The role of animal welfare agencies in improving animal welfare

Bidda Jones, Chief Scientist

^{RSPCA Australia, PO Box 265, Deakin West, ACT 2600, Australia}

• Introduction
• How animal welfare agencies influence issues
• Strategies for success
• Have animal welfare agencies had an impact on animal welfare in Australia?
• Why is progress in animal welfare so painfully slow?
• The future role of animal welfare agencies
• Opportunities for change
• Conclusion
• Boxes and Tables
• References
  
  

Introduction

Animal welfare agencies are non-government, not-for-profit organisations with the welfare of animals as their reason for existence. They are member-based, independent of government and industry and derive almost all of their funding from public donations. Animal welfare agencies may reflect a range of views on animal welfare, but all accept some use of animals by humans, provided it can be justified and is humane (RSPCA Australia 2008). This is a point of difference between animal welfare and animal rights organisations: a basic tenet of animal rights is that no use of animals by humans is justified. Meanwhile, acceptance of the responsible use of animals for human purposes is intrinsic to the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy (AAWS), but there are many differing views within the AAWS family of what is justified and what is humane. This is important because progress in the welfare of animals depends upon the continued questioning of these concepts. Indeed, some of the policies of modern animal welfare agencies challenge traditional assumptions about the justification of our use of animals. They may also challenge some people’s ideas of what animal welfare organisations should do.

The main goals and activities of most animal welfare agencies are fundamentally the same across the world and have changed little from the original intent of the movement’s founders. They focus on four main things: enforcement of existing animal protection legislation; advancement of such legislation; raising public awareness and knowledge about animal welfare issues; and direct care for animals in need. For the RSPCA in Australia these are articulated as seven distinct objectives (Box 1).

Over the past century these objectives have been applied to a gradually expanding range of issues and with shifting emphasis. The focus of animal welfare agencies began with working animals but now covers all aspects of human intervention in animals’ lives, from companion animals to wildlife, agricultural production to animals used for work, sport, entertainment, display and research. It includes all the sectors of the AAWS. While agencies like the RSPCA are still rooted in the hands-on care and protection of animals (through its shelters, veterinary clinics and inspectorates), there is also increased emphasis on raising public awareness and campaigning for change. It is this aspect of their work – campaigning for improvements to animal welfare in Australia – that is the focus of this paper.

How animal welfare agencies influence issues

An animal welfare issue can be defined as a public dispute over the treatment of animals in a particular context. In most cases it centres on whether that treatment is justified or humane. Examples of animal welfare issues in Australia that have been the subject of organised campaigns in the past ten years are: the live export of sheep for slaughter; housing layer hens in battery cages; mulesing sheep; tail docking of dogs; keeping elephants in zoos; using 1080 to kill ‘pest’ animals; keeping exotic animals in circuses; mandatory desexing of dogs and cats; duck shooting; and confining sows in stalls.

How issues arise and are responded to is a central theme of public relations. Most issues originate out of problems experienced by individuals, only becoming public when they are shared, communicated and labelled. Public issues are debated by the population at large, are covered by the media and are of interest to government. They become more visible through the airing of opposing views, and when attempts are made to influence the knowledge, attitude and actions of others. Issues are dynamic and vary in the amount of attention they receive over time: some may fade from the limelight, to subsequently be rejuvenated by some triggering event.

Social scientists and public relations specialists use models to attempt to explain the way in which organisations, such as animal welfare agencies, effect change. One such model (the issue processes model) describes the dynamics of managing issues in terms of two groups of opposing forces and their effect on public opinion: activists, who work to recognise and activate issues and create disturbance around the status quo; and respondents, who seek to minimise the sources of this instability and maintain the status quo (Hallahan 2001). Thus issues inherently involve power and struggle between respondents and activists. The object of this struggle is to win over the support of the public. This model proposes five types of ‘public’ which differ in their levels of knowledge and involvement with the issue: active publics; aroused publics; aware publics; inactive publics; and non-publics (Box 2). The challenge for those involved in issue activation, such as animal welfare agencies, is to shift people from the inactive, aware and aroused groups into becoming members of the active public. For the respondents (those seen by animal welfare agencies as the source of the problem) the challenge is to counter-educate and discourage involvement in the issue.

Another model of issue dynamics aimed at those involved in the social activist movement (the movement action plan) divides the progression of issues from problems to solutions into eight separate stages (Box 3) (Moyer 1987). As before, the nub of this process is the power struggle between the movement (issue advocates) and the power holders (issue targets) for the hearts, minds and support of the public. Issues move through the eight stages of the plan at varying speeds, depending on both internal and external influences. The plan considers that ‘trigger events’ play a vital role in moving issues from one stage to the next, particularly in making issues ‘take off’ as a social movement. In the issue of live exports, the Cormo Express incident was an obvious trigger event: suddenly an issue that had previously received only minor attention in the mainstream media was being talked about by large numbers of Australians.

