Yesterday Faye travelled to the Houses of Parliament to contribute to the APGAW (the Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare) committee meeting. There were a large range of animal welfare groups present and there was a unanimous concern on the overbreeding of companion animals (dogs, horses and cats) and that action needs to be taken. The scale of the abandonment of horses is also of huge concern. Wales are currently changing their rules to crack down on this problem - and the fear is that this will cause the problem to move across the border to England where legislation is not strong enough to deal with it.
The main part of the meeting was an open questions session with Lord de Mauley. We had two questions to put forward. The first was about hot branding - we welcome the recent review by Defra and we wanted to know what developments would need to be made for Defra to feel able to progress to a full ban in England. Lord de Mauley said that he had personally been to Exmoor to witness a branding. He said that it had been better than he had expected - that the foal went straight back to its mum and suckled, and it was good to see the ponies being wormed and treated coming off from the moor (obviously a situation that was set up - because this is certainly not standard practice!!). He felt that the handling was the most distressing part of the process for the foals. Neil Parish MP (and chairman of APGAW) who has fully supported our campaign from the start, championed the view at the meeting that hot branding should be banned, and the good news is that Lord de Mauley agreed on this and said that as soon as he is satisfied that technology is able to positively identify/read a microchip from a distance, then hot branding should be banned in England. (Of course, as we posted previously, Lord de Mauley's review has made hot branding of domestic horses and ponies illegal, and reduced the number of brands on Exmoor ponies from up to 7 individual brands to just 1 brand).
Our second question was about Bodmin Moor - after the crisis in 2011, Defra promised that the situation would not happen again. This year, over 20 ponies died on the same small enclosed area known as East Moor. We wanted to know what guarantees Defra can give us that there won't be a crisis on Bodmin Moor this winter. Lord de Mauley said that the owners of the animals should be made responsible (which we absolutely agree) and Neil Parish again supported us by saying that owners cannot be allowed to be keeping animals in emaciated condition or allow neglect to the stage that they are dying. Whilst there are responsible owners, there are persistant offenders, Defra knows who they are, and they need to be held accountable for their actions. Lord de Mauley said that there will soon be a meeting with local AHVLA, the police and local involved parties about Bodmin and this winter.
It is very clear from the meeting that Lord de Mauley is taking a very strong and personal interest in his role in animal welfare - and has made great efforts to meet different charities/groups and to listen to and consider issues across the companion animal spectrum...and this is something that has been needed for a long time and should be commended. We'd also like to thank Neil Parish who has been such a support for us - for our campaigns and our work! We are closer than ever to getting a full ban on branding in England!
We should also make a mention of Marc Abrahams (who presented Faye with her CEVA award) who was at the meeting and is asking for people to sign his petition - he has over 80,426 signatures and if he reaches over 100,000 the subject of banning the sale of puppies/kittens without their mothers being present will be debated in parliament - here's the link to the petition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49528
Thank you also to Margaret for collecting Faye from the station (after midnight!) to make sure she got home safely!
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