Djurskyddsanmälningar i Västra Götalands län – en undersökning av faktorer som bidrar till att en anmälan klassificeras som obefogad

Sammanfattning: Since 2009, the county administrative boards of Sweden are responsible for the enforcement of the nation’s animal welfare regulation. This entails receiving public complaints regarding maltreatment and neglect of animals. The Swedish Board of Agriculture and the audit entity of the EU, Food and Veterinary Office, have estimated that inspections resulting from public complaints are overrepresented and that these types of matters consume a great deal of the resources needed for routine inspections. In addition, approximately 50 % of the inspections carried out due to public complaints result in unwarranted inspections. The County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland expressed the need for a study to be carried out in order to investigate whether one is able to single out certain types of complaints, which are likely to lead to an unwarranted inspection. Knowledge of these types of complaints increases the possibility of sorting them out at an early stage of the process, consequently saving time and valuable resources. Each complaint received during one year in the County of Västra Götaland was scrutinized. This was done with respect to certain parameters estimated to be of value for the outcome of a complaint, among these being the type of animal involved, the reported non-compliance, the amount of relevant details mentioned in the complaint and the type of informer (whether anonymous or not). This resulted in a total of 776 unwarranted complaints and 548 warranted ones. Approximately 200 complaints were handled by mail, and were thus not included in the study. The category “unwarranted” was divided into four sub-categories in order to highlight the fact that there may be several different reasons as to why a complaint is classified with the outcome “unwarranted”. In addition to the examination of complaints, five interviews were carried out as to shed light upon the problem from an animal welfare inspector’s perspective. The results show that dogs, horses, cats and cattle were the types of animals most frequently mentioned in the complaints. For each type of animal, one was able to point out the non-compliances which were statistically most likely to result in an unwarranted inspection. For dogs, this non-compliance was “handling”; for horses, it was the non-compliance “cleanness of environment”, while it for cats and cattle were “access to water” and “housing” respectively. Furthermore, the amount of relevant details mentioned in the complaint seemed to affect the outcome of the complaint, whilst type of informer appeared to be of little or no importance. Regarding the distribution of the different outcomes, it was concluded that for approximately half of the unwarranted complaints, one could not identify any non-compliance or reason that could legitimize the complaint. For the rest, however, the complaints were not entirely unsupported; for some, a non-compliance was indeed found at inspection but not severe enough to be considered a violation of the animal welfare legislation. As for others, there had been a non-compliance, which had been corrected or was in a process of being corrected. In some cases, the reported non-compliance could not be verified, thus resulting in an unwarranted complaint. These different situations point at the need for an expansion of the old categories in order to better describe why the complaints are classified as unwarranted, both to increase the knowledge of the problem and to provide a more accurate interpretation of the situation. The interviewed inspectors were of the opinion that the majority of the complaints are a result of lacking knowledge. They also expressed the view of unwarranted complaints as a natural part of their work, rather than a time consuming obstacle. To conclude, it is possible to sort out certain types of non-compliances which are more likely than others to result in an unwarranted inspection. Still, there are commonly several non-compliances mentioned at one time, making it difficult to single out groups of high-risk complaints based merely on the non-compliances. Rather, a complex approach involving a larger set of parameters is needed. What can be concluded with certainty is, however, the need for additional categories to correctly describe the outcome of a complaint, rather than the somewhat misguiding term “unwarranted”.