Strategies for success

Whatever process animal welfare agencies and other stakeholders employ to influence change, the crucial issue is whether or not they have any effect on outcomes for animals. Mellor and Stafford (2001) argue that strategies for improving animal welfare can be broadly divided into the gold standard approach and the incremental improvement approach. The gold standard is an all-or-nothing strategy, which defines the ideal situation and does not accept anything less. Incremental improvement on the other hand is about making small changes towards the same ideal situation.

When working to achieve improvements in animal welfare, animal welfare agencies tend to adopt a pragmatic approach and accept the concept of incremental change. An animal rights approach tends to be more ideological or abolitionist in its aims, using a gold standard approach to eliminate unacceptable practices.

Mellor and Stafford conclude that, in general, an incremental improvement strategy is more successful in achieving change than adopting a gold standard. However, this conclusion assumes that some progress is regarded as better than none at all, and that ultimate objectives can be achieved through small progressions. But it may be that there other strategies for reaching ultimate goals, and that negotiation or compromise will never result in the desired outcome (Garner 1992). In order to determine fairly whether either strategy is successful, it must be measured against the same target, i.e. the aim should not be to measure whether the incremental improvement strategy is good at achieving incremental improvement, but whether it is capable of eventually achieving the gold standard.

Consider the limitations of both approaches. On the one hand, if incremental change is resisted in favour of holding out for the ultimate goal, no progress may be made and animals may suffer unnecessarily for longer. On the other hand, once incremental changes have been adopted, an initially flexible target can become resistant to further change. This is particularly likely when any major financial investment has been involved in implementing the change.

Whatever the advantages and disadvantages in adopting an incremental improvement or a gold standard approach, the crucial question is whether the strategies adopted by animal welfare agencies in recent years have been successful in improving welfare in Australia.

Have animal welfare agencies had an impact on animal welfare in Australia?

The following section examines the progress of three major animal welfare issues in Australia over the past ten years: livestock exports, layer hen housing, and the control of vertebrate pests. These particular issues were chosen as they were all identified in 1985 as key animal welfare issues of the time (Gee 1986). This assessment asks whether the approach of incremental change has been successful at improving animal welfare, or achieving the gold standard in any of these areas over this time.

Live export of sheep for slaughter (Table 1)

All major Australian animal welfare and animal rights agencies are opposed to the live export of animals for slaughter. They see the trade as being cruel and unnecessary when animals can be slaughtered in Australia instead. RSPCA Australia has held this policy since its formation in 1980, however, it has also acknowledged the need for incremental change towards this goal.

In 1997 the live sheep export trade was entering a period of growth and had strong government support. Up to this point, the industry had been regulated only through the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Marine Orders Part 43 (AMSA 1997), which prescribed conditions for the carriage of livestock by ship, and by voluntary codes of practice which covered transport within Australia. In 1997, the industry formed a self-regulatory program and introduced its own standards to cover animal management from the farm-gate to loading onboard ship. At the same time, the role of the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) in the export process changed from having its own veterinary officers assessing the health and welfare of animals on the wharfside to a ‘third party’ system where a veterinarian employed by the exporter conducted the assessment. Campaign activities during this period concentrated on the regulation of the trade from farm gate to the export destination, the improvement of shipboard welfare and lowering of mortality rates. Public awareness of the extent of live sheep exports and its associated animal welfare problems was low. What could have been a major trigger event for action: the sinking of the Uniceb in 1996 with 67,000 sheep on board, rated only a few lines of comment in national media. In contrast, it made headlines in the UK where a major debate was raging over the export of livestock across the English Channel.

By 2007, some of the proximate campaign goals set in 1997 had been achieved. The industry was subject to regulation through the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock (ASEL) (DAFF 2006); health and welfare assessments were being conducted by accredited vets under contract to AQIS; research into selection of animals and onboard welfare had resulted in some improvements onboard ship; and mortality rates had fallen. However, the ASEL was heavily criticised for its lack of enforceability, and evidence of handling and slaughter practices overseas indicated that, while more sheep were reaching their destination alive, their treatment in importing countries was far from acceptable. This led to an increase in industry-coordinated activities overseas to attempt to raise standards in importing countries, and a major international campaign against live exports and long distance transport. But at the end of 2007 the newly elected Rudd Labor government firmly stated its long-term support for the live export industry. Overall, while the numbers of sheep exported had dropped by over one million, there had been no measurable progress towards ending live exports of sheep to the Middle East for slaughter.

Layer hen housing (Table 2)

The ultimate goal of animal welfare agencies with regard to the housing of layer hens is to end the use of battery cages in Australia. In 1997 there were over 10 million layer hens in cages in Australia, with 91% of eggs sold coming from hens in cages. Unlike many other livestock industries, regulation of minimum space allowance for cages was already in place, although this provided only 450cm2 per bird. In 1997 animal welfare agencies were campaigning to increase consumer awareness of the inadequacies of cages and to encourage consumers to buy non-cage eggs. This led to the development of the RSPCA egg accreditation scheme in 1998 which only endorsed eggs from non-cage systems meeting high animal welfare standards. In 1999 the momentum increased when the Tasmanian primary industries minister sought agreement from the ministerial council ARMCANZ for a national phase-out of battery cages. Ministers received record numbers of letters and postcards opposing battery cages. But, after a long and bitter negotiation process involving the egg industry, state, territory and federal governments and animal welfare agencies, the eventual result was only a resolution from primary industry ministers in to increase cage sizes to 550cm2 by 1 January 2008 (ARMCANZ 2000).

