The Animal Sentience Committee is new and was fully established on 25 May 2023, following the appointment of five new members who collectively bring a wealth of animal welfare expertise. They have joined me, as the committee chair, in fulfilling the statutory function of the committee.
Background
To give you some background on the committee membership, I am the former chair of the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England and current chairman of Animal Medicines Training Regulatory Authority, helping to support the long-term future of the animal medicine sector.
Professor Richard Bennett is a Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Reading. He is also a council member of the Humane Slaughter Association and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare. He has undertaken research on the economics of animal health and welfare for over 35 years.
Richard Cooper is a practising veterinary surgeon with a passionate interest in the welfare of animals, but more specifically in the continual improvement of farm animal welfare standards at a commercial level.
Dr Penny Hawkins has 30 years of experience in life science research, practical bioethics and animal welfare.
Professor Anna Meredith is the Dean of Faculty for Natural Science at Keele. She has significant experience providing advice to the government, including her role as chair of the Zoo Experts Committee for 10 years.
Professor Christine Nicol has experience in veterinary research environments and has published over 200 scientific publications. Her work addresses the conceptual issues around measuring welfare and the evaluation of practical solutions.
How the committee works
The committee are supported by a Secretariat function that sits within Defra, who are responsible for acting as the first point of contact for any general queries, maintaining an overview of all committee activities, supporting report publication and work planning and facilitating cooperation between the committee and policy teams in all central government departments.
The committee will reach out to external experts, welfare groups and industry representatives, including farm and domestic animal keepers and veterinary practitioners, to understand current issues. When deciding which policy decisions to review and when drawing together evidence on the effects on animal welfare of those policy decisions, we will seek to include as many views as possible.
As the committee chair, I am equally keen to collaborate with welfare experts across a range of sectors to understand the various issues which may impact the welfare needs of sentient animals and use this information to help guide our choices when determining what policy decisions the committee should or should not consider.
The scope of activity that may be considered by the Animal Sentience Committee is very broad. In essence, we may issue a report on any policy for which UK government ministers are responsible. However, we cannot issue a report on any policy which relates to legislative provisions falling within devolved competence.
We are able to consider all central government policy decisions which may impact sentient animals from formulation to implementation and delivery, but this does not cover local authority, or non-departmental public body, decisions.
The definition of sentient animal, as outlined in the Act, covers all animals, kept and wild, defined as vertebrates and also decapod crustaceans (eg crab and lobster) and cephalopods (eg octopus and squid).
We want to ensure that the work of the Animal Sentience Committee is prioritised to maximise its influence in highlighting the impacts of key policy decisions on animal welfare.
It is up to the committee to determine what it means by the term policy, but it is currently defined as ‘a decision made or implemented by a UK minister which affects the activities of government, business, charities or members of the public. This includes, but is not limited to, the processes of making regulations, legislating, allocating resources or promoting a course of action.’
Deciding which policy decisions to consider
In terms of what policy decisions the committee may choose to consider in the future, we expect to focus on emerging current or recent decisions. We intend to take a proportionate approach and will not duplicate the work of other committees, for example, the Animals in Science Committee, which considers the use of animals in scientific procedures, or the Trade and Agriculture Commission, which specifically scrutinises trade deals.
In order to have the highest impact, we will focus primarily on emerging policy decisions to provide a constructive steer to departments on building a suitable evidence base to enable the impacts on animals to be understood.
This will enable us to make valuable and timely recommendations to ensure that, in any further formulation or implementation of the policy, the government has all due regard to the ways in which the policy might have an adverse effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings, but it is worth noting that the government does not necessarily have to follow these recommendations.
In practice, the committee will select individual policy decisions and seek information from the relevant department on what evidence base was built about the impacts on animals affected, and how the evidence was assessed.
Reports on policy
The committee will use its statutory powers to produce reports containing its views on whether, or to what extent, the government is having, or has had, all due regard to the ways in which the policy might have an adverse effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings.
We will engage with departments to form an overview of all emerging, current and recent policy decisions of potential interest, using the support of the Secretariat for this policy mapping. We will also work closely with other groups outside of government, across industry and non-governmental organisations, to understand emerging issues and priorities which will then be factored into our work planning.
Once we have decided which policy decision to review, we will work closely with the relevant policy team to assess the welfare evidence base. We will gather and review relevant evidence. This could include any research or impact assessments, and stakeholder views or external evidence collected by the policy team, any calls for evidence or formal consultations that were conducted, and any policy formulation documents that set out the likely impacts of the policy (both positive and negative).
Policymakers will need to be able to show that they have considered the welfare of sentient animals when formulating or implementing policy and when securing ministerial decisions. This could entail demonstrating that relevant evidence has been gathered on the likely impacts on animals affected by the decision, and ensuring ministers are sighted on these impacts whenever decisions are made throughout the policy making or implementation process.
After a thorough assessment of the evidence provided by the department, we will take a collective view on the extent to which the decision had all due regard for the welfare of animals then generate a report setting out our views, summarising any evidence gathered and making any recommendations for future action.
The reports we will produce are likely to focus on whether the welfare evidence base was strong enough in the circumstances, and whether the evidence was understood and considered appropriately in the decision-making.
Our role as a committee is not to make recommendations or judgements about the policy decision itself, but instead is to consider if the impact on animals was duly considered during the decision-making process.
Once we have formally submitted our report to the relevant government department, the Secretary of State is required by law to lay a response in Parliament to each report within 3 months (excluding periods when Parliament is not sitting).
Both the committee reports and the government response will be made available publicly on our Animal Sentience Committee gov.uk page, to ensure that all members of the public have access to our work.
We anticipate that our reports will be short and timely, and ministerial responses are expected in turn to be proportionate. As we intend to proactively engage with departments at the early stages of policy development, this should in turn result in policy decisions being well grounded.
In our first set of reports which have now been published on gov.uk, we focussed on a wide range of topics including the Veterinary Medicines Regulations, the Renters (Reform) Bill and the Animals (Low Welfare Activities Abroad) Act. We have also published a note on XL Bully dogs which we shared with Parliament. Going forward, we intend to consider a variety of other issues with a focus on the delivery and implementation of policies, which we will report on over 2024.
Conclusions
This is a new committee with a unique statutory ability to independently provide accountability to Parliament for the consideration of animal welfare and a new idea.
Our intention is to guard our independence while ensuring that we continue to deliver a useful and constructive critique on policy as it evolves, before becoming the law of the land. We hope our efforts will help inform the development of government policies in relation to animal welfare and lead to better welfare outcomes for all sentient animals.