Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Brooks): I welcome Neil Gartland, director of animal health and welfare policy division, and Christopher Andrews, deputy director of animal health and welfare policy. Thank you for being here to present to us.

Mr Neil Gartland (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): Thank you, Chair, for the welcome. We aim to use the opportunity to provide the Committee with information on the draft proposal for a European regulation on the welfare of cats and dogs and their traceability. However, I stress that neither the Department nor the UK Government have been involved in the formulation, drafting or discussion of the content of the policy. Therefore, our understanding and knowledge of the content is based primarily on our scrutiny of the publicly available information that was published on the European Commission website on 7 December 2023.

In the past number of years, the Commission has been taking forward a significant programme of work to revise and update animal welfare legislation. As part of that work, the Commission conducted a survey of member states' citizens that showed that 44% owned companion animals and 74% considered that the welfare of companion animals should be better protected.

As it stands, EU member states do not have uniform rules on the breeding, keeping and selling of dogs and cats, nor is there any EU-wide traceability system for dogs and cats. There are serious concerns about the illegal trade in dogs and cats across the EU, and there is widespread support across Europe for legislation on the commercial keeping, breeding and selling of dogs and cats and for harmonised traceability rules. In 2020, the European Parliament also adopted a resolution on the illegal trade of companion animals that called for harmonised EU mandatory identification and registration of cats and dogs and improved protection for consumers who purchase companion animals via online platforms.

I will turn to the details in the proposal, including a broad overview of the policy aim, and then provide members with some details on an article-by-article basis.

The proposal aims to establish uniform EU rules for the welfare of dogs and cats that are bred or kept in breeding establishments, pet shops and animal shelters. It also sets minimum standards for the housing, care and handling of those animals across member states. Traceability requirements, along with the possibility of automated checks when pets are being supplied, will make it easier for European government authorities to control the breeding and trade of those animals and for prospective owners to verify the origin of their future pets and increase the chances that they will be physically and behaviourally healthy. Competent authorities will need to offer training for animal handlers in those establishments, and anyone buying a cat or dog will be informed about the importance of responsible ownership. Imports of cats and dogs to the EU from third countries will have to meet equivalent welfare standards.

Articles 1 and 2 set the scope for the proposal, which is to establish minimum requirements for the welfare of dogs and cats that are bred or kept in establishments in the Union or placed on the Union market and for the traceability of dogs and cats that are placed on the Union market or supplied into the Union. Article 4 sets out exemptions from the proposal. Those include breeding establishments that keep three or four breeding female dogs or queen cats that produce, in total, two or fewer litters per year; pet shops that keep, at any given time, three dogs or fewer or six cats or fewer; and, importantly, rehoming centres that keep, at any given time, 10 dogs or fewer or 20 cats or fewer.

Article 5 of the proposal is based on the establishment of the recognised needs of animals. Dogs and cats kept in any of those established must have a suitable diet and accommodation, be kept with or apart from other animals and be provided with appropriate care.

Article 6 imposes restrictions on breeding animals that have extreme physical characteristics that cause them suffering. That includes regulating the breeding of flat-faced dogs like pugs, which can develop breathing problems.

Article 7 requires breeding establishments, pet shops and animal shelters to notify the competent authority of their location and provide details of the maximum number of dogs and cats that they are keeping. I will skip to Article 16, which goes one step further. That requires the mandatory inspection, approval and registration of dog breeding establishments by the competent authorities in member states.

Article 8 requires information on responsible pet ownership to be provided to any person who acquires a dog or cat from a breeding establishment or shelter. It also proposes that online adverts carry a uniform warning that owning a cat or dog is a lifetime responsibility. Article 9 sets out competencies and training for people who are deemed to be "animal caretakers" in those sites and establishments. A caretaker is defined as a person who takes care of the dogs or cats that are bred there or are in the establishment and animal shelters.

Article 10 mandates that animal shelters undergo an annual advisory visit by a vet for welfare purposes. Article 11 outlines the standards for providing feed and water to dogs and cats in breeding establishments or shelters. The minimum housing for breeding establishments, pet shops and shelters is covered in article 12.

Articles 13 and 14 deal with the requirement to take care of the behavioural needs of the animals. Article 15 prohibits physical mutilation and certain painful practices, such as ear cropping, tail docking and similar types of procedures. Those procedures will be banned unless they secure the health of the cat or dog. It also bans the use of muzzles, other than for public health or animal safety reasons. Applying electric currents to dogs or cats will also be prohibited, outlawing the use of adverse training devices, such as shock collars.

