RSPCA rehoming?

Our inspector's request for us to crank up the numbers of rabbits we foster and rehome has provoked some soul-searching among the rehoming team. 

On the one hand, there's the desperate need to take in rabbits from truly dreadful conditions where they're likely to produce yet more babies who will have miserable lives.

On the other, there's the concern that we'll at best end up creating "sanctuary" conditions where they'll be in better circumstances but we won't be able to move them on and eventually we'll still have no space for new requests. 

At worst we could end up creating the kind of sanctuary that's a welfare problem in its own right if we're not strict with ourselves about taking on no more animals than foster carers can cope with and not skimping on the specifications for their housing.

Keeping rabbits correctly is not cheap; a pair will need living accommodation that will cost at least £500 unless you are a really good carpenter and they'll need yearly vaccinations costing £40 each. They also need good quality hay and green vegetables daily. 

This is possibly a reason why so many people buy rabbits from pet shops rather than adopting—because the shop will let them buy when we would refuse because the proposed accommodation is not adequate.

In one form or another similar dilemmas impinge on the rest of our rehoming:

• Rats are extremely prone to benign tumours as they age; if we rehome to someone who clearly does not have the funds for vet treatment, are we condemning them to a long-drawn-out period of discomfort with large lumps of flesh that may ulcerate or become infected.
• All small animals will need cages that will cost far more than the monetary value of the animals themselves (which is why some pet shops offer a "free" hamster with purchase of a cage).
• When we rehome animals with ongoing medical issues, like Lulu (pictured above), are we taking a risk that the adopter may not keep up their treatment?

We have to be practical about rehoming as fast as we can so that other animals can be taken in, but there is always some degree of risk, and that's partly why we encourage adopters to come back to us if they find they're not coping. It's also why we visit homes before adoptions so that we can assure ourselves as much as possible that the prospective owners have thought through the practical and financial aspects of owning animals, and why we do reject some people if their facilities aren't suitable. We try to operate a "buddy" system for foster homes so that no-one feels under pressure to take more than they can cope with and animals can be dispersed to other foster homes to spread the load if needed.

We need to recruit more temporary foster homes and home-visitors for the pre-homing checks. We particularly need visitors to cover the area round Ely and the northern part of our branch area. If you might be able to help, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

RSPCA access to Police National Computer

News stories about RSPCA access to the PNC earlier this year implied that inspectors might be trawling computer records looking for sensitive information in order to harrass people. 

It was originally an exclusive by online computing journal, The Register—I suspect as a result of information supplied by the pseudonymous Richard Martin who made a large number of Freedom of Information requests about provision of data to the RSPCA before the police got fed up and told him any more would be treated as "vexatious".

The Register, had enough computer savvy to write FOI requests in a form that would get some answers and, following their initial scoop, they obviously hoped a bit more digging would produce something really exciting.

Their reporter's application reads:

"Dear The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland,

I wish to see some examples of information disclosed to the RSPCA
under the SLA you have with them.

Specifically I wish to see details of the first ten disclosures to
the RSPCA of information from the PNC. Obviously this will need to
be redacted to remove specific personal information and any
specific information likely to prejudice an ongoing case. But I
wish to know the detailed nature of the kind data in practice sent
to the RSPCA. For information that is redacted please ensure that
the description of the information (e.g. "previous address",
"occupation") remains. Please disclose where possible the actual
emails (suitably redacted) to and from the RSPCA in relation to
these ten cases.

Yours faithfully,

Ken Tindell"

If you compare this with the earlier applications you can see why it got a response; Ken Tindell is clearly rational and non-obsessive; he's after another exclusive, but he's not going to go on and on.

Sadly, the result is not news; RSPCA access to the PNC is done in exactly the way ACPO said it was back in August. There's no trawling; simply a notification from the RSPCA when they are about to prosecute someone and a request for creation of a record in the PNC with disclosure of previous offences. Precisely because this is not news it will never get the same publicity as the first round of media claims.

Look out for "The Dog Rescuers" on Channel 5 on Tuesdays

Animal Welfare in practice

Lots of different definitions of animal welfare:

• The state of the animal's body and mind, and the extent to which its nature (genetic traits manifest in breed and temperament) is satisfied ^[a]
  
  
• Animal welfarism: the position that it is morally acceptable for humans to use non-human animals, provided that adverse effects on animal welfare are minimized as far as possible, short of not using the animals at all. ^[b]
• [The animal's] state as regards its attempts to cope with its environment. This state includes how much it is having to do to cope, the extent to which it is succeeding in or failing to cope, and its associated feelings.^[c]
• The feelings experienced by animals: the absence of strong negative feelings, usually called suffering, and (probably) the presence of positive feelings, usually called pleasure. In any assessment of welfare, it is these feelings that should be assessed.^[d]
• Animal welfare involves the subjective feelings of animals.^[e] 

Most of the definitions don't include preservation of life; the assumption being that, once an animal is dead, it cannot suffer, so cannot experience poor welfare. This is obviously the basis of justification for most welfare improvements for farmed animals (the other being that some people will continue to eat meat whatever we do, so improving conditions is more likely to help actual animals than futile campaigns in favour of strict vegetarianism for all).

