Every year, animals across Great Britain suffer abuse and neglect that break the law. Until now, no one has known exactly how many. A report commissioned by the Animal Welfare Evidence Centre set out to establish that baseline.

Great Britain has no single legal definition of animal abuse and neglect. In England and Wales, for instance, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 criminalizes causing unnecessary suffering to animals under human control, but it excludes invertebrates and free-living wild animals. It also excludes routine but harmful practices, such as slaughter for meat, since these are considered necessary for producing food. Separate laws cover free-living wild animals, and Scotland has its own animal welfare legislation, further complicating any single national count of animal harm.

The researchers aimed to estimate the scale of illegal animal harm across England, Wales, and Scotland. Northern Ireland was excluded since it has a very different legal and enforcement system.

To build this picture, the team combined desk research with engagement with a variety of stakeholders, including government agencies and animal welfare organizations. They also used data obtained through Freedom of Information requests to police forces. Eighteen stakeholders responded to initial outreach, and 17 police forces across England and Wales, plus Police Scotland, supplied crime data.

The researchers grouped animals into four categories: companion animals, farmed animals, free-living and captive wild animals, and animals used in science. For each group, they gathered the best available data on incidents, offenses, and inspection outcomes, including prosecutions. They also flagged where each estimate might run too low or too high.

Rather than one fixed time period, each figure reflects the latest year available for that source. Some historical figures stretch back over a decade, while the newest data is from 2025 or 2026.

Added together, the report estimates that between 1 million and 4.6 million animals are illegally harmed in Great Britain each year.

• Farmed animals make up the largest share of this estimate. Between 830,000 and 3.9 million a year are affected by welfare breaches found through farm, transport, market, and slaughterhouse inspections. Yet only about 9% of farms in Great Britain were inspected in 2024, so these figures only include the non-compliance that inspectors happened to catch.
• Annually, between 180,000 and 370,000 companion animals are involved in reported instances of harm, and that number is rising. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals identified 40% more companion animals as potentially harmed in 2025 than in 2023. Yet, of 16,908 active animal boarding, breeding, selling, and exhibition licenses in England, just 31 were refused, 30 suspended, and eight revoked in 2024/2025.
• Free-living wild animals fare little better. An estimated 12,000 to 34,000 are harmed annually in reported incidents. Separately, around 310,000 wild animals living in British zoos experience conditions that fail to meet at least one welfare standard. Between 2020 and 2025, only 18% of British zoos met every welfare standard assessed in formal inspections.
• In laboratories, at least 189 animals a year experience adverse welfare outcomes due to non-compliance. Most of these cases are self-reported by researchers themselves rather than caught during an audit. And of the 68 research establishments audited in 2024, just 10 visits were unannounced.

Across every category, few cases lead anywhere near a prosecution. In England and Wales, animal-related prosecutions rose 52% between 2023 and 2025, yet only about 3% of recorded offenses across Great Britain resulted in a charge.

The authors are upfront that these figures likely understate the true scale of illegal animal harm in Great Britain. Animals can’t report their own abuse, and much of it happens in private homes or remote areas. Data collection is also fragmented and inconsistent. No single agency tracks animal harm nationally, and many wildlife offenses aren’t required to be investigated and reported to the same standard as other crimes. Most sources don’t track how many animals were affected or make it clear which species were involved in each incident. As a result, the authors describe official offense data as capturing only a small fraction of all illegal animal harm in Great Britain.

This report gives advocates a concrete, evidence-based case for legislative change. It points to specific fixes that could be the basis for direct policy asks. These include requiring police to log how many animals are affected by each offense. Another is making more wildlife crimes notifiable so they show up in national statistics.

It’s also worth noting what these numbers leave out — in two separate ways. As noted above, gaps in the data mean that the scale of illegal animal harm is underestimated. On top of that, the report’s estimates only cover what’s against the law. Legal practices that cause harm, like many routine farm procedures or approved scientific experiments, are excluded entirely. Thus, whether advocates help companion, farmed, wild, or research animals, the message is the same: these numbers are a floor, not a ceiling. Millions of animals are subject to criminal abuse and neglect, and millions more experience suffering that either goes uncounted or is entirely within the bounds of the law.

This summary was drafted by a large language model (LLM) and closely edited by our Research Library Manager for clarity and accuracy. As per our AI policy, Faunalytics only uses LLMs to summarize very long reports (~50+ pages) that are not appropriate to assign to volunteers, studies that contain graphic descriptions of animal cruelty or animal industries, and research on niche topics. We remain committed to bringing you reliable data, which is why any AI-generated work will always be reviewed by a human.