be no possible objection to the RSPCA continuing to promote scholarly discussion about the correct principles on which we should make decisions about animals as well as promoting enforcement of existing laws, improvement of these laws where needed and practical welfare provision such as animal homes and hospitals.

It may be that the lobby in favour of repeal of the hunting act is sufficiently powerful to threaten the RSPCA's ability to provide the practical welfare services which are by far the  most expensive element of its work. 

Updating our Burleigh Street shop

Jenny Eden and Teresa spent most of today working on the new layout at Burleigh Street. I joined them after work and it was nearly 10 pm when we finished. We were nearly crippled by then, but as you can see, the final result is very pleasing and hopefully it will help us to raise more funds for local animals. 

We also shipped across a van-load of excellent donated stock collected at our Mill Road shop so we'll be opening again tomorrow with lots of fresh bargains and more will be going out over the next few weeks.

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 9: other rescues

"The owner of an animal sanctuary was warned yesterday that she could be jailed after pleading guilty to 24 charges of animal cruelty, after one of the biggest investigations ever taken on by the RSPCA.

Anne Stott, 56, admitted causing unnecessary suffering after inspectors from the RSPCA found 140 dead dogs, cats, ferrets and a fox at her Crewe Animal Rescue Centre in Cheshire and in two lock-up garages.

They found another 20 animals alive but suffering from dehydration.

Magistrates in Crewe were told that some of the animals were pets taken to the centre by people who thought they would be looked after with care.

It appeared that Stott had put down animals entrusted to the sanctuary and stored their bodies in bin liners.

Inspectors went to the centre in Edleston Road - two flats over the charity shop which Stott used for fund-raising - last May after a caller said a dog was trapped inside in temperatures of up to 37C (99F).

A veterinary surgeon who examined the animal corpses said some were so decomposed that it was impossible to identify the exact cause of death."

David Ward The Guardian, Tuesday 27 April 1999 

One situation in which the RSPCA has to act is where rescues have "gone bad"—usually because the people running them have become so overwhelmed that they cease to have any appreciation of the animals' needs.

When this happens it is a tragedy for the sanctuary owners and puts a great strain on RSPCA resources because of the sheer numbers of animals who may need to be taken in.

What an enquiry might comment

Rescues (including the RSPCA's own branches) are under constant pressure to accept more animals, putting them at risk of entering a downward spiral in which the owners are so exhausted that it becomes easier to agree to take animals than to refuse, in spite of being unable to care for the ones they already have. The existence of the RSPCA inspectorate as an external body which can enforce acceptable standards provides an essential safeguard of the welfare of rescued animals but is understandably resented by many rescue owners who are at the end of their tether.

This situation has not been helped by some organisations using RSPCA prosecutions of failing rescues as another opportunity to attack the society and to create fear that there is an intentional policy to "take out the competition".

It might be beneficial for the RSPCA to attempt some outreach to small rescues firstly to reassure them that there is no intent to force them out and secondly to educate them about the potential risks of becoming overwhelmed (and indeed the value of being able to tell anyone who complains when they  refuse to take in more animals that they are acting on RSPCA advice to limit numbers to a level that they can cope with).

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 8: prosecution?

Unlike Australian RSPCA inspectors who are sworn as special constables and have powers equivalent to police officers, the RSPCA in England and Wales makes use only of legal powers which are available to any citizen.

There is little controversy over RSPCA prosecutions of acts of sadistic cruelty but much more disagreement over cases of neglect and the enforcement of the Hunting Act. 

In neglect cases the main cause for concern is that many people reported to the RSPCA for suspected cruelty are not deliberately cruel but have a mental abnormality which means they are unable to provide proper care for their animals.

The vast majority of neglect reports are dealt with by the RSPCA providing advice and support, including practical help such as neutering vouchers and veterinary treatment. In 2012 (most recent figures available) the RSPCA provided welfare improvement advice in 78,090 cases but only sent forward 2,093 cases for possible prosecution (2.6% of the 80,183 cases where any action was felt needed). 

