DEFRA has stupidity, not just in Spades but in every other suit as well.
DEFRA regulated how many people you need to employ based on the number of cats rather than individual health, age or ability - this might sound like standardising an industry to some young inexperienced university bonehead sitting behind a desk, but in the real world, there are no fit and old construction workers and 20 years ago, I could clean a cattery from front to back in half the time it takes me today.
Allowing local authorities to close a cattery down because the sleeping platform was a centimetre too narrow when putting it right might cost £20,000 is a disgrace that only a know-nothing bureaucrat wouldn't have the foresight to build in retrospective protections for older catteries.
Only a sick and addled mind would believe that turning catteries and kennels into paperwork generators would improve animal welfare.
Only a department full of thickos, idiots and clowns would create a rating system for local authorities to judge compliance - and include one regulation that negates the entire inspection process and throws the entire “animal welfare” argument under the bus. DEFRA's regulations allow every cattery to choose their rating standard by choosing between accepting permanent lockdown for a 5 star rating but for three stars, DEFRA decided that all animal welfare is immaterial and you can come and go as you please.
Only a department with no talent, no due diligence or duty of care would have written regulations without knowing that the majority of catteries are run by single women or couples and then have them choose between complete social isolation in return for a five star rating or be forced by DEFRA to accept a three star rating because they have to go shopping.
No one else involved in looking after animals is subjected to such disgraceful overreach, vets do not have to provide 24 hour care for dying animals and farmers can leave their premises and charities make up their own rules as they go along - so why did DEFRA choose to single out private citizens and private businesses for draconian legislation?
