Scottish Animal Welfare Commission – Review of Scottish Government activity affecting the welfare of animals, as sentient beings

7. Scottish Government - Policies and strategies

Natural environment

In December 2022 the Scottish Government met its commitment to publish a new Biodiversity Strategy, setting out its ambition for Scotland to be Nature Positive by 2030, and to have restored and regenerated biodiversity across the country by 2045. The Strategy represents the first element in Scotland's Biodiversity Delivery Framework and is due to be followed by a Natural Environment Bill (a 2021-2022 Programme commitment) providing for statutory targets for nature restoration on land and sea, and a framework for setting, monitoring, enforcing and reporting on those targets. It includes a number of actions that have animal welfare implications and are therefore relevant to the SAWC remit, including a continued drive to reduce deer population densities, ongoing control and removal of invasive non-native species (INNS) and ensuring that grouse moor management sustains healthy biodiversity.

Wildlife: species licensing

The 2021-2022 Programme included a commitment to review the wider species licensing system with a view to ensuring that the law is being applied correctly, and that lethal control is only licensed where the conditions required for such a licence are demonstrably being met. A public register of licences is also under consideration.

SAWC is aware that this work is under way within NatureScot and looks forward to further developments.

Aquaculture

The 2023-2024 Programme for Government continues work to deliver the Scottish Government's Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture.

This includes progressing the regulatory review of aquaculture, where a Consenting Task Group (CTG) has been formed to pilot the implementation of key recommendations from an independent regulatory review published in February 2022. The CTG is focused on ensuring improvement and streamlining the administration of the finfish farming consenting process, while maintaining high environmental standards. The CTG has developed a new draft pre-application consenting process for fish farm developments, which are being piloted in the Shetland and Highland local authority areas.

In addition, the Scottish Government remains committed to working with the finfish sector to reduce the risk that fish escape from fish farms through a new Technical Standard for Scottish Finfish Aquaculture, and that work is ongoing.

Taking account of the latest evidence of the persistence in the environment of emamectin benzoate (EmBz), which is widely used in the marine finfish industry to control sea lice, the Scottih Government has adopted the UK Technical Advisory Group recommendation for an Environmental Quality Standard (EQS) setting reduced EmBz discharge limits for marine finfish farms. The Scottish Government intends to introduce the new EQS by means of a Direction to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to vary existing licences to implement the new EQS. When the Direction is in place, SEPA, working with the sector, is expected have completed implementation within 48 months. An interim EQS already applies to new fish farm applications, or applications to increase discharges at existing fish farms.

SAWC did not respond to the consultation on discharge levels, but notes the importance of mitigating the welfare problems caused by sea lice infestations as well as reducing the environmental hazards of pesticides.

Scottish Veterinary Service

The 2021-2022 Programme proposed to create a new dedicated Scottish Veterinary Service so that the field animal health and welfare functions currently delivered by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) in Scotland would be replaced by a new Scottish Veterinary Service (SVS) within the lifetime of the current Parliament.

A Programme Board, representing organisations involved in the delivery and enforcement of animal health and welfare and food safety, was given responsibility for assessing the proposed functions of the SVS and what format these might take. This identified that an SVS would deliver quality improvements and would be financially sustainable. However, the Scottish Government has announced that it is unable to progress with plans for the SVS, given the significant costs to create the new service.

Encouragingly, however, 2024 saw the formation of the SRUC School of Veterinary Medicine in Aberdeen, Scotland's third veterinary school and the first in over 150 years. The School began accepting applications for a Bachelor of Veterinary Science (BVSci) degree for work in the rural mixed practice, agricultural and food sectors.