The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations continue to fail to protect rabbits says the Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund
With the view that the updates to the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 (LAIA Regulations) fall significantly short of providing sufficient safeguarding for rabbits, the Rabbit Welfare Association & Fund is lobbying government to introduce appropriate legislation which will reform current insufficient legislation around rabbit breeding in the UK.
The UK is experiencing the worst rabbit rescue crisis ever. Rescue centres are struggling to cope with the number of rabbits currently being abandoned, mistreated, or surrendered. And with the current regulations, this will continue to be the case.
The Post Implementation Review 2024 continues to allow uneducated and inexperienced rabbit owners to have multiple litters that they can’t look after or sell-on to responsible pet owners. The ongoing lack of effective legislation continues to result in too many rabbit breeders having no licence, inspection, or standards.
The result of this is that thousands of baby rabbits are still being mis-sexed and sold with no proper checks or care information. Unsuspecting owners continue to be faced with accidental litters, which can result in rabbits being dumped and the UK’s rescue centres are becoming more and more over-run with unwanted animals. Rabbits are as intelligent as dogs yet are not covered by the same level of breeder licensing protection.
The RWAF is a registered charity and the UK’s leading authority on rabbit welfare. A member of CASC, it has worked with the All-Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (APGAW) to produce the Good Practice Code for the Welfare of Rabbits.
Key recommendations from the RWAF
- That the LAIA Regulations be amended to make the breeding of rabbits a licensable activity, and to require all animals that are sold to be correctly sexed.
- That local authorities be provided with additional resources so that the LAIA Regulations can be better enforced.
- That the Good Practice Code for the Welfare of Rabbits be made a statutory Code of Practice.
RWAF CEO Rae Walters says: “Our data suggests that many active rabbit breeders are not answerable to the current LAIA Regulations, which raises concerns about welfare. These unregulated breeders are not subject to local authority inspections or required to meet any welfare standards at all (save for those in the Animal Welfare Act 2006) and, unfortunately, the conditions in which breeding rabbits are kept are often very poor. Sadly, it is often not a priority for such breeders to carry out home-checks or provide care information to ensure their rabbits are going to suitable homes and to owners who understand the commitment of owning a rabbit and how to meet their animal’s needs.
“If the law was amended as we propose, we believe that more rabbit breeders would need to be licensed, welfare standards would be raised, fewer rabbits would be bred (be that accidentally or otherwise) and, hopefully, fewer rabbits would be given up by their owners which would ease the pressure on the rescue centres and mean fewer rabbits are abandoned. In addition, consumers would have more confidence that the commercial operators they are buying their animals from are caring for their pets appropriately and local authorities would generate more income via licensing fees.
“The current loophole in licencing is contributing to a welfare crisis for rabbits which is only getting worse.”
In November 2022 the RWAF launched a “Breeding Amnesty” campaign (supported by the RSPCA, the Blue Cross, Woodgreen, Gumtree, Preloved and others) and started a petition asking for the LAIA Regulations to be amended to ensure rabbit breeders require the same licensing as dog breeders. At the time of writing 81,652 people have signed it.
The petition can be found here: https://www.change.org/p/amend-the-animal-welfare-act-2006-to-include-rabbit-breeding-legislation.