Examination of Witnesses (Questions 210-219)
MS GINETTE
ELLIOTT, MS
LYNNE SMITH,
PROFESSOR DAVID
B MORTON, MS
CLARE O'DEMPSEY
AND MS
PAULINE BAINES
8 SEPTEMBER 2004
Q210 Chairman: Sadly our witnesses from
the Council of Docked Breeds are not yet able to be with us. We
are perhaps slightly ahead of the schedule that we set ourselves,
but we have a vote at 4 o'clock and I am mindful of the fact that
colleagues may not be able to return to the Committee. So we will
start with the Anti-Docking Alliance and we will question you.
When the other witnesses come I hope you will respect the fact
that we are giving you a free run at the moment from your side
of the argument, but we will want to turn to the others for their
observations. So, for the record, we have Professor David B Morton,
Head of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics of the University of
Birmingham, Pauline Baines, Founder of the Anti-Docking Alliance
and Clare O'Dempsey, the Adviser. I think I am fairly clear what
your answer might be to the question I have asked everybody: what
is the one thing you would like us not to forget in terms of your
view, and I guess it must be the ending of docking, full-stop.
So I am going to be terribly rude and say that I will take that
as read. The other question I have asked is, do you generally
favour the Bill other than this particular area of concern?
Ms O'Dempsey: Other than this
area of concern, yes, we welcome the Bill.
Q211 Chairman: That is helpful to us.
We had a flavour of some of the arguments about tail docking through
yesterday's evidence and one of the things that perhaps you might
like to comment on is this question of the science of working
out particularly whether very young dogs actually feel any pain
or not. We seem to get two very distinct sides of the argument,
so perhaps you might like to contribute your views on that?
Ms O'Dempsey: Can I hand over
to David for that? But can I just make clear before he starts
speaking, that although he is here at the invitation of the ADA,
because we believe his expertise can be of assistance to the Committee,
he is not a member or representative of the organisation; so he
is speaking in an expert capacity.
Professor Morton: What we want
to see is an end to non-therapeutic docking. I think we are happy
for docking if it is done for the best interests of the individual
animal to go ahead, if it has injured its tail, for example. So
I think that you have to differentiate between therapeutic and
non-therapeutic docking. Is that fair enough?
Q212 Chairman: You tell us because we
are not in the business of making judgements; we are in the business
of asking questions.
Professor Morton: If the dog has
injured its tail, if it is the veterinary decision that the professional
clinical judgement is that it should have the tail removed for
its best interests, then we would be happy for that. But where
it is done for cosmetic reasons or where it is done in terms of
prophylaxis, there we have some difficulty. We want to see a ban
on that particular aspect. I have been looking at the docking
of various newborn species and where research has been done is
in pigs, lambs, mice and puppies. By far and away the bulk of
evidence is on lambs and mice, where a lot of it is carried out.
It is carried out in mice to decide whether it is the right genotype,
and the tip of the tail is taken off in that work. There is some
other work that has gone on in pain perception in very young animals,
and that shows that the nervous system of very young animals is
immature, and it is immature in the sense that these animals do
not possess the descending inhibitory fibres which come down from
the brain to the spinal cord, which actually modify impulses going
up to the brain, and so very young animals are likely to feel
more pain than older animals, and it is not until these young
animals are two to three weeks of age that their nervous system
matures. That is where this idea has come from that very young
animals feel more pain than older animals. What has been left
out in the debate and what the new information is—and this
is work coming out of human babies and also mice—that after
you cut the tip of the tail off there is an increased sensitivity
to pain, not only around the tail tip but on the tail as a whole;
you get what is called hyperalgesia, so it seems to spread from
that area, and if you apply a painful stimulus they respond more
in areas that are remote from the site of surgery than before.
That response in mice has been shown to persist for several months.
There is a very interesting analogy in humans, when babies are
circumcised. They have looked at the pain response of babies at
vaccination six months later and circumcised boys seem to show more
pain responses on vaccination than uncircumcised boys at that
six-month period, even though they were circumcised in the first
few days of life. So at the time of docking the evidence shows
that puppies feel pain, and probably more pain than adults, although
that particular piece of research has not been done. But we know
that young animals feel pain and the persistence of that sensitivity
can endure for months afterwards.
Q213 Chairman: Thank you. Can I welcome
the Council for Docked Breeds, who have come to join us, Ginette
Elliott, their Secretary and Lynne Smith their Treasurer. We were
just asking the Anti-Docking Alliance about the science and you
have heard what Professor Morton has said in terms of the new
science and the potential lasting effects of pain. As an organisation
which has a diametrically opposed point of view to the one that
we have just heard from, would you care to comment on the science
of pain in this context?
Ms Elliott: Obviously I cannot
go into the same sort of science that Professor Morton can, but
we do have information from three professors. One is as recent
as the year 2000 and one was only a few weeks ago. Professor Grandjean
of the Veterinary School of Alfor in France is the main author
and scientific co-ordinator of the Royal Canine Dog Encyclopaedia.
