Agromenes: Act now for Man’s best friends

The ingenuity of crooks is often a source of wonder. Who would have thought that the simple business of taking your pet on holiday would give rise to major fraud and considerable cruelty?

Agromenes remembers when first we were able to travel with our pet dogs and cats. Before, pets had to be put into into quarantine for six months, which meant that only about 8,000 dogs and cats passed through British ports each year. The coming of effective vaccines and later of pet passports meant that the UK could maintain its rabies-free state and allow people to travel with their pets without any need for quarantine. We jumped at the opportunity and, last year, not 8,000, but 368,000 pets were moved in and out of the country.

These numbers remained high even when Brexit meant pet passports could no longer be used, so pet owners had to suffer the bother and cost of getting health certificates from vets and completing new paperwork every time they went abroad. The recent improvements in EU and UK arrangements, negotiated by the Government, mean that pet passports are back, so microchipped, vaccinated cats and dogs will be able to travel unhindered.

However, the Government has not done anything to stop the misuse of the wider system by unscrupulous traders who pretend to be travellers, but are actually bringing dogs and cats into the UK to sell. We have a buoyant market and need about 950,000 puppies a year to satisfy it. That is more than we breed in the UK under proper animal-welfare conditions. The crooks want to avoid those rules and bring in animals many of which are bred in conditions we would never allow here.

Others have been ‘doctored’ in ways that we have largely banned. We cannot properly enforce our regulations on cropped ears, docked tails and the declawing of cats if animals that have suffered these cruel practices can be brought in under the guise of travellers’ pets.

The problem is increasing. Last year, 65,000 cats and kittens were bought from abroad. Many were smuggled. Their new owners will never know for certain if they are healthy or not. The growing fashion for pedigree cats means legitimate breeders here cannot keep up with demand and many of those for sale, particularly online, come in illegally. Both dogs and cats bring disease with them. Many are very young, so may carry undisclosed illnesses, and there has been a growing number of pregnant animals whose progeny cannot be tested.

Given the seriousness of this trade and its increasing profitability, it is surprising that successive Governments, although warned by animal-welfare organisations and border officers, have failed to act. It has been left to a back-bench Liberal Democrat MP, Danny Chambers, and cross-bencher Lord Trees in the House of Lords to introduce a private member’s bill to combat this evil trade. It is notoriously difficult for such Bills to get through both Houses without Government time being given for debate, but this one has passed through all stages in the Commons and has just had its Second Reading in the Lords.

The Government timetable is already overloaded with long and complex Bills and there is no hope of getting extra time for this one — however vital it is. The one chance is that their Lordships will make no amendments during the Committee stage — however much they might improve the Bill — so that it can be passed without going back to the Commons. The Lords must put the good before the perfect and get this Bill into law.