In addition, all cats and dogs placed on the EU market will have to be microchipped and registered in a national database. Those databases will have to be interoperable to make it easier to search across all the approved databases using a new single search portal that will be developed by the European Commission. For online sales, suppliers will have to provide information on the identification and registration of animals through a website connected to the national databases. That will allow buyers to verify the breeding background of the chosen cat or dog. The proposal states that the welfare conditions for cats and dogs that enter the EU for the sole purpose of being sold must be equivalent to those set out in the proposals.

The full outworkings of the legislative proposal, as drafted, will not necessarily take effect following ratification by the European Parliament and European Council; rather, the Commission proposes that significant key features become law in various stages rather than immediately. For example, competent authorities will have three years to establish and implement the microchip databases, and member states will have five years to ensure that the databases are interoperable across the EU. The microchipping requirements for cats and dogs will apply three years after the draft regulation comes into force. Online selling platforms will have five years to provide the functionality to allow buyers to check the identities of the cats and dogs that they obtain. The housing requirements, which would, at this juncture, primarily focus on the rehoming sector, relating to space, light, temperature etc will apply five years after the draft regulation comes into force. The measures in article 13 to safeguard the health of cats and dogs, including the minimum ages for breeding, would come into force after three years. Finally on the timescales, the measures in article 16 on the approval and inspection of breeding establishments will apply five years after the draft regulation comes into force. There are timelines for the changes; they are not all immediate.

The European proposal broadly mirrors, complements or slightly augments existing Northern Ireland legislation in a large number of areas. As you will have noted, the draft legislation aims to safeguard the welfare of cats and dogs in three settings: breeding establishments, pet shops and animal shelters. It also introduces the need for animals to be appropriately cared for and given the right diet and housing etc. The draft regulation also outlaws specific ways of handling a cat or dog or ways of treating them that could cause harm. On the basis of the draft regulation, we contend that those matters are already dealt with in the Welfare of Animals Act (Northern Ireland) 2011. Under that Act, any person who owns or is in charge of an animal is responsible for its welfare. Section 9 of that Act places an obligation on the owner or responsible person to meet the needs of the animal. Those needs include a suitable environment, a suitable diet, being able to exhibit normal behaviour and:

Our Act also makes it illegal to treat an animal in a way that subjects it to unnecessary suffering. It outlaws any mutilation that interferes with sensitive tissue or bone structure, which means that, for example, a dog's ears cannot be cropped and a cat cannot be declawed. Section 6 of our legislation also prohibits the tail docking of dogs for cosmetic reasons.

I turn to commercial dog breeding. Dog breeding is already a regulated activity here, with requirements for establishments to be inspected and licensed. A licence can be conferred only on premises that are deemed to have met the accommodation requirements. Dogs must have dedicated well-being facilities and access to a suitable diet. A socialisation programme must be established at the site, and there are strict rules on when a dog can breed and the frequency of the breeding.

In addition, Northern Ireland was the first jurisdiction in the UK to mandate the microchipping of dogs as part of the licence condition. Dogs born in Northern Ireland must be microchipped by the age of eight weeks. Any new owner must license the pup and update the microchip details when they obtain the animal. That must all be recorded on a database that is readily accessible by a council dog warden.

That said, the draft proposal contains potential requirements that are not catered for by Northern Ireland's domestic legislation. Specifically, the rescue and rehoming sector is not subject to regulation or inspection in Northern Ireland. Therefore, the obligation to notify the competent authority of the activities of a rehoming or rescue centre is a new requirement. Those organisations would also need to complete an annual vet visit and keep those records for six years. In addition, all persons who are deemed to be caretakers of animals under the proposals need to demonstrate a minimum standard of competence. That can be achieved through either educational or professional experience to be determined by the competent authority.

There is no existing definition of a commercial cat breeding establishment in domestic law, nor has there been a requirement for cat breeders to be inspected and registered, so the measure in the draft regulation would be new and a change. Members will also be aware that it is not yet mandatory to microchip cats in Northern Ireland. If the draft regulation applied here, that would also need to be addressed. Likewise, there is no single database anywhere in the UK for the identification of dogs. The microchipping of cats is mandatory in England but not here.

The Department continues to promote responsible pet ownership and runs regular social media campaigns. A code of practice exists in relation to both cats and dogs. However, the draft regulation would place an onus on those supplying dogs and cats and those advertising their sale to provide information on responsible pet ownership.