He says: "The neonatal period begins at birth." It is
called the "vegetative phase". "Few reflex activities
. . . development of the nervous system, as myelination occurs
from the anterior to the posterior end of the dog . . . the perception
of pain is the last thing to appear in neurological development
. . ." Professor Hales, a biomedical research professor in
the Faculty of Medicine in New South Wales has examined the scientific
research published in international journals and has subsequently
tested reflexes in neo-natal puppies. "Re. the scientific
literature there is only one study of tail docking in puppies
and although it purports to show the procedure is painful the
study is scientifically flawed by omitting control pups. (b) It
is invalid to compare humans or lambs with puppies; (c) studies
of newborn rats, which may validly be compared with puppies have
shown that neuro-physiological pain mechanisms are not effectively
functional until around eleven days of age. Re. reflexes, Hales
has observed in neo-natal puppies that the characteristic hind
paw scratching in response to tickling mid side skin is initially
absent but is faintly present in most pups at day eight and does
not exhibit adult like characteristics until at least day 14."
Q214 Mr Mitchell: I do not see that showing
that very young animals feel pain tells us anything very much
on this issue. The real question is—and there must be pain,
I suppose—that we do not know anything about the duration,
the intensity or the long-term consequences of that pain. What
are the long-term consequences of docking? What damage does it
do or what advantage does it confer on an animal, dog classically,
that has had its tail docked? Could you tell us about that?
Professor Morton: I think it goes
behind that to ask the ethical question, which is should we inflict
harm on animals in order to improve their cosmetic value to us
as humans? I find that a questionable thing. If we have duties
to animals not to cause them avoidable pain or unnecessary pain,
which most people, I feel, would accept as being acceptable in
most situations where society uses animals, we try to minimise
the amount of pain and suffering caused to animals; or we try
to balance it against the benefits. I can see that there is a
benefit in docking a dog that has got its tail injured, as I said,
for therapeutic purposes; I am far less comfortable with docking
a dog in order to improve its appearance or to prevent it damaging
its tail later on. Why do you dock 100% of dogs when perhaps less
than 1% or less than .01% are going to damage their tails at a
later date? It seems to me crazy.
Q215 Mr Mitchell: But that is an ethical
question. What are the practical problems? What are the consequences
for dogs that are docked? Does it have consequences for balance,
for urination, whatever? What are the consequences?
Professor Morton: There are very
good scientific studies on consequences except for these. One
is that anecdotally dogs with tails are better balanced, they
are better able to do agility tests, they are better able to race;
greyhounds, for example, without tails cannot go around corners
as agilely. The second thing is that when you dock some animals
occasionally you will lose one because they bleed to death or
because they get an infection. There are other issues about animals
that have been docked, which are unable to show their emotional
state to other animals and may be involved in aggression and fights
because they are unable to signal to other animals that they are
happy or they are unhappy with what is going on. I think there
are certain issues like that which are the consequences of docking.
There are clinical issues and also behavioural issues.
Q216 Mr Mitchell: To the dock brigade,
why do you want to subject animals to those kind of consequences?
Ms Elliott: Because we believe
it is a preventative welfare measure and there are breeds that
are born naturally tailless; they do not have problems with communicating
or balance. I cannot see what the problems are, quite frankly.
It should be a freedom of choice. If people want to leave tails
on, fine, but if they do not they should have that freedom of
choice.
Q217 Joan Ruddock: Can I ask for clarification?
When you say that there are breeds that are "born tailless",
are they breeds that have been crossbred by human beings to produce
that effect?
Ms Elliott: All breeds are manmade.
Q218 Joan Ruddock: Precisely. What I
am trying to establish is, in the natural world we would not see
these animals except in aberrant circumstances, a genetic fault,
coming without a tail, I would assume? So when you say there are
tailless breeds there are tailless breeds because we have engineered
that to come about by choice?
Ms Elliott: Yes.
Ms Smith: There are a number of
breeds that are traditionally docked, which a lot of them have
a gene which they are born with bobtails anyway. You have the
Brittany, you have the Corgis, you have the Swedish Vallhunds,
and some of them are born naturally with a short bobtail. They
do not have problems with balance, they do not have problems with
aggression with other dogs.
Q219 Ms Atherton: I notice it is mostly
dog breeders who are opposed to a ban. When you go to Crufts
is there an international view on docking and does it affect judging
at Crufts, if perhaps there were dogs in one breed if you
had to have the tail docked to be part of that classification?
Ms Elliott: It should not affect
the judging but I am sure it does.
Ms Smith: If you have a judge
in the ring who prefers the breed to be docked then it would be
fair to say that if there were two dogs of equal standard he or
she would probably put the docked breed first and the tailed one
second.
| 