The main point of prosecutions from an animal welfare point of view is firstly to obtain a court's instructions that the animals in question are relinquished for rehoming and secondly to ensure that people who are likely to re-offend are disqualified from keeping animals. This second function means that animals can be removed immediately if they are acquired by someone who is the subject of a disqualification order.

Currently the RSPCA forwards details of successful welfare prosecutions for inclusion in the Police National Computer records and has a service agreement with PNC to receive details of past convictions (which might be by other agencies such as Trading Standards) when court cases are commenced. This does not at any stage involve direct RSPCA access to the PNC.

What an enquiry might comment

Animal welfare is an emotive subject and there are legitimate concerns about high profile cases where individuals with mental disabilities are exposed to public hatred. Unless there were to be a policy of not prosecuting such people at all, this concern would not be addressed by transferring prosecutions from the RSPCA to the police as cases would remain of great interest to the media. 

Allowing animals to be removed without any legal scrutiny if an owner has a disability, is potentially much more discriminatory than the current situation.  As the major concern is the publicity surrounding neglect cases rather than the prosecutions themselves, a better solution might be to tackle this by introducing protection against naming of disabled defendants similar to the protection given to child defendants.

It might be helpful if the RSPCA were to record statistics showing the proportion of disabled people in the advice/support and prosecution categories respectively.

It has been estimated that around 90% of the prison population have some kind of mental impairment and that around 40% of those with a learning difficulty are unable to have their children living with them. It would be unreasonable to expect the RSPCA to reverse these trends in the case of dependent animals. However it would be a cause for concern if the RSPCA was less successful than the police in resolving neglect cases without the need for prosecution.

Once an RSPCA investigation has reached a point at which the police need to be involved there may be a feeling that the situation is now on a "conveyor-belt" to prosecution and can no longer be resolved by negotiation. It might be helpful to have discussions between the local police and inspectorate team to agree working practices which would leave the individual inspectors more lee-way to give animal owners another chance to rectify the situation without feeling they were wasting police time.

Preventing collation of criminal records  in the PNC would make it more difficult for the police to identify breaches of animal keeper disqualifications when visiting properties for non-RSPCA related reasons.

If, at some future date, the RSPCA were to announce that its prosecution role had become untenable due to organised campaigns by certain sectors, it is difficult to predict the likely outcome. However one possibility is that the police and CPS might feel under pressure to bring cases which the RSPCA would not in fact have prosecuted, rather than risk creating an impression that some people are above the law.

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 7: the branches

Originally the link between the National (or Central) RSPCA and its branches was simple: each branch raised the funds needed to pay the wages of an inspector who would be trained centrally (to ensure consistency) and deployed to cover the branch area. Branches were required to raise at least 2 years funds and transfer them to the National RSPCA before they could affiliate and be given an inspector. This ensured that there would be a reasonably steady cash flow so an inspector could be confident of being paid.

As life moved on and the National Society built up more funding, the link between a branch's "quota" payment and employment of the inspectors gradually became more tenuous. The RSPCA gradually took on extra functions beyond campaigns and prosecutions, such as animal rehoming, veterinary treatment, pet neutering and so on. 

In the very early days, much of this extra activity was done by the inspectors (or their wives!) in their own homes and branch activity moved forward with the concept of their rôle of supporting the inspectorate being expanded to the provision of local welfare services which would reduce the workload of the inspector. 

Some branches took a very active part in driving forward change — for example Bath and District Branch was the first branch to adopt a policy that they would not put down healthy animals and would take in all unclaimed dogs from their local pound for rehoming (in 1955).

This additional workload gradually became a higher proportion of branch activity and the relationship between branches and employment of the inspectors weakened because it was more efficient to organise inspectorate work without reference to artificial geographical boundaries. As a consequence, branches who were struggling to meet all the calls on their resources began to resent the "quota" payment. At this time the Society as a whole was becoming more and more under pressure in relation to the hunting question and branch volunteers were sometimes very aggressively challenged to explain why they were unable to fund unlimited local services, often by people who assumed these services were all funded by the Central RSPCA and that the volunteers were themselves being paid and benefiting personally from money raised by a branch.

