After 20 Years, It Is Time to Put Animals Back Into The Animal Welfare Act
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, the most significant and comprehensive animal welfare legislation in England and Wales for over a century. We have published report examining whether the Act is working as it was intended to.
The landmark provision of the Act was the creation of a positive duty of care to ensure the welfare of animals. This became enacted under section 9 of the Act, which set out that:
A person commits an offence if he does not take such steps as are reasonable in all the circumstances to ensure that the needs of an animal for which he is responsible are met to the extent required by good practice.
These needs include the need for a suitable environment, the need to be able to exhibit normal behaviour patterns and the need to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease.
The hope of this provision was that it would take ‘the focus away from simply responding to cruelty and reactive laws to requiring proactive care given to animals.
20 years on, are its provisions truly preventing animal suffering in the manner intended by those who passed it?
The sad reality is that many standard practices do not meet the welfare needs of animals. One example is intensive production systems, which are the dominant farming system, which keep an estimated 85% of all UK farmed animals. These systems are designed to maximise efficiency and output, often through the confinement, poor conditions, and genetic manipulation of animals.
Laying hens are commonly housed in indoor cage systems, with little more space than the size of an A4 piece of paper per chicken.
Over 10 million pigs are raised in the UK annually, with over 90% reared indoors, and around 60% kept in pens without any bedding.
Cows used in the dairy industry have been selectively bred to produce high milk yields, causing issues such as mastitis, lameness and stress.
Intensively farmed ducks are crammed together and deprived of access to water for bathing, which they require in order to exhibit their fundamental natural behaviours.
At the Animal Law Foundation we have spent years working to build the bridge between the Animal Welfare Act as intended and the Animal Welfare Act as applied.
We believe that the government must undertake a more rigorous and purposive interpretation of the Act; one which scrutinises established practices, engages with scientific evidence, and prioritises animal welfare over convenience or economic benefit.
20 years on from its enactment, it is high time that the government returns its attention to the welfare needs of animals and puts animals back into the Animal Welfare Act.
You can read our new report here: https://animallawfoundation.org/reports
