This year has seen a few big changes for Animal Concern! Our new website launched in January, which we have since filled with information on our campaigns, news, letters and commentary. We also launched an online shop, with a selection of Animal Concern merchandise including badges, t-shirts, tote bags, notepads and caps.

We also changed our postal address! Instead of our old PO Box, correspondence can now be sent to 150 Main Street, Glasgow, G69 6AH. And we have a new landline phone number – 0141 3607653.

With all the changes, we wanted to make sure we also work on preserving our history. Especially our collection of copper plated printing plates depicting scenes of live animal experiments from our days as the Scottish Anti-Vivisection Society.

These are presently being converted to paper print for easier sharing.

Vivisection: A History In Copper

Looking to the future, we have been busy on our campaigns strategy, as well as fundraising to sustain our activities. Through charitable grants, street collections and partnering with the Lush Charity Pot scheme we have been working to generate revenue, along with approaches to celebrities, online giving platforms as well as, of course, your generous donations which, however big or small, are needed now more than ever. We have welcomed new members and supporters, as well as a social media following which we hope to grow exponentially in 2024.

General campaigns

Across all of our campaign issues, we have met with politicians, parliamentarians, environmental and animal advocacy groups in our mission to legislate to liberate.

We have signed and shared petitions and calls to action not just on our campaigns, but on others’ too. We have added our logo to collaborative letters to organisations, institutions as well as the Scottish and UK Government on various animal wellbeing issues and have written our own letters to Rishi Sunak, Thérèse Coffey, Steve Barclay and Humza Yousaf calling out particular failures on current animal welfare policy. One of these was even quoted in the Daily Record after we expressed our dismay at Humza Yousaf’s new cabinet which no longer included a Minister in charge of animal welfare, prompting the appointment of Gillian Martin MSP who now carries this responsibility as Minister for Energy and the Environment.

We were also delighted to go into schools to give talks on “How To Be Kinder To Animals”, encompassing some of our primary campaign issues. We were so impressed with the enthusiasm, knowledge and ideas of how to better protect our wild, farmed and companion animals as we would each other. Education is a hugely important part of campaigning and we hope to continue engaging with our youngest animal advocates and inspiring each other to keep fighting for a better world for our animals!

Fireworks

As for our primary campaigns, we have been working towards the long-term goal of a ban on the public sale and use of F2 and F3 category fireworks across the UK. To that end, this year:

We gave an interview to Dogs Today magazine about the damage caused to dogs’ wellbeing by fireworks.

We wrote to dozens of MPs and met with a handful of them. One of these MPs, Patricia Gibson of North Ayrshire, even met with a UK Government Minister, Kevin Hollinrake, to urge him to impose restrictions. Other MPs have been asked to support Ms Gibson’s plea.

We wrote to all Scottish local councils to use their new powers under the Firework & Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act 2022 to designate Firework Control Zones, which would prohibit all firework displays within an agreed area. Once in June, and again in November. So far, none have been installed.

We launched our petition to the UK’s biggest supermarket chains to not stock fireworks on their shelves this year.

We shared individual stories of animals who have lost their lives to fireworks, and the heartbroken families they have left behind. One about Derry, the healthy 12-year-old rescue dog who had a seizure so severe on 5th November 2022, he could not recover. And the other about Tallulah, a healthy horse who was left psychologically broken and unable to even stand at New Year this year.

After Bonfire Night weekend this year, we amassed just some of the countless heart-breaking stories on the news and social media of animals running away, going missing, and being killed by fireworks.

See the stories here

On 5th November, itself, we were honoured to support an anti-fireworks event in East Renfrewshire – **Nae Fireworks Night** – where the rangers of Whitelee Wind Farm invited local dogs and their owners to go for a walk in the fresh air far away from any firework displays.

Around 1,000 people attended, of whom many told us their stories of how much grief and trauma fireworks have caused them and their animals – having to sedate their pets, organising trips away on firework nights, and even coping with their own post-traumatic stress in the case of several ex-service personnel. Read more.

