Not a single person on the CSFG board represents a sector that puts animal welfare before profits or self-interest.
When was the last time the PDSA saved a kitten from a tree?
When was the last time the RSPCA picked up and rehomed an abandoned litter?
When did a vet perform life-changing surgery because the owner couldn't afford the fees?
Charity organisations are just businesses who don't provide a service.
They can't even support the causes they were set up to help, because if the probem is ever solved, the free ride is over - and it's this reality that illustrates that there's no legitimate reason for any charity to be on an advisory board for animal welfare - Because whether it's animals, cancer research or mencap, begging is their sector of expertise.
Surely it's an abuse of the public trust to masquerade as advisors when they are charity sector lobbyists - The only purpose of being a lobbyist is having any influence over policy is to protect their brands, raise their profile, extend their authority and protect their tax-exempt status.
And without being cynical, the entire purpose of a charity is to avoid paying any tax while skimming off as much as possible from donations to benefit themselves - and they aren't providing a public service because the main work of every charity is raising more money through envelope stuffing, emotional blackmail and staging high profile raids for the media to keep the money rolling in.
But the core of the problem is that the staff working for DEFRA didn't understand their own objectives and failed to improve animal welfare because the entire document is a transparently flawed attempt to justify a five star system that is so complex that it conveys nothing to our customers. The five star rating system doesn't even exist. DEFRA and the CFSG's designed a document to differentiate between two artificial standards that in many cases has no scientific basis or are entirely arbitrary and others that are absolute and supercede every other regulation or standard. But it's not just the lack of critical analysis, inadequate knowledge or the beauracratic incompetence that has lead to local authorities being given the power to drive people out of our industry. It's that no one is responsible for their own decisions because everyone involved will claim that they were "just following orders". When in fact everyone involved embraced their inexperience and mental vacuity and failed to understand the practicalities or consequences of anything that they were doing.
DEFRA have made an undeniable pigs ear out of the entire legislation, not out of malice, but because because they chose to base their regulations on the advice of an advisory board who had no pertinent knowledge or practical experience of the industry.
No one involved had any idea how catteries function or who works in them.
Everyone appears to have assumed that catteries have unlimited piles of cash to reinvest or that cattery owners are only motivated by profit or have shareholders to serve - when in reality many catteries don't reach the annual income threshold to pay taxes - And while the abysmal disregard for practicality and consequences appears in every syllable, the regulations are the undeniable evidence that DEFRA is probably the least qualified government department to write any regulations for any commercial boarding operation.
And by arming local authorities with pointless regulations, the fate and future of individual catteries were being decided by local authority employees who proved themselves to be the least qualified people to comprehend or apply any regulation with any accuracy or consistency.
Having to read, comprehend and interpret 26 pages of ill-conceived drivel would confuse most council employees, but beyond that, we have instances of council Licencing Officers just making up regulations as they went along.
But the reason they have been allowed to continue to abuse business owners is because absolute authority corrupts absolutely and they did whatever they wanted because DEFRA has failed to act to prevent it.