Animals: Retail Trade

(asked on 7th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will take legislative steps to prohibit online retailers from (a) listing for sale and (b) dispatching live animals.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 20th January 2023

Under The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 anyone who is in the business of selling animals as pets or breeding and selling dogs needs a valid licence from their local authority. Licensees must meet strict statutory minimum welfare standards which are enforced by local authorities who have powers to issue, refuse or revoke licences. Any licensee advertising animals for sale will need to include their licence number in the advert and specify the local authority who issued the licence. Advertisements must also include the age of the animal for sale displayed alongside a recognisable photograph.


Legislation protects all animals from being transported in a way likely to cause injury or suffering. Transportation of vertebrate animals for a commercial purpose must comply fully with legal requirements aimed at protecting their welfare, set out in Regulation (EC) 1/2005 (as retained). Vertebrate animals transported for non-commercial purposes and invertebrates are protected from injury or unnecessary suffering by a general duty of care provision in Article 4 of The Welfare of Animals (Transport) (England) Order 2006 (WATEO) and equivalent national legislation in Scotland and Wales.

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