Okay—this title is misleading. Deliberately so, to illustrate a point.

In April this year the animal rights group ‘Animal Defenders International’ (ADI) launched a new ‘manifesto’ for changes to the European Directive, with a press release on their website. One of the proposals was for the Directive to be extended to cover all invertebrates, foetal and embryonic animals, as well as animals killed for organs, or as surplus to requirements. This would undoubtedly lead to a massive increase in recorded animal numbers.

RDS has argued for some time that the narrow obsession of the animal rights groups in the UK with the annual statistics is pointless. The numbers simply depend on what is being measured, rather than give a meaningful indication of animal suffering, which is the main concern to us all.

We wonder if ADI will notice the glaring contradiction between the increases that would result from their proposals, and the ‘reduction targets’ which MEPs with an animal rights agenda will undoubtedly argue for. That is probably optimistic!