More nuanced discussions of welfare accept that killing a happy animal deprives that individual of further happy experiences. An example of this is Animal Welfare in Veterinary Practice by James Yeates, the RSPCA CVO, who argues that what we need to consider is the concept of "a life worth living" (which implies that the animal has an interest in continuing to stay alive) and "a life worth avoiding" (which implies that we should not cause animals to be in such a state and that a humane end would be a benefit to the animal if rehabilitation is not possible). 

It's this kind of reasoning which provides a justification for projects such as more humane rearing of veal calves (who would otherwise be shot at birth or exported to worse conditions). 


 

Dogs were the first domestic animals and, as a species, have evolved to live with human families (although wolves are able to cross-breed with dogs—as tigers can with lions—they are no longer the same species). It no longer makes much sense to talk about the natural behaviour of dogs apart from life with humans because living with humans is what is natural for dogs.

Because dogs are now primarily companions greater weight tends to be given to preserving their lives as a vital element of "animal welfare" than is true for farmed animals. Some commentators talk as though "animal welfare" is (or ought to be) about saving the lives of stray dogs and little else.

This ignores those dogs who suffer but are not strays or unowned:

Heidi: an example of a neglect prosecution

Dogs make up a large proportion of the RSPCA's caseload. This prosecution is particularly sad because Heidi and Mimi could have been seen at our Cambridge clinic if their owner had contacted us.








Dogs may also suffer if their owners put money before their welfare (as in the case of puppy farming and trafficking) or if owners become so obsessed with breeding for a particular "look" that they ignore potential health consequences.

 The RSPCA:

"Our position on pedigree dog welfare

There is a wealth of scientific and other evidence to show that the welfare and quality of life of many pedigree dogs is seriously compromised as a result of established selective breeding practices.

The RSPCA’s position on this serious issue is very clear, and was informed by the independent scientific report we commissioned on pedigree dog breeding."

"We are working with the Royal Veterinary College and the University of Sydney on a three-year PhD research project to develop a new system for data collection, analysis and interpretation. It is not just dogs that are affected by welfare issues from selective breeding so the PhD study aims to estimate the prevalence of inherited and acquired disorders in both dogs and cats to highlight breeds at greatest risk of specific conditions.
More information is available on the VetCompass project website."

Two contrasting views:

"And a King Charles Spaniel. So lovely to see how many suffer as a result of #KC breed standards & #RSPCA doing FA as usual #wonderofdogs"
— Vanessa Morriss (@softmutt) September 26, 2013

"THE RSPCA is still a very real threat to pedigree dogs and dog showing, and all in the hobby should stay on guard in the coming weeks and months.

In the wake of the society’s recent bizarre instructions for its supporters not to take part in, or be associated with, any dog shows which are to be judged on the basis of breed standards, most people have concentrated on making the point that the think that the Society has lost the plot and become more extremist in its attitude. "
— Dogs Today July 2010

What's really interesting is the conclusion of the Dogs Today piece—that pedigree breeders must improve breed standards to reduce exaggeration and support breed clubs in working to eliminate genetic defects to avoid giving the RSPCA any ammunition. The RSPCA may not be making friends, but it is successfully influencing people for the good of dogs' welfare.

Best ever Sunday at our Burleigh Street shop

Fantastic day at 61 Burleigh street, although Anton, Una and I are now more or less crawling on hands and knees.

In all, we took £340 - enough to fund a fracture repair operation or to board a dog in kennels for 6 weeks.

If only we can keep this up we should be able to think about expanding the welfare work we do—something that's desperately needed.

However doubling our sales means we need to double our intake of stock. 

If you're considering a clear-out, or have been on a diet and now have clothes a size too large, please remember our shop.

We also need good quality bric-à-brac, toys; really anything that will sell.

Burleigh street is pedestrianised, but if you want to drop items off by car there is access from Paradise street at the back of the shop. If you're coming to the back entrance, it's best to phone ahead to make sure someone knows you are there and will let you in: 01223 312 802.

Freedom Food Farm Assessors

A major reason why the bulk of the RSPCA's work is not "news" is that much of it is fairly technical and detailed. This youtube clip shows the work done by one of the Freedom Food assessors.

The Freedom Food program is continually being revised and improved on the basis of the latest scientific knowledge about animal welfare. Like the rest of the Society's campaigning activities, it will only survive if we can maintain the practical welfare services that keep the support of ordinary animal-lovers, because it's those services that act as credentials of our genuine concern for animals.

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.