PVA response to government’s Animal Welfare Strategy for England.

The PVA and its members firmly believe that while measures to improve animal welfare must be rooted in evidence, they must also be precautionary and compassionate and reflect our ethical views as a profession. We commend the government’s commitment to strengthening protections for pets, farmed animals, and wildlife, which include consulting on phasing out the use of cages in farming, moving away from the use of carbon dioxide to stun pigs, and introducing standards for the humane killing of fish. Such measures go some way towards recognising the modern understanding of sentience and the capacity for suffering across species.

However, the ambition in the strategy must be matched by timely legislation, clarity, resources and enforcement. While policy proposals signal meaningful progress, their success depends on the development of robust regulatory frameworks, the provision of sufficient resources for their implementation, and effective enforcement mechanisms, including deterrent punitive measures for offenders.

Veterinarians and their teams will be vital partners in delivering welfare outcomes — from advising clients to supporting monitoring and compliance — but only if their role is facilitated through the provision of clear guidance and practical tools.

We particularly emphasise the need for investment in education and professional support, ensuring veterinarians are recognised not just as clinical practitioners but as welfare advocates and educators in their communities, and that their services continue to be available and affordable to the wider public at a time of serious concern about the increasing control being exercised by corporate actors in the sector. The PVA will continue to call for greater involvement of independent practices in the Competition and Markets Authority’s investigations into the veterinary sector, and looks forward to taking part in an inclusive, comprehensive and transparent review of the Veterinary Surgeons’ Act.

A forward-looking strategy should also address the enforcement gap identified by experts, including enhancing transparency and strengthening inspection regimes across all sectors.

The strategy also fails to address many issues which continue to cause the suffering of many millions of animals. A clear commitment and timeline for the elimination of the use of laboratory animals is lacking, in spite of the existence of comprehensive evidence clearly demonstrating that animal testing, as well as causing unnecessary suffering, is outdated and ineffective. The need for rescue and rehoming centres and sanctuaries to be defined and licensed in recognition of their vital work and to eliminate rogue practices, the need to address the continued exploitation of animals for sport, and the need to tackle the trade in and keeping of wild animals as pets which is seriously out of control, do not feature. The strategy also focusses on addressing specific aspects of farming activities, such as the welfare of farmed salmon at the point of slaughter, the use of farrowing crates for pigs, and the continued confinement of broilers in tiny cages, which are welcome, but fails to address many of the wider animal welfare harms that result from intensive animal production systems. The UK’s ability to encourage progressive change in other countries, for example by linking the elimination of egregious practices (such as the slaughter of whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands) to trade deals, does not feature strongly enough. The promise to explore with industry and NGOs legislative and non-legislative options to stop the advertising in the UK of low animal welfare activities abroad also smacks of kicking the can further down the road, given the Animals (Low Welfare Activity Abroad) Act itself received Royal Assent more than two years ago.

The Labour party also promised in its election manifesto to “end the ineffective badger cull”. However, while it has indicated that intensive and supplementary culls in the high-risk and edge areas of England will end from January 2026, the government continues to focus on badgers as a source of bovine TB in cattle, and has failed to fully engage with independent experts from the disease control, wildlife and animal welfare sectors during the development of its National Bovine TB strategy. The animal welfare strategy provided a key opportunity to recognise the massive animal welfare impacts of badger culling, and the need for a major shift in direction. Its omission is extremely disappointing.

So while the PVA supports the overarching direction of the Strategy and stands ready to work collaboratively with government, the wider veterinary profession, industry and civil society to ensure these reforms deliver tangible improvements in animal welfare, much remains to be done before we can join with the Minister acknowledging this strategy as “the most ambitious animal welfare programme in a generation.”