As I said at the outset, it has not yet been determined whether the draft regulation will apply here. That will not be determined until it completes the legislative process. Nevertheless, we continue to liaise with our Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) colleagues, who have initiated some engagement with the Commission on the content and potential interaction with the UK from a trade and movement perspective. Similarly, we have had informal conversations with colleagues from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) to better understand some of the detail and intent of the draft regulation.

I hope that we have given Committee members a useful short overview of the proposed regulation. We will endeavour to answer any questions that you have about the proposal, but we hope that members will appreciate and understand that we are not party to its development or current status. We will know about the potential application of the draft regulation when it is finally agreed at EU level and published in the Official Journal of the EU.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Brooks): Thank you very much for your presentation. I will get questions under way before passing over to other members. First, the Government anticipate that there will be financial impacts for DAERA, animal activity businesses and charitable organisations that rehome dogs and cats. Will you speak further on your assessment of those financial implications?

Mr Gartland: Our initial assessment of the financial implications is that we would have to develop some form of interoperable database, so that all microchipping could be registered in one place and we could report on that to the Commission on a three-yearly basis.

That would be developed by the Department and would be additional expenditure. In addition, the rehoming sector is currently not regulated, so it does not have to meet the same requirements as breeding establishments in, for example, housing requirements, access for outdoor activities and space for animals. That sector would have to invest — in some instances, a significant amount of money — to come up to the standard that we currently expect from breeding establishments as a result of domestic legislation. That standard would be required under the EU legislation as well. Those are broadly the main things. In addition, the establishments in the rehoming sector would have to have an annual veterinary visit, which would be an additional one-off cost per year. That broadly covers the main financial aspects.

Mr Christopher Andrews (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): The other aspect is the requirement for the caretakers to have training. If that is formal training, there will obviously be a cost to that. However, the draft regulation makes it clear that caretakers can obtain the competences by means of experience or professional development. It could well be that the rescue and rehoming centre creates its own training programme or video or gives the individuals materials that they develop, so it does not necessarily follow that there will be a hard cost for that training.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Brooks): Thank you very much. In June 2024, the Council agreed its negotiating mandate but proposed some changes. Are you able to speak to the impact of any of the changes that were made?

Mr Gartland: I am not aware of what changes were made from the time that the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) gave that mandate until now. As I said, we have not been involved in or aware of negotiations; indeed, we have not kept up contact on what has been happening. There was one meeting with the Commission, facilitated by the UK Government, which was really just a broad information-sharing exercise. That did not into the detail of the ongoing negotiations at European level, so I cannot comment on that.

Ms Bunting: Gents, thank you very much for your presentation; it was really helpful. I have a couple of questions. You have gone over the financial impacts, but I am also concerned about other impacts there may be for charities like the Dogs Trust that ship dogs to the mainland for rehoming on behalf of a number of the shelters in Northern Ireland. Will you outline some of the additional impacts that there may be on charities that do that work like the Dogs Trust?

Mr Andrews: It all largely depends on whether the draft regulation is adopted in Northern Ireland. If it is, they will have to adhere to the requirements that we have just run through. Moving dogs to GB would be deemed to be internal UK movement, so normal UK legislation should apply. It would be slightly different if animals were going into the European Union or the Republic of Ireland. Then, obviously, they would have to meet the requirements set out in the draft regulation. It is clear that anything entering the Union market has to meet the requirements of the draft regulation, but that does not apply to movements to GB.

Ms Bunting: And vice versa?

Mr Andrews: My understanding is that, if Northern Ireland was deemed to be under the auspices of the draft regulation, it might follow that that would be seen as movement into the Union. However, that is purely guesswork.

Ms Bunting: I appreciate that we have a long way to go. Do you envisage the database that you referred to being a national database for the entirety of the UK and that, therefore, the Government will specify the specs that you will need?

Mr Gartland: We would have to specify the specifications. In the draft regulation there are proposals about what things need to be recorded for the animal, such as the age and the sex. As a competent authority and as it is a devolved matter, we would have to, at Northern Ireland level, develop a database. Whether that would be interoperable with a wider UK database would have to be determined in discussion with DEFRA if the draft regulation applied here. There are no plans for that at this juncture, but it is something that we will have to look at. Certainly, from a Northern Ireland perspective, we would have to ensure that it is interoperable across Northern Ireland, and then, of course, we would have further discussions about how that works on a UK-wide basis.

