Animal welfare is a real crisis, but Cape Town’s draft bylaw regulates the wrong things
The City of Cape Town’s draft Animal Keeping Bylaw misdirects its regulatory efforts, targeting compliant pet owners and small groomers rather than the informal breeders driving the animal welfare crisis.
The City of Cape Town's draft Animal Keeping Bylaw focuses on the wrong aspects of animal welfare, targeting compliant pet owners and small groomers instead of the informal breeders responsible for the crisis, according to Brett Herron, a founding member of the Good party. South Africa has a severe animal welfare problem, with over a million cats and dogs euthanised annually and many SPCA branches closing.
Rescue Rehab SA spends R183-million a year on cremations alone. The proposed solutions in the draft bylaw are misguided, as they regulate the wrong things at the wrong level, resulting in high costs for non-crisis sources. The measures focus on commercial breeders, online and social media sales, sterilisation, and pet-grooming businesses, but these do not address the informal breeding and trade problem.
Cape Town's bylaw imposes heavy penalties, including two-year maximum sentences for minor contraventions, making it harder for low-income households to comply. The City should focus on what works, such as cruelty prevention, welfare protections for working animals, and the ban on glue traps, and create a light-touch registration system tied to microchipping, better grooming standards, and narrower search powers.
Written by urgent.news from Daily Maverick's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
