Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

“Prevent cruelty, promote kindness to and alleviate suffering of all animals.”

Founded in London in 1824, RSPCA is the world’s oldest animal welfare organisation, internationally active in around 20 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. It works with NGOs, governments, academic institutions etc – delivering aid, training and consultancy to promote animal protection law, education, animal rescue, stray control, laboratory animal welfare, and improvements in the rearing, transport and slaughter of farm animals.Over 2000-04 RSPCA funded several modest projects including China’s first purpose-built animal re-homing centre. Since 2004 RSPCA has partnered the Jane Goodall Institute’s Roots & Shoots environmental education program, delivering training and an animal welfare manual for volunteers. Over 2008-12 RSPCA also trained more than 200 teachers under the ‘Ecological Experience Education’ programme, run by the National Institute of Education Sciences, using animal themes to promote respect, kindness, responsibility, environmental awareness and good citizenship.

In 2005 RSPCA and the Ministry of Commerce’s Meat Hygiene journal held the first farm animal welfare conference in China, ‘International Forum on Animal Welfare & Meat Safety’. In 2008-09 a second conference ‘The Importance of Farm Animal Welfare Science to Sustainable Agriculture’ and a series of five follow-up seminars were co-hosted with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ (CASS) Rural Development Institute. They attracted livestock scientists, officials, producers, postgraduate researchers and trade media.In 2009 RSPCA and Chinese Association of Laboratory Animal Sciences (CALAS) delivered a workshop ‘Good Science and Animal Welfare in Experimental Design’ in Xi’an, attracting 90 scientists, laboratory technicians and breeding establishment staff. In 2010 an RSPCA course ‘Laboratory Animal Welfare and Alternatives’ followed in Suzhou, and in 2012 participation in the CALAS annual meeting.

RSPCA has worked closely with CASS Institute of Law, hosting an ‘International Forum on Animal Protection Law in China’ in Beijing in 2008, then supporting a panel of academics set up to draft China’s first animal protection law. A draft ‘Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Law’ (PCA) was released at an ‘International Forum on Chinese Legislation for the Protection and Management of Animals’ co-hosted with CASS-IOL. The draft PCA law was further improved in late 2010 and proposed at the National People’s Congress in March 2011.

Over 2006-09 inspectors from SPCA Hong Kong visited the UK and also received RSPCA law enforcement training in Hong Kong.

RSPCA has had the following other project partners in China: Animal Guardians, Compassion In World Farming, European Commission, Humanebeing, Humane Society International, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Marching Trust, World Society for the Protection of Animals.