It gradually became obvious that a payment sufficient to cover the salary of two inspectors per branch area would leave most branches with little scope to handle their other responsibilities in respect of animals taken into RSPCA care by the inspector and that the issue was damaging relations between branch committees and the Society. The problem was finally solved by de-linking the quota payment from the inspectorate and introducing a sliding scale so that branches were required to contribute based on the levels of their uncommitted reserves. Funds raised from branch contributions are now ploughed back into regional funds to be spent on joint projects agreed between branches in a region and are no longer part of the general revenue of the Central RSPCA.

At present, branches receive a yearly grant of around £20,000 from the Central RSPCA in addition to a share of the subscriptions paid by RSPCA members living within the branch area.

Once telephone ownership became virtually universal the volume of phone calls to the society became such that it was not longer reasonable to expect them to be handled by a combination of branch volunteers and inspectors' spouses. First local, then regional and finally a national call centre was set up by the Central RSPCA to receive and triage calls about animals in distress.

A side effect of this was that larger numbers of injured strays and wildlife could be brought to the attention of the Society. Initially the Central Society assumed that this would fall under the existing remit of the branches to provide care for animals within their areas. However this proved to be impossible and the current position is that the Central RSPCA has an agreement with vets that it will provide up to £60 towards first aid so that branch volunteers do not need to be contactable 24/7 and can have uninterrupted rest at night.



What an enquiry might comment

The RSPCA is almost unique in the scale of its volunteer involvement. This is probably a major reason why it is able to achieve such low euthanasia rates but the negative side of this is some degree of inefficiency as a result of committees knowing their own patch but sometimes being unaware of the wider picture.

Branches are independent charities although they are governed by general society rules and some of them have turnovers approaching a million pounds p.a. This means the individual branch committees have a daunting task and a considerable amount of support is needed from the parent society when a committee consists mainly of newly recruited individuals. Consequently the amount actually spent by the society on support to branches is in fact considerably greater than the funds spent on grant aid.

Support is primarily given by the Branch Support Specialists whose rôles are subject to a degree of tension in that they are employed by the National society to support trustees of the independent affiliated charities and this may involve a degree of conflict if the interests of the National Society, a branch as a legal entity, the branch trustees as individuals and the local animals as beneficiaries are not fully aligned.

It may not be ideal if trained volunteer managers are recruited as Branch Support Specialists because of the importance of branch trustees being able to debate and act with some degree of independence from the National Society. This is less likely if their relationship with the link person "feels" like that between a manager and the group of volunteers who are to be managed.

It would make sense for the Central RSPCA and the branches to produce an agreed statement of the true financial relationship between them. Currently this is used as a weapon against the RSPCA, with claims  in the media that the branches have to pay large sums to the Central RSPCA while getting no funding from it for practical animal welfare work (and also that the Central RSPCA itself does no practical work). Branches may feel under pressure because they are accused of making a personal profit from their volunteer work and unintentionally contribute to the media attacks by issuing statements saying that their work is not funded by the Central RSPCA.

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 6: equines

The desire to improve the lives of horses was at the core of the RSPCA's original foundation, with all of the founders being passionately concerned for their welfare in spite of differing views on how this might be achieved.

As large, charismatic mammals who are highly visible, horses are responsible for a large number of complaints about the RSPCA's inaction in the face of conditions which are not quite bad enough to be illegal.  Animals who are not in fact suffering any welfare issues may be the subject of complaints if members of the public do not appreciate that native ponies are adapted to life outside during the winter (and may indeed be more likely to have problems in very hot weather or when unnaturally rich grass pasture is available).

Horses are also the subject of high-profile debate about acceptable working conditions and sporting events with a high degree of risk.

At one end of the scale there are native moorland ponies and ponies grazed by travellers on pieces of rough ground. The RSPCA may be pressed to take action when they are at risk in adverse weather conditions and also if pony owners dispose of surplus animals to the horsemeat trade.