Mr Andrews: Just to build on that, there are a number of databases in Northern Ireland and across the UK. Microchip databases for dogs are operated on a commercial basis, and there are a number of them. What database your dog ends up on depends primarily on who microchipped your dog. There have been ongoing conversations across all the devolved nations and with the UK Government about whether there should be one overarching single point of search that spans all the databases to make it easier to look up the microchips of dogs. The start of those conversations preceded the draft regulation, so they have been going on anyway. There might well be a single UK point of search for databases, regardless of what happens with the draft regulation, because it is a sensible thing to do.

Ms Bunting: I appreciate that we have got a way to go on this still, but it is important to have some understanding. The EU has outlined specific proposals on breeders and so on, and you have indicated the issues in Northern Ireland. There are a couple of things that I want to check. What is the existing threshold for licences for breeders in Northern Ireland?

Mr Andrews: It is broadly similar. Here, it is purely for dogs; we do not license the breeding of cats. That is the first important distinction. It applies only to dogs. That is from legislation enacted here in 2013, and only a person who keeps three breeding bitches and supplies three or more litters of pups a year requires a licence. That is broadly similar to the proposal in the draft regulation.

Ms Bunting: I am not asking a question on this, but I have concerns around this, and they have been raised with us by the charities. There are issues around the fact that people in private homes are engaging in large-scale breeding. There are weaknesses in that there are small numbers of dog wardens for the scale of the problem, so, as you look into all of this, will that be borne in mind? Presumably, you will get an opportunity to feed into the proposals.

Mr Gartland: At this juncture, because it is moving at pace at the European level, I do not know how much we will be able to feed in to change or amend the proposals. It is worth noting that the draft EU regulation makes it clear that, anywhere that it applies, the competent authority can go above and beyond its provisions. The example of dog breeding that you gave is something that we would have to deal with at a domestic level anyway, and our Minister has outlined his anticipated way forward for welfare for this business year, with a commitment to meet the welfare organisations, including the Northern Ireland Companion Animal Welfare Group, in the next few weeks to discuss what the welfare priorities of his Department will look like until the end of the mandate. Dog breeding will be part of that discussion because we know that it is an aspect that needs to be looked at and has been raised before. Therefore, in the round, regardless of this, we will look at that.

Ms Bunting: That is great. It is really good to hear that the Minister will do that.

Finally, it is OK having all of the measures in place, but enforcement is always an issue. Might there be costs to local government, PSNI and so on of enforcing all of that?

Mr Gartland: Ultimately, when new provisions come in under any legislation, whether domestic or EU, and you are required to enforce it, if people do not apply it and do what they should do, there will be additional enforcement costs. It is hard for me to estimate what they would be at this juncture, but it is safe to say that, with new provisions coming in, including the microchipping of cats and the regulation of rehoming centres, there would be additional costs if this were to apply in Northern Ireland. When we look at enforcing that with a domestic structure around penalties and offences, we have to look at a regulatory impact assessment on what it would cost us and other statutory agencies. I am not able to give you that at the minute, but it is safe to say that there would be a cost of some description.

Mr Andrews: It might be helpful to point out, Chair and members, that the direction of travel across the UK is for the regulation of rescue and rehoming centres. Scotland has already enacted legislation to regulate that sector. As we touched on in the presentation, England has already introduced legislation to microchip cats, and we believe that Scotland will follow suit. Wales already has legislation in place covering shock collars, so a number of the policy areas identified in the draft regulation are in line with the general direction of travel at a UK level or are things that have been enacted elsewhere in the UK.

Ms Bunting: That is great. I think that all of us welcome positive moves to prevent abuse and cruelty and all of those things. It is just a pity that some of the sentencing is not implemented a bit more severely, but that is a separate matter for, perhaps, a different Committee. It is one thing to talk about the costs, but how enforceable are all of the measures practically?

Mr Gartland: In some ways it is open-ended because we have not done some of them before. We would have to go through those and understand what our enforcement approach would be once the provisions were made applicable in domestic legislation.

We have robust enforcement procedures in place, working with our partners in local councils, who are responsible for enforcement around dog breeding, for example. A lot of those would apply directly to the cat breeding elements of the draft regulation. The regulation of the rehoming sector is slightly different in that breeding establishments apply for an annual licence and a council inspector will go out to inspect. The draft regulation is slightly different for rehoming centres in that they will have to apply under the regulation but we will not go out to inspect them on a yearly basis. That is a slightly different kind of enforcement, albeit that they would be required to have a veterinary visit that was recorded and the data accessible by the competent authority for up to six years. It is a different approach, so we would have to assess how we would do it. As with anything, we will work with it and make it as enforceable as we can.

