It has taken two centuries of hard campaigning to halt some of the worst abuses of animals in the UK. The baiting of bears and bulls has been banned, trade in wild birds curtailed, fur farms outlawed, and wild animals prohibited from being displayed in circuses.
Yet the creatures with whom we share the country still suffer at our hands. Indeed, they have never faced a more worrying future than they do now, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has warned as it prepares to celebrate its 200th birthday.
“With threats of climate change, industrial farming, war in Europe, wildlife loss, the cost of living crisis and the legacy of the pandemic, all animals face unprecedented challenges,” RSPCA chief executive Chris Sherwood said last week.
Having battled for the last 200 years to set up laws to safeguard animal welfare, the RSPCA – set to launch its anniversary celebrations this week – is still facing serious problems in trying to protect them from the worst ravages of modern life. These include the continuing export of live animals from the UK; foxhunting, which still occurs illegally; and the grim lives led by factory-farmed chickens.
“The last on that list is probably the most important,” adds Emma Slawinski, the society’s director of policy. “We slaughter about a billion chickens in the UK every year – an extraordinary number. It is very difficult to envisage the scale of that.
“Yet we never see these creatures, despite their vast numbers, because they are locked into incredibly cramped spaces. They are also genetically selected to grow incredibly quickly. We get through them at an extraordinary rate because they are bred to produce the maximum amount of meat in the fastest possible time.
“Factory-farmed chickens live absolutely horrible lives; their suffering is the single biggest animal welfare issue facing the country at present.”
The RSPCA is the world’s oldest animal charity. It was formed at a meeting in a London coffee house – on a site now occupied by a Pret a Manger – in 1824 by a group that included the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce; Arthur Broome, a London vicar; and the Irish MP Richard Martin who, two years earlier, had pioneered the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822, the first animal welfare law approved by any nation. Sibling organisations were created in Ireland and Scotland not long afterwards.
Eleven years after the RSPCA’s formation, the society helped to promote the Cruelty To Animals Act – introduced by the Quaker MP Joseph Pease who had put it to parliament in 1835. It was passed to prohibit cruelty to dogs and other domestic animals and paved the way to the banning of “a host of other horrors”, as Slawinski puts it. These included the baiting of bulls and bears, a “sport” that involved chaining animals to posts or walls so they could then be attacked by dogs, and cockfighting – in which pairs of roosters, sometimes fitted with metal spurs, were encouraged to kill each other.
“The Pease Act did not eradicate these so-called sports because the drafting of the law was incomplete, but it marked the beginning of the end for them,” adds Slawinski. “It was a crucial piece of legislation.”
Other measures that have since been supported by the society include laws that provide protection for laboratory animals, regulations to control the selling of pets in open markets, and legislation that enforced the licensing of zoos.
In addition, the Animal Welfare Act of 2006 put the onus on owners to provide proper housing and feeding and to prevent harm from occurring to their animals. “Before then, the law worked reactively. We could only prosecute once an animal had suffered,” says Slawinski. “That law made a major difference.”
These changes have been supported by the British public, which has been enthusiastic about protecting the nation’s animals. However, there is still a disconnect when thinking about species. People leave food for hedgehogs but treat foxes as vermin. Others marvel at birds such as kites or jays but ignore the plight of factory-farmed chickens that live short, unbearable lives.
And while we no longer pay money to watch dogs fight chained bears, we still put bets on greyhounds despite the fact that many of these dogs are kept in tiny kennels for most of their lives and receive little in the way of healthcare. Despite two centuries of progress, treatment of British animals still leaves a lot to be desired, in other words.
The crisis facing our pets and farm animals has been intensified by the surge in pet ownership which occurred during the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns. This was followed by the cost of living crisis and an abrupt rise in abandoned pets. In 2020, the society recorded 16,000 cases of abandoned animals. The total figure for 2023 is expected to be around 21,000.
“It is obvious that we still have major hurdles to overcome in ensuring our animals are all treated in humane ways,” said Slawinski. “On the other hand, it is also clear we have come a long way, and that should give us encouragement for the future.”
