Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In Sweden everyone has the possibility to report deficiencies in animal welfare they encounter. They report this to the county administration in their county and such a report is called a complaint case. Complaint cases are normally handled with animal welfare inspections, carried out by animal welfare inspectors from the county administration in the county where the animal keeper with reported deficiencies lives. The county administrations in Sweden receive a lot of complaint cases that differ in grade of how severe the deficiency is. The complaint cases are given priority by how severe the deficiency seems to be. Because of this priority system some complaint cases have to wait. The ordinary animal welfare inspections may be put on hold as well.

The need to make the animal welfare inspections more effective and how to accomplish that where investigated in a project called OSKAR. The project was done in cooperation between the Swedish Board of Agriculture and the county administrations of Sweden. The project OSKAR presented a final report where it is suggested that complaint cases with a low priority should be handled with letters sent to the animal keeper instead of with an actual animal welfare inspection. The report presented both a letter template and a list that prioritize which deficiencies that can be handled with letters.

The system of handling complaint cases with letters has been running since the end of 2011. Yet the effects of the system has not been evaluated or looked upon, therefore no one knows if it work as desired. This thesis aim was to start looking on the present progress by creating a pilot study. The pilot study was then evaluated to see if it could work in a bigger investigation of how well the system of handling complaint cases with letters work.

The pilot study was carried out in Dalarna county with an animal welfare inspector from the county administration of Dalarna and included follow-ups and surveys. Follow-ups where done with 11 animal keepers that had received a letter instead of an animal welfare inspection after someone had reported deficiencies concerning their animal holding. Separate surveys were done with visited animal keepers and all the animal welfare inspectors at the county administration of Dalarna. This was done to acquire the opinions of what the people who have experienced the letters thought about it.

The follow-ups showed that the reported deficiencies most of the time no longer existed. However, some animal keepers had other deficiencies than mentioned in the complaint case report, and sometimes deficiencies concerning other species than mentioned. The survey showed that both animal keepers and animal welfare inspectors had a positive attitude against sending letters when handling complaint cases. The results showed that handling complaint cases with letters works pretty well and has great potential. The method to handle complaint cases with letters is in need of a more extensive evaluation and the pilot study formed in this thesis has potential to function, if some changes are done in the method.