Mar 27th, 2025
2 mins
On 24th February the Government’s Animal Sentience Committee (ASC) published an independent report on the due regard to animal welfare – legislative compliance and enforcement.
The report highlighted issues including inconsistencies in monitoring and enforcement of the legislation, discrepancies in actions taken by the different agencies responsible, and in welfare inspector training.
The ASC highlighted that despite advances, an effective, structured, fair and integrated system of animal welfare surveillance and enforcement is lacking. This concern is widely recognised by some governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGO) such as the All-Parliamentary Group on Animal Welfare and the Animal Law Foundation.
The issues surrounding animal welfare compliance and enforcement relate to inconsistencies in detection of offences, complexity of the legislative environment, resources, lack of coordinated inter-agency response, variable enforcer training and expertise, and transparency over the effectiveness of adequate reporting and enforcement. These are outlined in Section 1.
You can read the report in full here
