The English E-collar Ban
On April 27th this year, a draft legislation was presented to the House of Commons and House of Lords. The document is a Statutory Instrument, the most common form of secondary legislation in the UK, named the ‘Animal Welfare (Electronic Collars) (England) Regulations 2023’. In short, the core aspect of the legislation is to ban the use of remotely controlled electronic collars for dogs and cats, starting on February 1st 2024. A motion to approve the instrument was tabled for the House of Commons session on May 2nd. As far as I can tell, it has not been approved yet at the time of writing.
E-collar are training devices that work by producing an electric current through a part of the neck of the dog. The current could be called shock (hence the other name, ‘shock collar’), or stimulation, depending on whether or not you like these tools. The electrical current is unpleasant or painful to the dog, and thus can be used as a way to clearly communicate to the dog that a behaviour is undesired. In the context of operant conditioning, it is ‘positive punishment’, applying something the dog doesn’t like to punish an undesired behaviour. The fact that the collar can be remotely controlled means that it can be used even if the dog is out of control — at least if he or she is still in sight. Ideally, dogs that are e-collar trained don’t need to wear one, the initial training was sufficient. E-collars are most often used for recall training, to prevent dogs from running after livestock and wildlife, but they are also in use for sports and standard obedience.
What is in the new law? The legislation makes it an offence to put an electronic collar which can be remotely controlled by the owner on a dog or cat. ‘Electronic’ here means that the collar can send an electrical current to the dog or cat. People who are found to use such devices can be fined. The law does not ban e-collars outright; their use in containment (where the shock is triggered by approaching or reaching a boundary) is not banned. Collars that are activated by barking are also not banned. That means, as long as the dog has the control over the collar, the devices continue to be legal — but not when the owner is in control. Collars that only cause noise or vibrations also remain legal. Remotely controlled e-collars can still be sold and bought and even owned legally. There is also an exemption for the military.
The new law only applies to England. A similar legislation has been in place in Wales since 2010, and Scotland is also gradually moving towards an e-collar ban (see below).
The legislation is a result of a very long process, including multiple parliamentary debates and consultations. Anwering a question in the House of Lords in 2014, Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer commented that the issue of e-collars was already discussed in 2006:
At that time we took a lot of evidence from the police and other serious dog trainers, and none of those serious dog trainers, such as the police, had a good word to say for electric shock collars as a training method, and no force would use them. Nor would any of the other organisations training dogs as help animals, whether for the visually impaired or for the deaf. Nevertheless, after strenuous lobbying from the electric dog collar manufacturers, the then Government resisted a ban.
Since then the public opinion has changed, and a large majority of people now supports banning these tools. Also, the government has changed multiple times, and a lot of other things have happened in the world. The most prominent animal welfare organisations, such as RSPCA and the Kennel Club, have relentlessly campaigned in favour of banning e-collars. The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, has examined substantial research on the topic. In 2018, DEFRA completed a public consultation on a possible ban, collecting extensive evidence and commentary from stakeholders, both in favour and against the proposed ban. The law has gained broad cross-party support. Apart from Wales, e-collars are already banned in numerous European countries, including Germany, Netherlands, Austria, and all five Scandinavian countries, plus specific regions in Spain. In the context of these developments, and the lengthy preparatory process, the ban in England does not come as a surprise.
More recently, Scotland has published a comprehensive consultation on remotely controlled e-collars, including all stakeholders. Most arguments in favour of a ban and against a ban are summarised and referenced in this document. I won’t repeat all of them here. After looking at all the arguments, the commission concluded in slightly clumsy language that:
… e-collars have the potential to cause harm and that that risk is disproportionate to the perceived training benefit… and that the use of e-collars for the training of animals in Scotland should be prohibited in Scotland.
The most common argument in favour of e-collars is the protection of livestock, specifically sheep, against dog attacks. This is why farmers and their representatives are sometimes opposed to the regulation of e-collars. Proponents of e-collars argue that these devices are the most effective way to teach dogs livestock avoidance. It is then argued that a ban on e-collars will cost many animals their lives, both dogs that are out of control and consequently get shot by farmers, and sheep killed or threatened by dogs. Those arguments do not hold much substance. It is difficult to obtain robust numbers on the number of dog attacks on livestock, or damage to livestock caused by dogs, as there is no common reporting mechanism in the UK. Sensationalist reporting and anecdotes are the most commonly cited sources for claims regarding sheep kills by dogs.
