In a formal pre-action protocol letter, TALF has notified DAERA that it intends to seek judicial review of its compliance with mandatory animal welfare control obligations under EU Regulation 2017/625, which continues to apply in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework.

The challenge centres on what TALF says are serious deficiencies in the way Northern Ireland plans, conducts, reports and enforces animal welfare controls. Among other concerns, TALF alleges that:

• Northern Ireland has had no current publicly available Multi-Annual National Control Plan (MANCP) since the previous plan expired in March 2023, despite the legal requirement for a current and regularly updated plan.
• DAERA has failed to identify a coherent, auditable risk-based system showing how farms and other operators are selected for animal welfare inspections and how frequently they should be inspected.
• In 2024, DAERA reported just 370 welfare inspections involving 275 different farms, meaning approximately 1.13 per cent of Northern Ireland’s 24,423 farms received a welfare inspection. Non-compliance was identified in more than 21 per cent of those inspections.
• There are concerns regarding the transparency and consistency of DAERA’s published enforcement data, including apparent discrepancies between its annual reports and information supplied under freedom of information legislation.
• DAERA has failed to demonstrate a sufficiently coherent system for investigating suspected breaches, remedying non-compliance, dealing with repeat or serious offenders and imposing effective penalties.

TALF argues that animal welfare is not an optional or secondary consideration within the official-control system. The legislation specifically requires animal welfare requirements to be verified at relevant stages of production, processing and distribution, with controls conducted regularly, on a risk basis and with appropriate frequency.

Edie Bowles, executive director of TALF, said: “Animal welfare laws are only meaningful if there is a functioning system to enforce them. Our concern is that Northern Ireland does not currently have a sufficiently transparent, properly planned and genuinely risk-based system for checking whether those laws are being followed.

“When only a small proportion of farms are physically inspected, and significant levels of non-compliance are found among those that are inspected, the Government must be able to demonstrate that its system is identifying and prioritising the farms where animals are most at risk.

We have given DAERA the opportunity to address these issues. If it fails to do so, we will ask the court to intervene.”

TALF is seeking changes that would ensure Northern Ireland has a lawful, transparent and properly resourced system for protecting farmed animals and enforcing animal welfare legislation.

The proposed proceedings are brought in the public interest by TALF, a registered legal research charity whose work includes identifying neglected areas of law and, where appropriate, bringing legal challenges to enforce it.