Age-old practices condemned in report
FAWC concerns over ‘mutilation’ of lambs
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Concerns about the castration and tail-docking of millions of lambs were voiced yesterday by the independent Farm Animal Welfare Council.
It branded them painful mutilations and said farmers needed strong justification to continue carrying out both tasks.
The condemnation of age-old industry practices emerged in a new report from the independent FAWC, which advises UK agriculture ministers on welfare issues.
Farmers, however, argued that in many situations it is necessary to dock lambs’ tails to prevent flystrike – a debilitating animal welfare problem – and castrate male animals to avoid unnecessary pregnancies.
FAWC recommended farmers take steps to minimise suffering, including discussing the need for tail-docking with their vet after a full assessment on the risk of flystrike has been carried out.
Chairman Professor Christopher Wathes said: “If castration is warranted, some methods cause more suffering than others and pain relief should be given once practical methods of delivering local anaesthetics and analgesics have been developed.”
The report also recommended that sheep farmers, the meat industry, farm assurance scheme operators and retailers should instigate a new welfare code that imposes a requirement on farmers to carefully consider the need for castration and tail-docking.
It went on to suggest retailers and others in the food supply chain should no longer demand male lambs to be castrated and that they should instead be rewarding those farmers who adopt welfare-friendly polices on castration and tail-docking.
Big questions remained last night as to Scotland’s response to the report.
Tail-docking of lambs is legal north of the border. A specific exception was written into the 2006 Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act to allow it.
The Scottish Government said its advice to farmers and shepherds was that docking had to be carried out by a competent operator and only done so after assessing the likelihood of dirty tails causing flystrike.
NFU Scotland chief executive James Withers believed there had already been a “sensible debate” on both issues in Scotland.
He did, however, say the union encouraged the involvement of vets in the decision-making process.
Mr Withers said the Scottish Parliament had already recognised that exemptions were needed to ensure that essential farm management practices such as castration, tail-docking and de-horning could continue, where necessary.
But he added: “We need to listen to vets and animal health experts and consider the benefits of practices across an animal's lifetime. Without tail-docking, there would be a serious flystrike problem. Without castration, we would have to remove animals from extensive units and face potentially serious pregnancy problems.
