What I would like to say to WHW and RSPCA

Okay, so how CAN we help??

I've stood down Melton sales and watched hat racks go through the ring whilst the RSPCA officer is standing at the side.

Why doesnt the forum decide on some positive action, a change of law perhaps, that allows the RSPCA to have legal ownership of any horse deemed by, say, two separate vets, to be suffering? For instance, take one vet to have the animal siezed, and another one to allow the animal to be signed over? meaning prosecution would be totally separated?

I don't know, I know lots of people want to do something in light of this weeks events, but just not sure what?
 
It would be very difficult to get a law to allow the RSPCA ownership of any animal deemed to be suffering because of the entire way the legal system in this country works.
You have to have a trial before you can be found guilty of a crime, and the confiscation of personal property of persons who are then found NOT to be guilty of a crime would therefore be something of a legal minefield.
I think part of the reason the RSPCA are perceived as being so bad at acting in equine situations is that where there is little/no financial value in your average dog or cat so owners tend to sign over before the case goes to trial (I would suspect often in exchange for the case not being tried...) in horses there is always meat money, so owners rarely surrender ownership and therefore without a good body of evidence and a successful prosecution the animal is likely to end up back with the rubbish owner.

If you are looking for an achieveable animal welfare campaign to take up, I think the government should encourage schools to take a greater role in educating children how an animal should be cared for and what a healty animal looks like (something I also think the RSPCA should get more involved in) as this would help problems to be identified more quickly and give people more confidence in reporting cruelty cases before they get so bad as those Stamford horses.
I would also like to see longer term/permanent bans from keeping animals for those who have been convicted of cruelty. The ECHR doesnt protect a right of animal ownership yet, so lifetime bans would be perfectly feasible and really a more rational response. They dont give sex offenders a 10 year ban on working with children, and animal cruelty is a much easier crime to keep secret.
 
Having read gnubee last paragraph on bans for life, im just wondering how it could be enforced.

Many years ago our family went to Battersea Dogs Home looking for a dog. We had to fill in forms. One of the questions was "have you ever been banned from keeping dogs". When asked if they checked, their answer was "no, we have to rely on honesty". Things could well have changed since then

But I do know of a person who was found guilty of neglect to his horses and banned. Two of his horses were confiscated. The others were tranferred to his father, so not confiscated. The father then moved to another part of the country and, to my knowledge, has never seen the horses since. The animals are, ofcourse, being kept by his son!!
 
Exactly Charlie - there is a national database of those convicted of child abuse as I understand it - and many similar, no doubt. In these modern times a record cannot be that hard to keep!
 
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