Click here to find out more about our fireworks campaign, where you will find information and actions you can take and pass on.

Sky lanterns & helium balloons

Another one of our primary campaigns has been for the Scotland-wide restriction on the release of sky lanterns and helium balloons for the safety of our animals and environment. Whilst most Scottish local authorities have implemented their own voluntary bans, this applies only to council-owned land. We want the Scottish Government to legislate against their release from all land. This year we lobbied Scottish Borders and Edinburgh City Councils to impose their own restrictions and help us convince Holyrood that local authorities want to see this happen.

As of Thursday 14th December - Scottish Borders Council have voted unanimously to impose restrictions on the release of both sky lanterns and helium balloons from any council-owned land. This came after we approached Councillor Jenny Linehan and Deputy Leader Scott Hamilton to ask them to table a council motion, so we are delighted that it has gone through seamlessly. You can read our press release here, and see us mentioned in news stories, local and national press here.

We still have some way to go to achieve our overall aim and we will be accelerating our campaign to increase the urgency of this issue.

Rodenticide

We also had good news for our rodenticide campaign this year. Over the summer, we were thrilled to read a press release that by the end of 2024, the four most prevalent second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (Bromadiolone, Brodifacoum, Difethialone and Difenacoum) would all be prohibited from use in open areas in Scotland! This would be a great win for Animal Concern, after we spent the first half of the year gathering data, speaking to agricultural scientists and drawing people’s attention to the spread of these blood-thinning toxins used in the Scottish countryside, and which have been pervading the food chain for many years.

The slow-acting nature of the poisons lead to secondary infection of predators who prey on the rodents, which have included a host of species including golden eagles, white tailed eagles, hen harriers, goshawks, red kites, owls, badgers, foxes, hedgehogs, otters, cats and many more in recent years.

So it is very welcome news that this is to be stopped – and until then we will monitor the details of the proposed prohibition as well as raise awareness about the humane alternatives that exist to these industrial-strength poisons such as peppermint products, cayenne pepper, strobe lighting and effective land management.

Aquaculture

In 2023, as with many previous years, we had a few things to say about fish farming. We were horrified to learn of the octopus farm planned for the Canary Islands and were one of many animal welfare groups speaking out against that, signing and sharing petitions to stop this cruel form of farming these highly intelligent creatures. We also wrote to then-Secretary of State of DEFRA, Thérèse Coffey, to demand that no farmed octopus be imported to the UK.

We have continued to follow the appeals process for the application of Loch Long Salmon, who want to build their massive salmon farm development at Beinn Reithe. We were alarmed when Minister for Planning, Joe FitzPatrick, intervened after the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park Authority rejected the application. We wrote to Mr FitzPatrick to express our shock. Meanwhile, we have worked with local campaigns group AFF The Clyde on a video interview with one of their volunteers and Loch Long resident, Hilary Worton, on how this development will cause nothing but disease and pollution for profit. The application was also mentioned as part of a segment on Scottish salmon farming on BBC Countryfile in September, the reaction to which you can read here.

At the start of the year, we made a police complaint about a bullet casing found on a walkway at a MOWI salmon farm off North Uist. In July we gave comment to The Ferret and The National about the shooting of a healthy young seal on a salmon farm in Orkney. In August, we were also quoted in The Times newspaper condemning the granting of a license to test new acoustic technology to deter seals away from salmon farms, due to the unknown risks to the hearing and mental state of nearby dolphins, whales and porpoises.

And more recently, we have lodged an objection to DEFRA over the proposed relabelling of the food product “Scottish Farmed Salmon” to “Scottish Salmon”. We hope there was sufficient response to block this clear attempt to blindside the public about the origin of their food, now that the evils of the salmon farming industry are coming to public attention. We have also co-signed on a comprehensive and expert-informed guidance document, produced by Animal Equality, aimed at policy makers of how they can ensure better welfare standards for fish at the time of slaughter. With no clear regulations on this currently, it would prescribe precise methodology of making sure fish are properly stunned at the time of killing and minimise their suffering.