We have done things like this before, so there are precedents for some areas. For the things that are new, we will have to work through the detail, but they are not unenforceable. There are ways that we can work with the provisions to ensure that they are applied and people are doing what they should do if, indeed, the draft regulation applies here eventually.

Ms Bunting: Thank you very much.

Dr Aiken: I have a couple of technical questions. Do we have a definition of what a "caretaker" is likely to be?

Mr Andrews: Yes, it is in the draft legislation. Broadly speaking, it is anybody who has a responsibility to look after an animal.

Dr Aiken: Basically anybody.

Mr Andrews: Yes, in the three settings: a breeding establishment, a pet shop or an animal shelter, which we commonly refer to as a "rescue and rehoming shelter".

Dr Aiken: They keep on talking about the definition of the "competent authority". Will the competent authority be local government or yourselves?

Mr Gartland: On progressing the legislation, we are the competent authority. However, it may be that one of our stakeholder agencies or partners are responsible for the enforcement. At the minute, we are responsible for the dog-breeding legislation but councils are responsible for the enforcement.

Dr Aiken: Yes, that is what I meant.

Mr Gartland: We are always the competent authority in that respect but, if the proposals apply here, our enforcement partners in councils may have to look after, for example, cat microchipping or the regulation of cat breeding establishments. We would have to work through that detail and have engagement with them at that juncture first. It goes back to the point about enforcement and our availability to do that.

Dr Aiken: Whoever is the competent authority will also have the annual inspections to manage. They will have to make sure that they are done properly and do all the reporting.

Mr Gartland: Yes. An annual inspection is required for the licensing of breeding activities, which would include cat breeding as well, so the competent authority would be the enforcement agency doing that. I assume that we would be responsible for reporting on a three-year basis to the European Commission. We would bring together the data from councils or the databases that we would establish and report to the Commission in that way.

Dr Aiken: There would be a significant resource implication to that.

Mr Gartland: We will work through how we would enforce it. There will be resource implications for the Department and for our delivery partners in the councils.

Dr Aiken: There are an awful lot of requirements for vets to do an awful lot of inspections. Your Department, more than anybody, has been clear that we do not have a lot of vets and vet availability is particularly low.

Mr Gartland: Yes.

Dr Aiken: Have we factored that into the number of likely additional inspections? It is one thing to have councils doing it, but it is clear that vets have particular roles and we do not have that resource. Have we even thought about how we will look at that?

Mr Gartland: We have not gone into that detail yet in our analysis, but our understanding of the proposals is that the veterinary inspections apply to the rehoming sector only, not to the breeding establishment sector or pet shops. Pet shops are regulated by the Department anyway, but the additional veterinary resource that we require because of the proposals will be an annual visit by veterinarians to the rehoming sector, so it would not place that much of a burden on society as a whole because it would be private veterinary practitioners. It is not necessarily the Department doing that; it is a private transaction between the rehoming centre and private veterinary practitioners.

Dr Aiken: That will be an additional cost, too.

Mr Gartland: Yes.

Dr Aiken: It is difficult at this stage because it has not been enacted and we do not know the timescales. However, with the exception of the inspection regime and microchipping of cats, we seem to be on that general path of travel. I do not want to put you on the spot, but, in general terms, we are on that path of travel anyhow. The only significant changes from where draft legislation is at the moment would be the inspection regimes and the microchipping.

Mr Gartland: I cannot predetermine what our Minister will decide to do, and

to the end of the mandate.

Dr Aiken: I would not ask you to.

Mr Gartland: Thanks, Steve. A lot of our stakeholders have called for the microchipping of cats for a long time, and many members have written to the Minister on that. Also, for a long time the rehoming organisations themselves have asked for some form of regulation of and framework around how they operate. The direction of travel in what we see as the asks from the wider public and stakeholders are in line with what you have outlined. However, whether we can commit to that I cannot say. The Minister has to decide what his priorities are until the end of the mandate. However, it would be fair to say that many of the proposals align with key asks of the Department.

Dr Aiken: Basically, this is a five-year pathway. We are already on that pathway, and we are really looking at whether there will be any significant divergence as we move along it.

Mr Gartland: Broadly.

Dr Aiken: Thank you very much indeed.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Brooks): I thank the witnesses for their time this morning. It is much appreciated. We will let you go.