BVA Forum Welcomes Waxworks Sideshow

I'm wondering which century we are in. Had the British Veterinary Association, (BVA) by some quirk of time, been able to place Dr. Van De Graaf at the speakers' podium later this month, it arguably could not have generated as great a charge as is likely from one shocking guest who will be addressing delegates to the Animal Welfare Foundation Forum 2008, (BVA-AWF)..

On Tuesday 20 May, Lord Duncan McNair of Gleniffer will put the case for the use of electric shock dog collars to vets and animal welfare and government delegates at this year's BVA-AWF Forum. On behalf of the Electronic Collar Manufacturers Association, (ECMA) he will argue that these new innovations are a useful, even necessary addition to a dog trainer's arsenal, arming him with a harmless weapon of last resort.

The ECMA asserts that when electric shock collars are used at low levels, by experienced users following the instructions on the box, their effect is totally harmless and humane. The ECMA was established to promote the safe and responsible use of such equipment, of course. Its manufacturers however want to turn out as many units as they can - of course, and are unlikely to want to see the use of such gadgets restricted to a just few thousand licensed dog trainers. How easy it is then, to envisage such devices in the wrong hands.

You will excuse a little more time travel..

Had Charles Dickens' villain, Bill Sikes, been able to put an electric dog collar around his dog's throat, Bulls-Eye might never have run off - and we would have avoided a decidedly implausible Twist in that early Victorian tale. 170 years later - might not Dickens have thought to write such a device into history? Had he done so, we might now have added electric shock collars to a list of things that we used to put around necks: ruffs, yokes, shackles & chains.., nooses.

Base human instincts are at work. Electricians are attempting to create a market for a genre of ingenius devices of macabre Tussaudian freakery within the companion animal sector. Notorious for its political sensitivity, the companion animal sector is thrilling itself by giving them a platform on which to do it.

The humanitarian Lord McNair ought to keep his applied learning techniques for his own species and ought not to be allowed to hawk his distasteful gadgets around animal welfare conferences. Stepping up to the boards with the ECMA is in this writer's view, not unlike taking the stage with the British National Party, (BNP). Except on a university campus - it ought not to be done. Ah - it's the twenty-first!