Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The Swedish animal welfare law was written in 1988. The law’s purpose is to ensure that animals are managed in a suitable way and protect them from unnecessary suffering. Every year there are several cases of offenses concerning mistreatment of animals. The aim of this study was to do a compilation of animal welfare judgements from the year 2013 to 2016. The aim was also to investigate which paragraphs were violated, which consequences were most common and which animal species was most common in animal welfare judgements. 614 cases were reviewed and 447 of these were used in the results. The results shows that the animal welfare law is the most common one to violate in cases of animal offense. The paragraph most commonly violated is the one concerning animal abuse. The most common consequence when violating the animal welfare legislation is heavy fines. Dogs are most frequently abused compared to other species according to the results.
The reason people violate the legislation could be ignorance or that the legislation could be misinterpreted. Another reason could be people’s different view on animals. Heavy fines are the most common consequence of a violation because in order to receive a higher punishment it requires a graver violation. The study and research shows that in order to get sentenced to prison you need a background of committing other crimes not related to animal welfare legislation.
Some explanations for the result, according to scientific studies, could be that the animal welfare legislation needs to be clarified, a lack of knowledge about animals, how people see and value animals, a criminal past or which animals people encounter more frequently.
My study could be applied to animal welfare work at the Swedish Board of Agriculture when reviewing the animal welfare regulations and when control instructions to animal welfare officers are made. My study could also be used when the risk-based selection of controls is reviewed.
More studies need to be made on this subject in order to redistribute resources even more effectively to animal welfare checks to prevent breaches of animal welfare legislation.