The United Kingdom possesses one of the most extensive frameworks of animal welfare legislation in the world. From the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing Regulations, the statutory architecture appears comprehensive and designed to deliver meaningful protection for the more than one billion farmed animals within UK borders each year.
But the latest Enforcement Problem: 2024 Data Report from the Animal Law Foundation reveals a truth the legal community can no longer overlook: this impressive legal regime has become an elaborate facade. The laws exist, the enforcement system does not, at least not in any form capable of delivering the protections Parliament intended.
The figures speak with uncomfortable clarity. Only 2.2% of farms were inspected last year. Over a quarter of those inspections identified breaches of animal protection law, yet just 2.2% of confirmed non-compliance on farms resulted in prosecution. Most troubling of all, more than half of local authorities took no formal enforcement action whatsoever, even when they identified clear breaches.
This is not a case of rare, anomalous failures. It is structural non-enforcement, persistent, predictable, and baked into the current framework.
At the heart of the problem are two paradoxes: 1) society cares deeply about animals, yet they are placed at the very bottom of every pecking order and 2) local authorities, the entities entrusted with enforcing most welfare legislation, have powers but no duty to act. A sophisticated regulatory scheme has been placed on the statute books, but Parliament left its enforcement entirely discretionary. In an era of shrinking budgets, rising costs of prosecution, and acute staffing shortages, it is hardly surprising that many authorities choose not to act. The Chartered Trading Standard Institute’s recent report, Tackling Animal Harm, lays bare the consequences of these paradoxes. Determinations about whether to take enforcement action in animal welfare cases are made in light of the reality of high costs, and already overstretched budgets. The reality of these findings is councils must routinely weigh animal welfare enforcement against social care, housing, and community safety. In many areas, it is clear animal protection enforcement simply loses.
Central regulators fare little better. The Animal and Plant Health Agency, despite possessing the power to issue statutory notices and refer offences for prosecution, appears reluctant to describe itself as an enforcement body at all. Key data on staffing and budgets is missing, making meaningful scrutiny impossible. In any other regulatory sphere, corporate governance, environmental protection, financial services, such opacity would be unimaginable.
When the state enacts laws, but lacks the capacity, or inclination, to enforce them, it undermines public confidence in the fairness and consistency of legal protections more broadly.
The irony is that the public does care. Polling consistently shows overwhelming public support for strong animal welfare protections. For most people, animals are not an abstract policy problem; they are living beings whose treatment reflects broader social values. The public assumes that the laws they believe in are being properly enforced. The 2024 data shows they are not.
And yet, amid this concerning picture, a rare consensus has emerged. Parliamentary committees, professional bodies, animal law specialists, and frontline inspectors all now agree: the enforcement regime is failing, systemically and at scale. The call for a wholesale review of animal welfare enforcement is no longer a fringe demand, it is a mainstream legal imperative.
If the government’s forthcoming animal welfare strategy is to have any credibility, it must confront the uncomfortable truth laid bare by the 2024 data. The UK must ensure animal protection is more than an empty promise. That means transparency, proper resourcing, and an end to the quiet deregulation that occurs when laws are left unenforced.
For animals, the gap between the law on paper and the law in practice remains vast. As lawyers, we should recognise that without enforcement the system designed to protect animals has tacitly given permission for the very harms the law claims to prevent.
The time for structural reform for animal protection is not approaching. It is overdue.
Read the report here.
Edie Bowles is executive director at The Animal Law Foundation
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