Clause 16 - Powers in relation to animals in distress
Animal Welfare Bill
11:00 am
Bill Wiggin (Shadow Minister (Agriculture & Fisheries), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Leominster, Conservative)
Again, this is a probing amendment. It seeks to clarify the powers of inspectors and constables to end the life of animals in distress. There seems to be a contradiction: subsection (2) acknowledges that constables and inspectors are not qualified to make crucial decisions about the life or death of animals, but subsection (4) permits them to do so. I appreciate that in some circumstances it may be more humane to put the animal down on the spot.
In most circumstances, as stated in subsection (3)(a), only a veterinary surgeon should be able to make a life or death decision. An animal may need urgently to be put down if it has been run over by a car. However, as the Bill is not completely clear on the subject, the contradiction to which I alluded remains, and I would be grateful if the Minister clarified matters. It is important, because one cannot, for example, fire a gun near the edge of a road, so the quickest and kindest way of putting down a deer that has been hit by a car is illegal.
Amendment No. 67 states:
“When using any of the powers granted under this section, constables, inspectors and veterinary surgeons shall take such biosecurity measures as are necessary to protect the environment from disease.”
That would be ridiculous in the example that I just gave, but I have noticed that the state veterinary service takes great trouble with biosecurity if there is a suspected outbreak of some notifiable disease. People will remember that during the foot and mouth outbreak those who were trying to slaughter sheep frightened them to such an extent that they jumped out of the field and infected the next farm, thus widening the need to cull contiguously; indeed, that happened even in my constituency.
We therefore need to ensure that constables, inspectors and veterinary surgeons abide by the legal and biosecurity precautions, which I believe may already be on the statute book and which are obviously extremely important in such situations, when they deal with these sorts of problems.