Numbers from police forces, as published by the consultation in Scotland, do not give a clear picture. In Scotland, where e-collars are legal, the number of recorded livestock offences increased in the last 15 years, from around 100 to 170 in 2017/18. This may be caused by changes in reporting. In Wales, from 2013 to 2017, the number was 112 per year, and 72 in 2020. Based on farmer’s insurance claims, the NFU estimated that the cost of dog attacks on livestock in the UK was 1.6 million pounds in 2017, 1.2 million in 2018, 1.2 million in 2019, 1.3 million in 2020, 1.5 million in 2021, 1.8 million in 2022. Again, there is no uniform reporting procedure, and the causes of the large fluctuations remain unclear. Numbers for the individual nations are not readily publicly available.
Given all that, there is certainly no clear evidence that the presence or absence of e-collars makes a difference for the rate of dog attacks on livestock. The total number of dogs in the country side as well as the education and awareness of dog owners seems to be much more important. Also, despite what is often claimed, there are ways to train a reliable recall in the presence of livestock or wildlife without the use of e-collars. Lots of dogs are perfectly under control of their owners and have never seen an e-collar. It is possible that these methods take longer than a few hours, I will concede that. But those methods exists, and many practising dog trainers can teach them. Besides, the safest way to walk a dog in the vicinity of sheep is still to put it on a lead — which is required by law anyway.
The second claim of e-collar advocates is that a ban will lead to more dogs being euthanised because without an e-collar there is no way to control them. This is an absurd argument without any evidence to support it. The number of healthy dogs that are euthanised has dropped worldwide significantly over the past decades, with or without e-collars. In the UK, it’s less than one per 1000 people per year. Obviously, still too many. In the US, where e-collars are legal, it’s around 5. But in Scandinavia, where e-collars are banned, it’s practically zero. Also, there are lots of dog trainers who routinely help problem dogs without the use of aversive tools, and specifically without e-collars. It seems if we want to lower the number of healthy dogs that have to be put to sleep, we may need more animal welfare checks and legislations, not less.
Looking at the UK, it is doubtful that the new legislation would have any large-scale impact. According to the most recent Animal Wellbeing Report issued by PDSA, which includes a representative survey of dog and cat owners, only 1% of dog owners use e-collars (or admit that they use them). The number in circulation seems to be higher than this, but still a small fraction of the dog owners overall. Anecdotally, I have never seen a dog wearing one in Scotland where they are legal. There are 10 million dogs in the UK, according to PDSA, and most are clearly trained with other means.
In fact, most dogs probably only receive minimal training at all, but that is just my personal impression. When I’m out on walks and encounter other dogs, the biggest problem seems to be lack of training, in any shape, for dogs and their owners. It seems to me that unreliable recall is mostly caused by lack of training, any training, not the lack of an e-collar. The new law is not going to change that. It will of course affect dog trainers who routinely use e-collars; their business model will have to change. It will also affect dog owners who have trained their dog with those devices, and still use them. A current petition to stop the ban in the UK received five thousand signatures in a week, not necessarily all from the UK, but in any case, a tiny fraction of dog owners in this country. These people had, on the other hand, many years to get used to the idea of training in other ways, while the law slowly, very slowly, changed. Time is marching on.
Personally, I’m really glad about the new regulation. I’m not even categorically opposed to e-collars as training contraptions for dogs. And I’m certainly not a ‘force-free’ trainer. For a while I have seriously considered using one for my dog. I saw the short-term infliction of suffering as a price to pay for long-term benefits, that means, more freedom. This, as it happens, is one of the most common arguments in favour of these devices. But I could not convince myself that there is a practical way to achieve that goal specifically for my dog. For full disclosure, I did buy a remotely controlled vibration collar, one of those that cannot produce shocks. I haven’t really used it in any way.
In the end, and again that is my personal opinion, the potential for abuse is just too much. And it seems to me there are now good force-free training methods that can help with almost all, maybe all, behavioural problems in dogs. There may be situations where e-collar training is a path to more long-term happiness in a specific dog, perhaps. I don’t know that. But giving humans a button that allows them to inflict pain remotely to a dog that is running away seems like a bad idea. Angry people don’t always react precisely in the right and appropriate manner. I do get angry, without acting on it, when my dog does something stupid. Maybe I’m a bad person for that. But I doubt I’m the only one.
