APGAW Dog Breeding project

APGAW believes that every animal should have a life worth living and management of welfare should not be limited to mitigating negative consequences, but also promoting positive experiences and enhancing welfare. APGAW’s view is that there are a significant number of animals bred that can never experience a life worth living because they have been born with physical problems and pain from the very start.

APGAW wrote its first report on the issues around dog breeding in 2008 entitled “A Healthier Future for Pedigree Dogs”. The Group picked the issue back up in 2023 after seeing little progress and considering the welfare issues associated with poorly bred dogs to be one of the most significant facing companion animals in the UK.

From the meeting in 2023 and into 2025, APGAW has worked on four key workstreams that will make a big difference to dog health and welfare and we are currently piloting the pivotal component to this work which is the Innate Health Assessment. 

The aim is to tackle the issue of irresponsible dog breeding and then see how the tools designed came be used for other companion animal species. 

This project is led by:

APGAW director Marisa Heath who was the author of the Parliamentary report A Healthier Future for Pedigree Dogs, worked on the DEFRA Expert Panel for the Licensing of Activities Involving Animals Regulations 2018 and runs the Canine & Feline Sector Group advising Government on all issues relating to dog and cat health and welfare.

Dr Dan O’Neill who is an expert veterinary surgeon who has been at the forefront of the Vet Compass project as well as chairing the UK Brachycephalic Working Group (BWG) since 2016 and being a founding member of the International Collaborative on Extreme Conformations in Dogs (ICECDogs).

Vanessa Barnes who is a legal expert and has been at the forefront of the work on dog breeding. She is a member of the Legal Advisory Group on Extreme Conformation in Dogs (LAGECDOGS) formed of a number of legal and academic experts and part of the UK Centre for Animal Welfare (A-LAW).

WORKSTREAM 1: The Innate Health Assessment

The Innate Health Assessment (IHA) tool was originally designed by Dr. Dan O’Neill, who came together with Marisa Heath and Vanessa Barnes, to develop the tool and take it through APGAW to build support and utilise the critical eye of APGAW members to amend and improve the tool. The work has been supported by the RSPCA, Dogs Trust, Battersea, Local Government Animal Welfare Group and others. 

 The IHA aims to solve the top conformation issues impacting on dog welfare. The model primarily assists local authority inspectors to make decisions on licensing for dog breeding by assessing whether dogs submitted as potential breeding animals meet the requirements of Schedule 6 (6)(5) of the LAIA Regs. The IHA is designed to generate an overall score based on the number of ‘pass’ decisions from 15 conformation criteria for each dog. The local authority inspector assesses these criteria visually from a distance or with the assistance of the licence applicant for those criteria that require some handling of the dog. Assessment of each of the 15 criteria leads to a pass/fail decision on each. Summing the number of Pass criteria then generates an overall Innate Health Assessment score for that dog.

APGAW has piloted the IHA successfully twice with the use of local authority inspectors, veterinary surgeons and lay people. The results have indicated the simple workability of the tool and that it can be used by breeders and potentially by members of the public who may be considering purchasing a puppy.  

APGAW will be putting the IHA design on this page soon.

WORKSTREAM 2:  An Animal Welfare (Breeding) Bill

A working group under APGAW has drafted a proposed new Statutory Instrument which could be passed under the powers of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and would require that all dogs used for breeding must have innate health, such that it can reasonably be expected that breeding from the dog will not result in any detrimental effect on the health and welfare of that dog or on the health or welfare of its offspring, in terms of its genotype, conformation or state of health. Under this draft, it would be an offence for a person who is responsible for a dog to breed that dog with another dog unless that dog has been certified as being fit to breed by having passed the Innate Health Assessment.

The team on the working group are all legal professionals alongside leading welfarist and veterinary professionals. The basis of the wording comes from the existing Licensing of Activities Involving Animals Regulations 2018 but the Bill extends this requirement to all those breeding so that we not not have those who are licensed having to meet higher welfare standards whilst allowing those breeding under the licensing threshold to still cause welfare issues in the offspring bred by them.

WORKSTREAM 3: Registration 

At the moment, only “commercial” breeders have to get a licence and undertake an inspection by their local authority. Commercial is defined through a business test which is not very clear and often falls back to three litters or more. The majority of breeders are only producing one litter and therefore fall under this requirement. Those breeders who are doing the right thing often apply for licensing and find it bureaucratic, inconsistent and off-putting. It is crucial that we do not put off home breeders and those often just having one litter every so often which can put those looking for a puppy into the hands of unethical sellers such as those linked to Eastern European puppy farms.  

That is why APGAW alongside a number of other organisations supports the concept of registration and has factored this centrally into its work on dog breeding. Registration would require simply going online and letting your local authority know that you are having a litter of puppies. You would then be given a registration number which links to the microchips of those puppies enabling full traceability between the breeder and parents dogs to any resulting puppies.  There would be a requirement for any advert on any platform to have either a licensing number if you are a commercial breeder and seller or a registration number if you are a breeder who falls beneath the licensing threshold. There would be no requirement for an inspection for registration and only a small fee for doing so.  

Registration would also enable a clear understanding of the dogs being bred and sold across the country and would make it easier for local authorities to spot where there is either illegal or unethical breeding and selling of puppies. It would also empower the public to be able to check on the person selling and ensure they are a verified individual and not a fraudster. 

WORKSTREAM 4: Behaviour change and helping give the public the tools to help

There is limited resource around enforcement and there will always be unethical people who try to sell puppies that have been bred cheaply under low welfare conditions. It is, therefore, of vital importance to make it easier for the public to know if they are buying a healthy and well-bred puppy. All of the components above such as a registration or licensing number and the use of the IHA will help but knowledge will be the ultimate way the public can be empowered to ask the right questions and seek the right paperwork when buying a puppy. Dogs Trust are leading this piece of work to set out how all of the stakeholders including Government, charities and industry can communicate to people and change thinking on buying dogs with the type of conformations likely to lead to suffering. For example, shifting away from the trends that has resulted in huge numbers of what are known as brachycephalic breeds (French Bulldogs, Bulldogs, Boxers, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Shih Tzus, Boston Terriers, Mastiffs, and Pugs) would drive welfare upwards. This does not mean these breeds are no longer exist or should be avoided but that we shift the breed away from having flat faces that make breathing so difficult for them or the skin folds that cause so many painful conditions. 

The IHA has been designed to make it easy for anyone to use and the basis of this will be a part of the behaviour change work alongside the push for registration. 

Next Steps

Once APGAW has finished testing and piloting the IHA, it will be presented to DEFRA and Parliament and we will seek support for the tool. Alongside this, we will be showing how the other work streams mentioned above can provide a holistic solution and could also be adapted to tackle the growing issues around cat breeding. 

Changes to legislation take a long time. We welcome any support for this work and are happy to talk you through it if you are an organisations involved in dog breeding in anyway. You can contact us on info@apgaw.org