Pets: Prizes

(asked on 18th May 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the oral contribution by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park in the House of Lords on 20 June 2022, Official Report, column HL3, if she will publish the findings of work commissioned by her Department on the issue of pets being handed out as prizes in England.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 23rd May 2023

In England and Wales, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 prohibits the sale of an animal, or the transfer of an animal as a prize, to anyone under the age of 16 years old. It also ensures that any person winning an animal as a prize is obliged to provide for its welfare. Our assessment is that these restrictions continue to be balanced and proportionate. Defra has not commissioned any additional external research into pets as prizes, but has commissioned other external research into the keeping of primates as pets, which is ongoing.

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