UK Animal Cruelty Stats Released
Posted By Freelance Writers Date: 27/04 Posted Under: Animal Charities, Animal Cruelty, Animal Welfare“My cat doesn’t match my carpet”
For the second year running - and for a variety of different reasons - the world’s largest animal welfare charity rescued nearly 150 thousand wild, exotic, farm and domestic animals from dangerous and distressing situations.
The rescue figures include a 23 per cent increase in the number of animals abandoned by their owners - from 5,959 in 2006 to 7,347 in 2007. Almost half of these were cats.
Typical examples of how animals were abandoned* in 2007 include:
· a litter of kittens dumped in a dustbin bag for refuse collectors (London)
· a rabbit abandoned in a box in a crushing machine at a recycling centre (Northallerton)
· a puppy dumped in a cardboard Cadbury’s box on a street in Orpington (Kent)
· five hamsters abandoned in a plastic tub - two of which were dead - at the side of a road (Southampton)
And the worrying trend could be continuing. Just four months into 2008 the Society has already rescued 2,621 abandoned animals, including a three-legged cat with no tail dumped outside a Co-op store this month. (See case studies at the end of the release).
Equally concerning are some of the bizarre reasons given to the RSPCA by owners no longer wanting their pets, for example: “My dog hurts my legs when she wags her tail” and “my cat doesn’t match my new carpet.”
| Type of Animal | 2006 | 2007 | % Change |
| Cat | 33,290 | 29,987 | 11.0 |
| Dog | 9,532 | 7,903 | 20.6 |
This news comes at the start of RSPCA Week (28 April - 4 May) - the Society’s largest annual fundraising and awareness raising push.
Commenting on the figures Tim Wass, chief officer of the RSPCA inspectorate, said: “From birds injured by oil spills to stranded cattle, and cats in road traffic accidents to dogs simply abandoned by their owners, the RSPCA was on hand last year to help all types of animals whatever the emergency.
“Last summer we deployed the biggest number of RSPCA staff for a generation to the rescue of farm animals, horses and other much-loved pets from the severe floods that swept the country.
“Sadly we also noticed a rise in the number of animals callously abandoned. It is an offence to abandon any animal and there is never any excuse for doing so. If people have pets they cannot care for, for any reason, then help and advice is always available from the RSPCA.
“During RSPCA Week we want people to spare a thought for the many thousands of animals needing the RSPCA’s help each year and in particular for anyone thinking about getting a pet to consider the responsibility they are taking on before doing so.”
*The term ‘abandoned’ is used for an animal that has been left completely alone to fend for itself ie.it has not been handed over to an RSPCA centre or any other organisation or individual to care for it.
**The term ‘rescue’ refers to all animals that the RSPCA rescues for a wide range of different reasons, including animals that are sick and injured, in road traffic accidents, trapped in dangerous places and abandoned. Author Details
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Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Animal Charities, Animal Cruelty, Animal Welfare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The lurid headlines from Times today - “RSPCA says pets are falling prey to a throwaway society” is deeply concerning. The question is it true? Questions one may ask is how many of these animals actually need rescuing? Or how many of these animals were taken for political objectives?
Today I would suggest the RSPCA is a proponent of Animal Rights, not animal welfare. It is only a few years ago the RSPCA were forced by the charities commission to drop an open declaration of Animal Rights from its policy document.
We are a nation of animal lovers, and we are a nation that loves to keep animals (pets). Any cruelty to animals is untenable. However, we need to cautious that those enforcing welfare legislation are doing so from a ‘welfare’ perspective and not that of Animal Rights!
When the RSPCA published this annual data back in 2006 with the headlines ‘animal cruelty up 50%’ I endeavoured to discover the truth, so using the RSPCA own date taken from there Animal Review a very different picture emerged (see below). Interestingly from 2006 0nwards the RSPCA have declined to publish there Annual Review on the net – why I wonder!
