Breed specific legislation has been in place for decades in some areas, which gives us the opportunity to study its effectiveness. In 2013, the Canadian Veterinary Journal published a study of animal control practices in 36 Canadian municipalities.
While animal control measures and levels of enforcement varied widely across the country, there were a couple of interesting correlations. One was that the communities with BSL (about a third of the ones studied) did not have lower bite rates, and based on this research there’s no cause to think that BSL is effective as an animal control strategy.
One of the strongest relationships was between active ticketing/enforcement and lower bite incidences. Once again, research tells us that owner accountability and responsibility is the best strategy for keeping communities safe. Targeting dogs based on visual appearance? Not so much!
#endBSL #notoBill128 #Canada150 #BSLbytes
---
Source and further reading:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3552590/
---
For background on the #BSLbytes campaign visit the HugABull blog: http://blog.hugabull.com/take-a-byte-out-of-bsl
---
22/150
#BSLbytes 22
Posted by Chantelle Mackney on