How does it happen? How does an organisation end up doing the opposite of what it was established to do? This month marks the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: the world’s oldest animal welfare organisation. I wonder what there is to celebrate.
Me too, albeit I suspect for vastly different reasons...
If you mistreat your dog or cat or horse or rabbit, you can expect an investigation by the RSPCA. If the case is serious enough, it could lead to prosecution.
But run over an escaped calf with your police car and claim it was 'for the protection of the public' and you'll probably get away with it.
If you abuse animals on an industrial scale, you might face not investigation and prosecution, but active support and a public relations campaign to help you sell your products.
Oh, he's going for the farming angle, isn't he?
This is the conclusion of the deepest and most wide-ranging report yet conducted into something called RSPCA Assured. When you see meat or fish or eggs in the supermarket, you might find the RSPCA’s stamp of approval on the packaging, telling you that the animals they came from benefited from “high welfare” farming. It might seem odd that an organisation devoted to animals is promoting their exploitation and killing. It seems odder still when you discover that this “high welfare” farming includes massive factory farms, indistinguishable from the norm, in which animals live short, distressing lives before being trucked away to be stunned and slaughtered.
And that's without considering the halal angle, noticably missing from your screed, George...
The new report, by the organisation Animal Rising...
Ah. Those nutcases.
Expert assessors concluded that in many cases the farms not only failed to meet the RSPCA criteria, but didn’t even achieve the legal standard for animal welfare. Altogether, they alleged 280 legal breaches.
Then perhaps this is one we can leave to the ASA, George?
It gets worse. Until the new report was published at the weekend, at which point it deleted them, the RSPCA’s website carried recipes for meat and fish, showing how you could cook cuts of the animals that receive its stamp of approval. Of 159 recipes on its site, only four were plant-based. Stand back and marvel at the perversity. It’s as if a children’s welfare charity had published a directory showing where you can hire child labour.
We're not going to go vegan anymore than we are going to eat the bugs, George. Give it a rest!
When I asked the RSPCA about the new report, it told me it is looking into the allegations. It claimed that: “If we stepped back from RSPCA Assured, we risk leaving millions of farmed animals with even less protection.” I believe that’s the opposite of the truth.
Well, as a famous fictional lawyer once said, 'It doesn't matter what I believe, what matters is what I can prove!'