Wildlife management and snares

A Bill which we have been following particularly closely due to its potential implications for Scotland’s wildlife – is the Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Bill 2023. Having submitted to two consultations on this Bill, and encouraged our members and supporters to do the same, we are broadly supportive of its general principles. Namely the banning of cruel glue traps and licensing of other types of trap, the licensing of grouse shooting and thereby tackling raptor persecution, and the licensing of muirburn to be made safely and for reasons other than encouraging greater grouse populations for shooting. Latterly, amendments have been made which would include a further ban on the use of snare traps, as well as extending further powers to SSPCA inspectors to investigate wildlife crime, which we also support. Read more about it here.

Earlier in the year, we had petitioned for Amazon to stop selling snares on their site, which we are delighted to say was a success!

Greyhound Racing

Teaming up with our good friends at OneKind, Scotland Against Greyhound Exploitation, Say No To Greyhound Racing in Scotland and others, we joined the Unbound The Greyhound coalition to end greyhound racing in Scotland once and for all.

We attended high street awareness raising events in Glasgow for SAGE’s government petition to ban dog racing in Scotland.

Through these events and a comprehensive social media campaign including bespoke animation videos projected onto buildings and individual stories of rescued ex-racing greyhounds like our Sylvie, we have now amassed more than 20,000 signatures to the open letter! We hope to organise a hand-in at Holyrood soon.

And we had the pleasure of attending the Greyhounds Around the Globe conference in Edinburgh, hosted by our coalition partners Grey2K USA in September.

Hunting

We also supported our friends at the League Against Cruel Sports with the collaborative Time For Change campaign to improve anti-hunting laws in England and Wales. Starting with National Parks, we have supported their efforts to convince park authorities that they should rid their land of trail hunting – a commonly used and perfectly legal smokescreen for fox hunting. We’re thrilled that 10 out of 13 parks are now hunting free, thanks to an open letter signed by thousands of you. You can still write to the Peak District, Dartmoor and Exmoor park authorities to convince them to do the same.

We also wrote to big Scottish brands including IRN Bru and McGhee’s Bakery to urge them to sign up to Businesses Without Blood Sports pledge and show their solidarity with protecting animals from being killed for sport.

Better enforcement

Another coalition we joined was headed up by our friends at Animal Equality, who are campaigning for better enforcement of already existent animal protection laws on UK factory farms, where illegal animal abuse is still rife, but almost never charged. With the support of celebrity faces like Peter Egan and Diane Morgan, their petition to the UK Government amassed more than 100,000 signatures.

Others

Of course there have been other campaign issues we have spoken out on this year:

We continue to back a UK bill to prohibit the import of hunting trophies, despite being dropped by the Government some months ago.
We were delighted to support the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act, which was voted through early in the year – restricting the number of dogs that can be used for hunting parties to two, albeit with some loopholes.
We commented on the continued exploitation of horses at the Grand and Scottish Nationals, with a letter in The Scotsman newspaper about the racing industry’s attempts to blame horse deaths on animal activists. More recently we wrote to the Clydesdale Horse Society asking them to review their policy on promoting horse tail shaving – an unnecessary and unnatural practice. We await their decision.
We have been supporting another piece of Scottish draft legislation – the Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill, which would help educate prospective dog owners about how to acquire their dogs and puppies in a responsible manner and from ethical suppliers.
And we have spoken out against the decision to ban XL Bully dogs in the UK, with a letter to Rishi Sunak urging him to reconsider and tackle the real root causes of dog attacks – irresponsible ownership.

We cannot thank our members and supporters enough for helping us achieve all that we’ve achieved this year. We simply would not be able to do what we do without your generous contributions and activism.

We want to keep doing more for animals, across all the above campaign issues, but that is only possible with your support. So please, keep donating, reading our emails, taking action, rallying your friends and families about us, and together we can bring about the change we want to see for all our animals.

Help us legislate to liberate by clicking below and visiting our Support Us page, which shows all the different ways you can aid the cause.

Let’s see what we can achieve in 2024!

Support Us

What you helped us achieve in 2023