The document Animal Welfare Strategy for England 2025 sets out a vision for England by 2030 across companion animals, wild animals, farmed animals and international trade. It adopts a “systems approach”, emphasising partnership with certain industry partners, NGOs and enforcement bodies, and repeatedly asserts that policy will be “evidence-led” and outcomes-focused and yet completely fails to deliver a process for either objective.
The document lacks any semblance of clear baselines, quantified targets, delivery milestones, or a coherent framework for evaluating whether claimed welfare improvements will actually occur. The result is a strategy that is directional, rather than accountable and which appears to have been led by the nose by the Animal Rights Industry, as opposed to those with firsthand knowledge of, and decades of experience of delivering successful animal husbandry to a demanding, growing populace.
The strategy positions itself as delivering a “generational step change” in animal welfare, underpinned by science, partnership working and effective enforcement.
However, ambition alone does not constitute strategy. For a document presented to Parliament and intended to guide policy to 2030, the absence of defined outcomes, benchmarks and evaluation mechanisms represents a fundamental weakness that undermines its stated objectives.
A major inconsistency throughout the document lies between its outcomes-focused language and its process-led content. The strategy repeatedly states that interventions will be prioritised according to their impact and that welfare improvements will be monitored. Yet nowhere does it specify:
- What constitutes a measurable improvement in animal welfare
- Which indicators will be used to assess progress;
- What baseline conditions currently exist;
- Or how, when, and by whom progress will be independently evaluated.
Absence of a Measurable Impact Framework
The most significant omission is the lack of any formal impact assessment structure. There is no:
- Theory of change linking policy actions to welfare outcomes.
- Set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- Quantified targets or timelines.
- Cost-effectiveness or value-for-money analysis.
- Mechanism for corrective action if policies fail to deliver.
This omission is particularly striking given the strategy’s repeated emphasis on science, evidence and transparency. Without defined metrics, claims that welfare will be “measured” are not operationally meaningful. Some statistical work has been done by ‘Animal Scientists’ on consumers ‘WTP’ (willingness to pay) for animal welfare improvement. But willingness to, and ability to, are NOT the same. With an economy in dire straits perhaps ‘ATP (Ability to Pay) would have been a better measure?
Enforcement is consistently described as foundational to success, with local authorities identified as the primary delivery bodies. However, this emphasis is not matched by:
- An assessment of current enforcement capacity
- Commitments to additional funding, staffing or specialist training;
- Standardised national enforcement benchmarks;
- Or indicators to measure compliance and enforcement effectiveness.
The strategy therefore places substantial reliance on bodies already known to experience uneven resourcing, without addressing how these structural constraints will be overcome, or, how the damage that was caused by such things as the historic wholesale removal of qualified experienced animal health staff, (Animal Health Officers) funded by Local Authorities will be replaced. The Charity and the aligned Animal Rights Industry sector is NOT the right place to seek unbiased advice, information or enforcement, and the Police have far too much to do to take this on as yet another duty. In addition, current moves within wider government to remove or constrain local authority influence will make it almost impossible to deliver a locally focused monitored and enforcement arrangement without significant ‘top-down’ target driven meddling.
Wildlife Policy
Wildlife policy has been dismissed in a paragraph or two but does include definitive political commitments (e.g. banning trail hunting and snares). Yet the ‘evidence’ for such a Draconian approach is circumspect at the very least, coming as it does from a pressure group and their emotion driven polling, and no other source. This is surprising since it took some 700 hours of government business to deliver a statute that that been ‘gift wrapped’ and paid for by the Animal Rights industry and which resulted in the Hunting Act 2004. Legislation which led a previous PM to admit he was ‘wrong’ on pushing it through as government policy with a highly questionable use of the Parliament Acts.
A coherent reliable strategy discussing hunting with hounds should have mentioned that since to 2004 Hunting Act came into force there have been at least 252,660 days of people out with registered hound packs. During that time there has been
- Total number of prosecutions since the ban: 573
- Prosecutions involving registered packs of hounds: 25
- That amounts to roughly one offence per 10,000 trail-hunting days.
