In the UK, prosecutions for criminal acts of abuse and neglect against animals are brought under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. This is a very elegant and well drafted Act. There are two outstanding statistics in respect of animal abuse in the UK 2013:
- Successful prosecutions (convictions) under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 were far higher for dogs than cats. I have to deduce from the figures that this is because dogs are abused more than cats in the UK. However, cats are second behind dogs in the list.
- The number of prosecutions has risen steadily across the board.
Number of Convictions under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 per Animal (selected)
Why the 33% increase in abuse cases?
The indication is that it is about money – the lack of it. It could be argued that the bankers have the blood of animals on their hands. The decline in animal welfare appears to be directly linked to the financial crisis that has gripped most Western countries for the past five years.
The fact is that when the family budget becomes tight, animals, the most vulnerable in our society, face the consequences more than any other creature. The financial problem is passed down to the animals. This is human nature. It has to be said that if people budgeted properly in respect of caring for animals and factored in hard times there would not have been an increase in animal abuse cases as we have seen.
There is still a lot of unrealistic budgeting taking place concerning animal maintenance and care. People should budget about £10,000 over the lifetime of a cat. That is probably on the high side but people should be realistic.
Money aside, education is vital to improve animal welfare. Some of the things that people get up to is astonishing. Even veterinarians abuse animals sometimes. One conviction was against a 53 year old vet in Berkshire who was struck of for causing unnecessary suffering to a cat (Gus) and two dogs. He performed an operation on the cat’s broken leg. He inserted a metal rod improperly. After being at the vet’s clinic for 7 weeks the police were called in to collect Gus. His leg was subsequently amputated.
Abusing animals can hurt them but it can hurt the people who is seeing or hearing what these people are doing to the animals all over the world so I ask every one to help stop animal abused
You are dead on correct. Animal abuse hurts us all and makes the planet a worse place.
It’s terrible that despite our Pet Welfare law the number of cases of abuse keep on rising!
I also think many cases go unreported because of the difficulty in getting through to the RSPCA and then getting them to actually DO something, I think some people give up trying.
I don’t know what has gone wrong with our planet that worldwide there seems to be so much suffering by animals because of cruel or ignorant people, they don’t seem to realise we are all living beings, we just come in different forms but we all feel the same pain and fear.
What bugs me is that as soon as money is tight the companion animals tend to suffer. It all seems so shallow to me.
Me too Michael, our pets are our family and families should stick together in the bad times as well as the good times.
It saddens me that anyone harm can anything out of the reaction of stress. That means these abusers need right off anger management. You know if they are harming animals they are harming family members too. The latter information on Gus is horrifying and to think how much he suffered makes me ill. On the human side of me, how do these monsters manage to hide from society!
Love and Light
Carol
The UK is said to be an animal friendly society. It is, by and large, but there are still a reasonable number of people who don’t care about animals and some who like to hurt them. British people have to face that fact. That said, Britain is still one of the best places in the world for a domestic cat.