Chris Newman
Chair Federation of Companion Animal Societies
RSPCA statistics 2000 compared to 2005
Phone calls received down 36.60%
Complaints investigated down 12.55%
Inspections down 94.65%
Animal collections down 23.10%
Homes found down 27.50%
Treatments down 11.73%
Humane destructions up 85.70%
Income up 53.12%
‘The term ‘abandoned’ is used for an animal that has been left completely alone to fend for itself ie.it has not been handed over to an RSPCA centre or any other organisation or individual to care for it.
**The term ‘rescue’ refers to all animals that the RSPCA rescues for a wide range of different reasons, including animals that are sick and injured, in road traffic accidents, trapped in dangerous places and abandoned.’
Re the above information quote from the RSPCA article, a stray dog can find itself in many if not all of the above categories, do the RSPCA contact the relevant local council to report the ‘finding’ of an ‘abandoned’ dog?
Due to the very nature that stray dogs are found by the public and councils in public and private areas, surely it must be assumed that dogs on their own have become lost from their owner or keeper and therefore treated as stray dogs?
If as in certain cases the dog has a microchip with incorrect details and the ‘named’ person is contacted and says that they sold the dog or gave it away to a person who they have forgotten the name of, is the dog still a stray or does it become abandoned? Does the ‘paper trail’ lead to the the last named person on the chip as being responsible, if they say that they ‘got rid’ of the dog to an un-named person, is it a stray and how can you prove otherwise?
When a dog is found in the middle of nowhere or even in a cardboard box, should the RSPCA be contacting the local council to report finding the dog, what if (as has happened before and will happen again) somebody has a problem with the dog owner and takes their dog for a drive out to a different area of the country and lets it go, is the dog abandoned or is it ’stolen with the intention of depriving it from the owner because of a personal grudge’?
As there is no owner or keeper with the dog surely it should be treated as a stray?
Has the RSPCA got its hands on to 7,903 ’stray’ dogs that it is hoped it has informed the relevant local councils about? Otherwise if they have not they have come into possession of 7,903 dogs that they have failed to contact the council ‘forthwith’ to report finding.
Councils can prosecute finders of dogs for not reporting they have the dog(s)in their possession under the environmental protection act 1990 and the fine is £500.
There seems to be a very very fine line between a stray dog and an abandoned dog, I always thought that it was any dog that was in public without its owner, contrary to those who think that the dog from number 6 who wanders off everyday is not a stray because he lives at number 6 and comes back after a couple of hours.
Yet more confusion from the RSPCA, have they found 7,903 abandoned dogs or are a lot of them strays, perhaps with owners looking for them on sites such as doglost wondering what has happened to their dogs and mystified that their council has no record of any such dog being found?
RSPCA does do great work in the animal welfare field, but they really do need to sort out the status of these 7,903 dogs, legal technicalities are dangerous, how many are stray and their anguished owners are looking for them still?
Hi Chris Newman
No wonder the RSPCA stopped publishing its annual report if you criticised it!
Like most similar organisations that like to tell others how to do things, they do not like to be challenged.
completely agree that Animal Rights extremists have taken over control of the RSPCA.
Sadly without criticism there is no democracy, something that the RSPCA apparently has a problem with.
Bin the spin, concentrate on general animal welfare protection and get rid of your political lobbyists and use their wages to pay for some frontline inspectors.
Too much dabbling in politics by the RSPCA is turning people away from them and their policies.
They should concentrate on telling the public what they actually do and do not deal with, which might be a good start for regaining the confidence of people.
I’m puzzled. What are the figures in the middle of the article?
What do they refer to?
Why do the percentage figures at the end have no explanation?
If the figures are for the percentage difference between 2006 to 2007 then surely they are wrong.
To get those percentages as shown I had to work them backwards from 2007 to 2006?
Could someone, RSPCA?, please explain to a simple Animal Control & Welfare Officer what it actually means.