At the other extreme are high-value sport horses who may be at risk of fatal accidents (e.g. in jump racing) and may be kept in restrictive conditions which do not satisfy their behavioural needs. If they cease to be valuable because of age or injury they may also be disposed of to the meat trade or may enter a downward spiral of less and less competent owners.

They are extremely expensive to care for and raise the ethical dilemma of what to do with animals who have been rescued but may never be fit enough to be placed in a normal working home.

The RSPCA attempts to place unrideable horses as companions, thereby incurring some criticism that this is a sentimental waste of funds.

What an enquiry might comment

In many ways the RSPCA's difficulties in coping with the current equine welfare situation mirror its problems with dogs in that there is a high demand for it to take action in situations where it has limited ability to do so, either because there are no legal powers to act or because it is limited by resource constraints.

If the legal position on horses left on grazing land without the owner's permission and horses straying on the highways is changed to permit landowners to dispose of animals there will probably be pressure for the RSPCA to take them in to prevent them from being euthanised. It is difficult to see how the society will cope unless more people are prepared to give practical or financial support.

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 5: Laboratory animals

During most of its existence the Society has taken a relatively pragmatic view of animal experimentation, accepting that most people will put human health above animal suffering and pressing for reform rather than abolition. It accepts the general scientific consensus on the validity of animal experiments and promotes the moral imperative to reduce animal use to the minimum compatible with medical progress.

In the past this has sometimes brought it into conflict with scientists unwilling to accept any legal limits on science. However the question of experiments has been significant as yet another position on which the Society's "gatekeeper" position has made it a target for campaigners who will accept nothing less than the abolition of animal use.

What an enquiry might comment

The RSPCA's comparatively modest position on experiments has probably enabled it to be more effective than other organisations who cannot engage with the political process because it is plain that no reform will be enough to satisfy them.

It is a pity that recent changes in the society, intended to reduce "back office" costs which will appear as administration on the balance sheet, have diminished the strength of the Science Group. Donors should be encouraged to understand the importance of this apparently unexciting area of the Society's work and give it more support.

The RSPCA's work to reduce animal suffering in experiments rarely hits the headlines, but its research animals department plays an influential role in many bodies.

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 4: Wild animals

Wild animals have been a source of contention for the RSPCA ever since it was founded in 1824. It is known that two of the major original founders (Arthur Broome and Lewis Gompertz) were opponents of fox-hunting and two (Richard Martin and Thomas Erskine) were themselves hunters, although Martin seems to have had some doubts about its legitimacy towards the end of his life.

During the RSPCA's first hundred years the hunting question does not seem to have caused serious difficulties because there were other animal welfare concerns which were clearly more urgent. However during the 20th century opposition to hunting became progressively more insistent. Both sides viewed the RSPCA as the gatekeeper to legislation; provided the RSPCA remained neutral or opposed a ban no government would give parliamentary time to a hunting bill.

Thus, the anti-hunt lobby came to view the RSPCA with nearly hysterical loathing, and it was extremely tempting for the pro-hunt faction to try to push the Society beyond a view that, although hunting was cruel, there were worse abuses, into positive opposition to a hunt ban. Once opposition to hunting with dogs had become RSPCA policy the pro-hunters became equally hysterical in their hatred of the Society. Unfortunately there was often no corresponding change in the views of many anti-hunters, who still saw the RSPCA as an obstacle to radical change in the way animals are treated.

Wildlife Hospitals

Parallel to the issue of legal protection for wild animals there was the question of rescue of injured or sick wild animals. As individuals viewed as animal welfare experts the inspectors were commonly asked to help. This might be relatively straightforward if an uninjured animal could simply be freed and released or if one was clearly so ill that mercy killing was the only option (for example in the case of rabbits with myxomatosis). However it was more difficult if a wild animal was potentially salvageable (for example oiled seabirds) but only if longer-term treatment and care was available.