Compare these figures with those extrapolated from the ‘poll’ conducted by YouGov for a pressure group (LACS). A poll that provides an object lesson in how to manipulate data to deliver the desired result. It appears that just under 2000 people answered a question posed by YouGov. This requires a bit of clarification in that YouGov is an organisation that you must join to express an opinion. Because of the need to ‘opt in’, the audience can hardly be called representative of a wider population, but merely representative of members of YouGov who decided to answer some highly nuanced questions.
Of the 2000 people who responded it seems only about 10% describe themselves as having any knowledge of the countryside at all. For the others it appears to be little more than a free resource to visit at the weekend, but they still have a ‘right’ to an opinion on it.
However, when drafting this policy, the authors cannot be blamed for the highly inaccurate definition of ‘trail hunting’ used by YouGov. Even if it is expedient and seen as politically useful.
“Trail hunting” is the practice of laying a scent trail using a rag soaked in animal scent for hounds and riders on horseback to chase. Advocates say that this allows people to simulate hunts without actually harming an animal, but critics say it is sometimes used as a smokescreen for actual fox hunting. Do you think trail hunting should be made illegal, or should it remain legal?
One wonders which pressure group came up with that !?
The consequences (unintended or otherwise) of a ‘ban’ have been glossed over, and the included poll proves there is absolutely no understanding across the wider electorate between trail hunting, drag hunting and hunting the clean boot. Disciplines which are as distinct to those actually involved as rugby union, rugby league and football. Just because all three involve ’a ball’ does not make them the same thing.
As for introducing a close season for hares would mean that ‘fewer leverets would be left motherless and vulnerable to starvation and predation’ would not take account of the fact that, unlike rabbits, hares are rather forgetful, feckless mothers that often leave their offspring to fend for itself at the earliest opportunity knowing that they are able to do just that.
Evidence-Led Policy and Evidence Gaps
Whilst this strategy document asserts an evidence-led approach, it frequently acknowledges substantial data gaps. Despite this, policy development proceeds without explaining how success will be assessed or measured in the absence of robust baseline data.
This creates a tension between the stated commitment to scientific rigour and the practical limitations of current knowledge, which the document makes no attempt to address.
Although the document repeatedly alludes to a systems-based approach, this remains largely conceptual. For example, there is no modelling of likely tensions or cost benefit between policies between ‘higher welfare’ standards and trade competitiveness, nor any assessment of their impact such as unintended consequences or displacement effects. Without such analysis, the systems language adds little practical value but does allow ministers to promote a warm, fuzzy and ‘caring’ atmosphere. As such it creates uncertainty as to whether improving the perception of animal husbandry by concentrating on its ‘welfare’ impact, political expediency feasibility or pressure is actually what is driving prioritisation.
Conclusion
This iteration of the Animal Welfare Strategy for England is expansive, undoubtedly morally agreeable to some and perhaps seen as politically useful. However, it is strategically incomplete with a total lack of any robust accountability architecture.
Without defined outcomes, measurable indicators and truly independent evaluation, the strategy cannot credibly demonstrate that it delivers meaningful improvements in animal welfare. At best, it provides a roadmap of dogma driven intentions; at worst, it risks becoming an exercise in policy signalling.
In practice, the document catalogues intentions but provides no framework to test whether these activities translate into tangible welfare gains for animals or the cost of the unintended consequences such policies will unleash. Without such assumption testing, Pandora’s box will not just have been unlocked and opened, it will have been smashed to bits.
For a strategy that claims to be both evidence-led and outcome-focused, the absence of a measurable impact framework is not a minor technical oversight but a fundamental and perhaps deliberately cynical flaw. Addressing this deficiency is essential if the strategy is to move beyond the naïve wishful thinking of the Animal Rights Industry that currently seems to have the ear of government with little tangible benefits for wildlife, farming, or consumers. We urge Ministers to stop and have a rethink. Our rural landscape with its highly complex interrelationships of essential locally driven management processes deserves nothing less.
