Tougher pet theft laws don't address the main problem
In the UK, animal guardians have welcomed a new law making pet theft a specific criminal offence. While previously theft of companion animals was classed as property theft, the new law - recommended in a report by the government’s Pet Theft Taskforce, which was set up in May to investigate apparent rising abductions of companion animals - recognises the welfare of the animal as well as the emotional distress caused to their human family.
According to the Taskforce, reports of stolen animals, mostly dogs, rose to around 2,000 last year, up by about 3.5 per cent compared to 2019 - though research by Direct Line Pet Insurance put the increase at 19 per cent. Videos of distressed guardians have floated around social media, including those pleading for the safe returns of their dogs and the heartbreaking one of the 13-year-old boy in Hampshire who was powerless to stop thieves from taking his dog from him (he was later reunited with terrier Melchy).
As a guardian to two dogs, I fully empathise with these people and can’t imagine the stress and terror of the dogs and other animals who have been stolen. The recognition that companion animals are far more than just someone’s property is an important step forward in how we as a society understand our relationship and duties to the nonhuman beings in our care. But what is behind the apparent rise in companion animal thefts and will this law be enough to stop it?
The spike in demand for dogs during the pandemic has pushed up prices for particular breeds by nearly 90 per cent for some. The report from the Pet Theft Taskforce notes that there has been media speculation regarding the relationship between the rising prices and the surge in thefts. This is easy to see in articles, like this one, that list the most expensive breeds of dogs and warn that this might make them more vulnerable to theft. But the Taskforce report is cautious in making a causal connection between the two, arguing that “More complete data and further analysis would be necessary to understand this relationship.”
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Another reason that dogs are stolen is also for use in illegal dog fighting. Whether the new law, which campaigners hope will result in harsher sentences for thieves than they would have got under the Theft Act, will be enough to deter those intent on using dogs for such cruel and barbaric purposes remains to be seen. But for those who do steal animals to sell to the public, the law doesn’t get to the root of the problem.
As long as companion animals can be sold for profit, the risk that they will be abducted will remain. The commodification of companion animals, particularly dogs, has had many other ill effects too, including puppy farms and puppy smuggling, and people buying certain breeds (or species) as ‘status symbols’ which may then suffer from being bred for specific traits, like brachycephalic (flat-faced) dogs. The frequent advice for avoiding these issues is to ‘adopt don’t shop’. But with many people finding it overly difficult to adopt animals (again, dogs in particular) from shelters, the commercial demand continues to rise.
Capping the price that animals can be sold for could be one way to help address these problems as well as reducing the incentive to steal dogs to sell them. It costs around £300 when you adopt a dog from a shelter, for example, to help cover the cost to the shelter for providing medical care and feed. This could be a reasonable price limit. Banning the commercial sale of companion animals would be perhaps a more controversial but even more effective measure.
Any such measure would have to be assessed for its potential benefits and drawbacks - under a ban, for example, a black market for companion animals could continue to thrive - and weighed against those of the current state of affairs. But more laws to punish crimes related to companion animals may only treat the symptoms and not the causes driving the crimes. The tougher pet theft law may go some way to recognising the non-monetary value of animals, but it leaves intact the market that does put a monetary value on their lives.
Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.
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