Currently the RSPCA has four specialist wildlife centres (fully funded by the Central RSPCA not the local branches) and wild animals are included in their national agreement with vets. This states that vets should examine and give first aid to small wildife and birds free of charge during normal working hours while the RSPCA will include larger birds and mammals in its general scheme for provision of funding to cover first aid and will also pay for emergency treatment of small wildlife outside normal hours.

Treatment of sick/injured wildlife remains contentious to an extent as it is RSPCA policy that wild animals should be euthanased if they cannot be rehabilitated sufficiently to be returned to the wild.

What an enquiry might say

A relatively short period of time has elapsed since the passing of the Hunting Act and it may be that passions will eventually die down as those who were mainly interested in hunting in order to ride or watch hounds track find alternative ways to enjoy the outdoors.

Anti-RSPCA feeling has been sparked off again by a number of enforcement cases brought by the Society after a lull during which it seems that some people in the hunting camp were content to assume the law would not be strictly applied.

This has potentially serious implications for the much larger number of people who depend on the RSPCA's practical welfare services (which represent by far the largest part of its activities).

It might be helpful if the RSPCA were to re-examine whether some disabled (or simply too tame) wildlife could have a meaningful life in semi-natural conditions - for example in an enclosed deer park.

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 3: Farm animals

Animals who are kept to produce food or other products (wool, milk, eggs etc) for people or for other animals

Reform or abolition?

The RSPCA's Inspectorate will act to enforce animal protection law if farm animals are mistreated just as they do when the victims are companion animals, although they may refer complaints to the local Trading Standards or to DEFRA where they believe this is more appropriate.

As well as this law enforcement role, the RSPCA campaigns to change the law to provide more protection for farm animals and it operates a sophisticated farm assurance scheme, Freedom Food, which is designed to drive up welfare standards by providing a route by which farmers can get a premium for voluntary improvements.

The Society has commissioned an audit of the impact of the Freedom Food scheme by external scientific experts with a view to determining which aspects of the scheme have been effective in improving welfare in terms of the lifetime experiences of individual animals. The panel's report has now been published.

In addition to Freedom Food, the Society operates a "Good Business Awards" scheme to reward welfare innovation by individual businesses. This is able to be more adventurous than Freedom Food which is very much geared to what can be attainable in normal food producing activities rather than niche markets.

The RSPCA does not specifically promote a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle although many of its staff and supporters are themselves either vegetarian or vegan.

What an enquiry might comment

There is a segment of the animal protection movement which finds it utterly abhorrent that an animal welfare charity should involve itself in farming and would like the RSPCA to withdraw from Freedom Food and all similar activities. Some individuals with these views have devoted considerable effort to seeking out malpractice on Freedom Food farms and this may have been unintentionally useful to the scheme as it must leave farmers in no doubt that they will be found out if they only pay lip-service to welfare.

Publicity for "bad apples" in the scheme has been embarrassing for the RSPCA and they should probably look at extending unannounced checks on farms as well as the planned audits which are key to Freedom Food's function as a method of improving standard farming practice.

There is a fundamental tension between those who believe that killing and eating animals can never be compatible with welfare and those who accept that the wider society are probably always going to eat meat and wish to ensure that animals kept to produce food are treated as humanely as possible. Realistically this source of strife is not likely to disappear.

Any assessment of the value of the RSPCA to society at large needs to make allowances for the tendency for criticisms to come from those who believe it is not radical enough as well as those who think it has moved too far towards the arena of animal rights.

Enquiry into the RSPCA? - Part 2: Companion animals

Our pets - the animals who share our homes.

Rehoming and euthanasia

The RSPCA gives priority to animals taken in as a result of cruelty investigations or found as injured strays and it puts no time-limit on the length of time rehomeable animals may be cared for until they can be placed in a new permanent home. This means that centres are always full and need to be supplemented by paying for space in private boarding kennels and catteries or placing animals with volunteer foster carers.