In 2007, there were a million more hens in cages than 10 years before, although the market share for cage eggs had fallen to 71%. Several jurisdictions had yet to pass legislation to regulate the resolution passed in 2000 increasing cage sizes. Cages still provided less than an A4 piece of paper per bird and the cage still lacked any environmental enrichment. Meanwhile, the scientific evidence against cages mounted, with a major collaborative report from the EU concluding that battery cages are unable to provide satisfactory welfare for laying hens (LayWel 2006), something that the Australian industry still chooses to deny. Public opinion as demonstrated by buying habits and opinion polls indicates that opposition to battery cages has risen and that by 2007 one in four people were buying cage-free eggs. Yet nearly 11.6 million hens were still living in battery cages by the end of 2007.

Vertebrate pest control (Table 3)

After livestock production, the control of introduced pest animals is one of the biggest animal welfare problems in Australia. Control programs kill millions of animals each year, with many of these dying a prolonged and painful death. Animal welfare agencies advocate that pest animal control should only be carried out where they are justified, effective and humane.

In 1997, policy makers were just beginning to acknowledge that new methods of control should be more humane, effective and target-specific than existing methods (Environment Australia 1999; Braysher 1993). But when it came to management principles, research directives and on-the ground strategies, there was little evidence to suggest that animal welfare issues were being given any serious consideration. In 2003, RSPCA Australia organised a seminar and then a workshop to examine how to bridge the gap between paying lip service to animal welfare, and integrating it into the planning and implementation of pest management programs. Specific methods of concern at the time were the use of steel-jawed leg-hold traps, inhumane poisons (such as 1080 and anticoagulants) and chloropicrin fumigation.

Several on-paper improvements followed, with the drafting of codes and best practice standards for control techniques and development of a model for assessing their humaneness. Animal welfare is now considered as a fundamental component of decision making in vertebrate pest management. But despite this, none of the methods that had been widely acknowledged as unacceptable in the codes (steel-jawed traps, chloropicrin fumigation, strychnine, warfarin and yellow phosphorous baiting) had been removed from use in 2007. National adoption of codes of practice published in 2004 is still under consideration. No humane alternative methods of control have been adopted for any of the major pest species, although there are several in development. We are still a very long way from ensuring that all pest animals are killed humanely.

Why is progress in animal welfare so painfully slow?

If these three issues are typical, they do not paint a very optimistic picture of progress in improving animal welfare in Australia. Instead, they indicate that while movement is incremental, the increments are very small and painfully slow to be adopted and there is little obvious progress towards achieving the ultimate objective. Ten years is clearly not enough time to achieve any major goal in animal welfare, it is only just enough to move from one stage to another towards that goal. Some animal welfare issues seem to be stuck in the activist ‘failure’ stage, where the barriers to change seem insurmountable and the concept of a gold standard a very long way off. It is not just in Australia that the pace of change is slow. A 2004 analysis of the impact of applied ethology (animal behaviour science) on improving animal welfare globally found the overall rate of progress, in terms of tangible improvements in animal welfare, ‘frustratingly inadequate’ (Millman et al. 2004).

Most animal welfare agencies, the RSPCA being no exception, accept the need for negotiation and compromise as a means of achieving their ends. Yet it seems that they have been forced to accept very small improvements in standards with little progress toward eliminating practices they see as unacceptable. Why is this? Several causes have been suggested, including competition with other issues for public attention and resources; entrenched traditions; difficulty in effectively transferring information between scientists, industry, policy makers and the general public; and scepticism of the results of animal welfare science (Millman et al. 2004). But above all, political resistance and economic constraints seem to be the main impediments to progress in Australia.

Despite the high profile and public standing of organisations like the RSPCA, when it comes to policy-making, governments listen much more attentively to economic reasons than to ethical ones. In the case of farm animals, financial arguments for rejecting animal welfare improvements are extremely powerful in terms of influencing decision-makers. Equally, the rate of change can speed up exponentially when there is a financial imperative in favour of improvements. Mulesing is an obvious example: for several decades, research into alternatives ticked along with no measurable change in farming practices. Then came the anti-mulesing campaign by the US-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The PETA campaign differed from Australian campaigns on sheep husbandry as it targeted overseas markets, not the Australian community. The threat to the wool industry in Australia was clear – find an alternative to mulesing or lose your key overseas buyers. Since then research and development into alternative approaches to mulesing has accelerated greatly in a relatively short time, with a 2010 deadline to end mulesing in Australia seeming an achievable goal.

The most successful conditions for improvements in animal welfare occur when change is beneficial to a range of stakeholders, when it has associated financial advantages, when the networks are in place to ensure that new information is communicated to government and industry, and, most obviously, when public opinion is on the side of change (Millman et al. 2004; Moyer 1987).