Stupidity, ignorance and bureaucratic pretzels
DEFRA have injected all the solutions to imaginary health and safety risks into our regulations without considering that we all face the possibility of serious injury on a daily basis.
Every kennel owner is entirely aware that it’s possible for any dog to maul or kill if their approach was wrong. Just as any cattery owner knows that a bite or scratch could result in septicaemia and death.
And so it appears that if DEFRA knew this they would write regulations to counter nature and ban everyone from any physical contact with their boarders - and they'd force us to be dressed as lion tamers wearing face armour and welding gauntlets just to give oral medication and have licensing officers dock two stars if this set-up is not available in multiple sizes for every member of staff ... because you should never assign malice to something that can be adequately explained by all-pervasive stupidity.
DEFRA wrote regulations that are detrimental and unjustifiably cruel and if pursued through legal channels could see cattery owners being prosecuted for breaching the 2006 animal welfare act.
The codifiecation of animal cruelty is indefensible. And while I would imagine that DEFRA could find a corrupt or paranoid vet willing to state that the possibility of cross-contamination outweighs all other considerations, in a cattery every room of every guest is entered by staff on multiple occasions every day. There are no grounds for DEFRA to justify their collective ignorance, lack of good judgement or their failure to consider the consequences of preventing exercise as a solution to any problem.
In a single update to the regulations DEFRA banned the option of individual or collective exercise for cats, banned the option to see their neighbours or siblings and banned the possibility of being housed in a cool and well-ventilated environment.
These examples of gross ignorance either can't be policed, worsen animal welfare or stifle the innovations and eliminate the autonomy of private business. Government needs to be far more professional and skilled in its reasoning - It cannot find itself in the position of preventing private businesses from providing bespoke services - and it can't deny private business the ability to enter into private contracts with customers.
These bureaucrats have even twisted themselves into logical pretzels to produce unjustifiable legislation for our sector.
I find it hard to believe that DEFRA's bureaucrats had no idea that vets operate in a hotbed of diseased and unsanitary communal spaces with cross-contamination absolutely guaranteed - or that they had never realised that it's not possible for vets to comply with manufacturer's guidelines on chemical disinfectants between every consultation and consultation rooms are rarely cleared of fur. Just as I find it hard to believe that in catteries accross Europe even with the threat of rabies can all provide cats with collective or individual physical and mental stimulation without deferring to charity representatives.
DEFRA concluded that catteries who stay in business by managing the risk of cross-contamination on a daily basis needed extra directives above and beyond any other industry in our sector
It's incredible that DEFRA needed regulations to specifically deny cats exercise or access to any communal space with litter trays, toys and trees to play in.
But most incredible of all, DEFRA offers no advice on actual risks pertaining to our interactions, our clothes, sisel scratching posts, soft furnishings and cat trees which all pose a far greater and more tangible risk of cross-contamination.
We appreciate that some catteries want to pander to anthropomorphism and present objects and furnishings as enrichment because a beautifully designed room is very attractive to humans and takes the idea of a cat hotel to it's purrfect extreme - But we don't offer any of these because there's no practical benefit for the cat - Just the idea of getting the cleaning right is just too complex. Just as preparing the reuse of any object is so time consuming and costly that offering this kind of service for most catteries is best replaced by people bringing whatever accoutrements their cat needs and returning them after their stay.
DEFRA must acknowledge that this is a broad church that cannot be legislated into one imaginary cattery.
Catteries are privately owned businesses offering anything from a bespoke luxury hotel to basic prison cells, and what people want for their cats overrides anything anyone in the CSFG or DEFRA has opinions about.
When it comes to universal regulations, DEFRA couldn't find any and could have produced a more appropriate, cohesive and workable set of regulations if they'd have picked random sentences from the combined works of Dan Brown and it would have had less plot holes, been more cohesive and more useful.