Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to study incoming complaints to The County Administrative Board in Västra Götaland during 2011 and examine if it was possible to see a connection between warranted and unwarranted complaints and informer, animal species and type of inadequate. In Västra Götaland, a complaint is classified as warranted if the inspection leads to a reprimand, whether it regards what was reported or not. Data were collected during three weeks through The County Administrative Board´s record system Platina and a total of 456 complaints were studied.

The parameter “complainant” was categorized into four groups according to The County Administrative Boards own division; public with the subgroups anonymous and non-anonymous, animal health staff and others.

The animal species the study was limited to were cattle, sheep, horses, dogs and cats. Remaining animal species was titled as others.

The inadequacies was divided into two main categories, resource and function, pursuant to Henriette Bonde´s (2008) definition in her examination paper Ban against own or take care of animals – an analysis of judicial decisions according to 29 § in the Swedish animal welfare legislation and definitions of resource – and function based demands. Another category, stray animals, was appertained to inadequacies. Regarding the warranted complaints an additional column was filled in, “actual inadequacies”, which were categorized as follows: body fat, surface area, supervision, hygiene, care, food and water, interior/environment, others and inadequate concerning other species.

The anonymous complainants accounted for the majority of the 456 cases that were studied (59 %) and the most common animal species that were reported were dogs (33 %) followed by cats (24 %) and horses (19 %). The farm animals cattle and sheep had a lower occurrence. The most commonly occurring inadequacies that were reported were function based although both function – and resource based inadequacies were common. As regards the actual inadequacies for the warranted complaints, the category “others” included inadequacies that did not fit into any of the other categories, and thus became the largest. Thereafter came “interior/environment” and “care”.

Cattle, horses and dogs, were mostly reported anonymously and this led to a higher percentage unwarranted complaints. Regarding cats, most of the complaints were reported non-anonymously in large part due to the fact that they concerned stray cats which, according to a policy introduced by The County Administrative Board in Västra Götaland, may not be reported anonymously. This led to a lower percentage unwarranted complaints. The sheep however varied from this linkage since a clear majority of the complaints were reported anonymously, but still the relation between warranted/unwarranted complaints appeared relatively even, 53 % against 47 %. As for the category “others”, they showed a linkage almost quite to the contrary: the majority of the complaints were reported anonymously but still they were warranted to 67 %.

Anonymous complaints were usually unwarranted as for four of the six animal species that were looked into in this study. In summary, one can conclude that complaints received from anonymous complainants more often led to unwarranted inspections.