Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The main task for the animal welfare inspectors is to verify that the Swedish animal welfare legislation is complied with, by inspecting the animal husbandry. The subjects for inspection are selected with the help of a risk rating program. There are both regular inspections and those occurring after complaints from the public. The latter takes a lot of the inspectors’ time and many of the complaints turn out to be unsubstantiated. To handle this problem the regional County Administrative Boards introduced a category referred to as “letter cases” to reduce the time spent on less severe complaints and to free time for more severe cases and regular inspections. Instead of carrying out an on-site inspection the inspector sends a letter to the animal keeper to inform them that complaint related to their animal husbandry has been received. The inspectors can choose to require feedback over telephone or not from the animal keeper.
The aim of this study was to evaluate how the animal welfare inspectors find using the approach of letter cases related to animal welfare works in practice. This was done by means of a survey directed to animal welfare inspectors at four different County Administrative Boards. The main questions to answer in this study was whether the letter cases jeopardize the actual welfare of the animals, if letter cases is, according to the inspectors, an efficient way of handling the unsubstantiated complaints and last, if current management of letter cases reduce the workload compared to on-site inspections.
During a little over two weeks my survey was available for the animal welfare inspectors to answer. After this period, a total of 23 respondents had been obtained. Almost half of these had a positive attitude towards letter cases, although many thought that letter cases jeopardize animal welfare more than an inspection does. This is because it is difficult to know if a complaint is justified or not by letter or telephone. Therefore, the risk of animals continuing to suffer is considerable, as the authorities will not find out by just sending a letter or talking to the owner over the phone. Other respondents mentioned that there are some points that are difficult to inspect also on site, such as lack of exercise for a dog. In these cases, the animal welfare is not jeopardized more than during an inspection, according to these inspectors. Many respondents considered that some aspects if mentioned in a complaint should lead to an inspection instead of being handled as a letter case, due to the risk of jeopardizing the animal welfare. Several inspectors thought that letter cases is an efficient way of handling the unsubstantiated complaints. However, many respondents wanted to apply a system of mandatory feedback, to increase the chance of making a correct assessment. Almost all respondents thought that handling some cases as letter cases is necessary for the current work situation to be sustainable. Several considered it to be time efficient and mentioned that it enables the inspectors to focus on more severe cases and regular inspections.