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Animal Welfare Bill

Despite the comments made by noble Lords on electric collars, or what I prefer to call electronic training aids, there is still a lot of confusion. I am glad that the noble Baroness brought up the subject of proximity collars. They are used in conjunction with an electric fence so as to restrict a dog to its own territory. Those noble Lords who have visited the suburbs of the United States will know that there are no fences between the properties, so dogs can roam quite freely within their own territory, but they cannot stray over into another one. I do not think there is any problem with those collars, and the majority of people accept them. It is the other types of collar referred to in the debate that have a potential for misuse. I think that that is what bodies like the Kennel Club are concerned about. Mention has been made of the necessity to carry out research into this matter. It is my understanding that Defra put out a call for research to be done on electronic training collars. It had only one submission, and I understand that it was not of the quality required. There was also much antipathy towards doing the research for ethical reasons.