In 2012 (most recent year for which figures are available) the RSPCA took in 18,355 dogs of which 11,356 were rehomed, and  6,817 were put to sleep because they were incurably ill, dangerous or belonged to breeds which it is illegal to rehome.  182 potentially rehomeable dogs were put to sleep.

The RSPCA does not normally taken in stray dogs as these are legally the responsibility of the Local Authority. However few Local Authorities provide a 24 hour 7 day per week collection service for stray dogs or pay for treatment of injured dogs whose owner is not known.

It is debatable whether the RSPCA can legally spend funds to provide a service which should by statute be the responsibility of a public body. It would probably not be treated as misuse of charity funds if the RSPCA were to collect stray dogs at times when no LA collection service is provided or if it were to pay for treatment of injured dogs where no LA funding is available. However this would be a significant drain on the Society's resources, even if activity by the Central Society was restricted to collecting dogs and providing funds for initial first aid treatment. 

If the process for continuing treatment of injured stray dogs was dealt with in the same way as the current handling of injured stray cats it would mean imposing a considerable strain on the local branches, many of whom are already struggling to remain solvent.

In 2012 the RSPCA took in 43,621 cats of which 30,202 were rehomed (or released after neutering if feral) and 12,607 were put to sleep because they were untreatably ill or injured. 812 potentially rehomeable cats were put to sleep.

In 2013 the Society began a revolutionary initiative to locate rehoming centres within Pets at Home stores in order to encourage adoption of rescue animals instead of commercial purchase. Selling animals is a very small element of the revenue of a pet store so there is excellent potential to drive down over-breeding while maintaining the stores' income from pet food and accessories.

What an enquiry might comment

The RSPCA have very low rates of euthanasia of healthy domestic pets—better than most comparable SPCAs in other countries. These rates could very probably be reduced to zero by spending relatively small amounts of money to increase available accommodation in private boarding kennels.

Vociferous claims that the RSPCA has extremely high euthanasia rates probably contribute to inefficiencies in transferring animals between locations in order to speed up rehoming. Each branch knows that it is saving every animal it possibly can and the emotional investment in those animals who have already been admitted makes it difficult to "let go" and send them elsewhere without guarantees that the centre receiving them will be equally dedicated.

Some newly recruited branch volunteers and national staff may be unsure about branch obligations to accept inspectors' intake other than prosecution cases and be unaware that by refusing animals they might be forcing an inspector to arrange euthanasia.

One option might be for the Central RSPCA to pay for short-term boarding to provide a breathing space in which options for transfer to other branches or to National rehoming centres could be investigated. A potential problem is that this would inevitably be misrepresented as the RSPCA having a policy of killing animals after 3 days (or whatever the breathing space was) even if these animals were always successfully transferred to other accommodation.

Sick and injured strays

The RSPCA is unique among animal charities in England and Wales in having a blanket agreement with private vets to pay £60 towards first aid for sick or injured animals whose owners cannot be traced.

Dogs are not normally included in this as the Local Authority is legally responsible for paying for immediate treatment of stray dogs but in practice the RSPCA will pay if it is impossible to contact the local council, a dog needs immediate treatment to prevent suffering and the veterinary practice absolutely refuses to provide treatment unless payment is guaranteed. This £60 is paid by the Central RSPCA and local branches will then cover the cost of further treatment if they are able.

What an enquiry might comment

Many of the complaints about the RSPCA relate to not collecting/treating stray dogs and dissatisfaction that the £60 payment for initial first aid treatment is not larger. There might be scope for a national arrangement with local authorities for the RSPCA to take over part of their statutory responsibility for stray dogs in return for payment as the RSPCA already has a 24 hour control centre taking calls from the public and personnel available during the night to collect animals. As the Society is already over-stretched this would only be possible if the arrangement provided full cost recovery to enable extra people to be employed.

Increasing the veterinary treatment payment per animal by £100 would be likely to cost in the order of £4 million and would only become possible if the Society significantly increased its income.


It is very unfortunate that the RSPCA has recently become the target of political campaigns which aim to force the RSPCA to change its campaigning policies by hitting the funding of its practical welfare work.