THE ENFORCEMENT PROBLEM
Farmed animals are protected by several laws across the UK. The Animal Welfare Act 2006, The Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006, and The Welfare of Animals Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 are foundational Acts, which mandate that animals are spared any unnecessary suffering, and impose a duty on those responsible for the animals to ensure their welfare. Various regulations impose more specific duties on those responsible for farmed animals in each country in the UK.
In 2022, in partnership with Animal Equality, we published The Enforcement Problem. Our report revealed widespread and systemic under-enforcement of the legal framework intended to offer protection to farmed animals. This is what we call ‘The Enforcement Problem’ - where a law exists on paper, but is severely under-enforced in practice.
2024 update
We have now updated the data for 2022 and 2023 and sadly, we found no significant improvements compared to our previous findings. The system continues to fail animals.
On average in 2022-2023, we found that:
Only 2.5% of the more than 300,000 farms in the UK were inspected
There was only one local authority inspector for approximately 878 farms in England, Scotland, and Wales
Approximately 22% of inspections on farms identified non-compliance with animal welfare law
Fewer than 1% of cases of non-compliance were prosecuted
Of those subject to enforcement action on farms, at markets and borders, and during transport, approximately 14% had previously committed an animal welfare offence
What this data shows is that we cannot attribute under-enforcement to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, which could have previously provided a possible explanation for low inspection rates and poor enforcement. In reality, we are witnessing a wholesale failure of farmed animal welfare enforcement mechanisms.
You can read more about The Enforcement Problem here and find our reports here.
Case study: Tail docking in pigs
A key welfare issue where we suspect under-enforcement is the routine tail docking of pigs, which is contrary to the law.
Tail docking is a common practice that causes extreme suffering to pigs. It is carried out as a measure to reduce the incidence of tail biting from other pigs, which can result from boredom, frustration, and inappropriate environments lacking in space and enrichment.
The law prohibits mutilations against pigs, otherwise than for the purpose of medical treatment. There are legislative exemptions, under which tail docking is permitted where there is evidence that injuries to the tails of other pigs have occurred and where other measures to improve environmental conditions or management systems have been taken in order to prevent tail-biting.
Data shows that anywhere from 71% to 85% of pigs have their tails docked in the UK each year. This suggests that the legal requirement that only permits tail docking as a last resort is currently not being followed. A lack of inspections and enforcement action can only worsen the situation.
A call for accountability
We believe that the data uncovered in The Enforcement Problem speaks for itself - there is a significant gap between the protection afforded to animals by the law, and how that protection is enforced in practice.
In the words of our Executive Director Edie Bowles, ‘Asking for laws to matter is not a big ask, it is simply the fulfilment of promises already made to the public when Parliament enacted those laws in the first place’.
