This act in parliament was set up to prohibit dangerous dog types in having custody or possession of a certain breed or crossbreed of dog and the restriction for proper control dogs that present a threat to the public. The laws updated in 2014 and bans four types of dogs that the government classifies as dangerous the Pitbull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino and Fila Brasilero . If in case you do own a dangerous dog it can be seized if the court rules the dog as not dangerous your allowed to keep the dog with a certificate under certain condition.
This act had a lot of controversy and media attention was brought, it all started around reports of dangerous dog in the by certain breeds which have been banned it was all over the news. The act was first introduced after attacks in 1991 but the act had failed during 2014 there was national crisis of owner training dog to fight and cause attacks in public, the media had brought the crisis to parliament which led them to start amendments. There has been a lot of controversy at the time many dog that were considered banned breed were seized and many dogs had been put down by the police around 307 were killed and 599 were seized for not attacking anybody or showing dangerous behaviour.
Organisation like the dog trust have been campaigning against the act as it needs to be seriously amended as it is a flawed legislation which did not protect the public the dangerous dog act has a exception under the index of exempted dogs certificate which proves that most of the banned dog breeds are not dangerous so why would parliament ban the dogs that are not causing a problem it all depends on the behaviour of the dog that it learns from the owner and in way any dog breed can be dangerous so the act was criticised a lot by different animal welfare groups pressurising the government to improve this law. The ban of the Pitbull terrier was mainly pushed by the media because of one Pitbull terrier that has killed a four-year old boy in Liverpool it led to a change which was not very effective. The RSPCA had published a report in 2016 which widely criticised the act for being ineffective because it failed to prevent more attacks and compromised animal welfare this report campaigned against banning specific breeds types instead legislation should be imposed on the owner on treating the dog. The dangerous dog act implied Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) which many other countries do, the RSPCA mainly are campaigning against it and one way they had this by creating a huge public petition gaining support by over 95,000 in order to get the policy changed.
The government have consulted these influence like welfare charities but have not made any changes because the government has justified that there is no other alternative . However, the Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) a law committee consulted parliament and later on new amendments were made to deal with the growing influences from pressure groups, welfare charities and a growing public concern by the media. According to a report by the house of commons on the dangerous do act the changes made were extending criminal offences by dog on private property so no just in a public areas, compulsory microchipping to keep track of dogs which the RSPCA and Dog trust campaigned as well for, not being able to seize dogs that under court proceeding and the main one is that no more dogs will be added to the BSL even though the RSPCA and other influence wanted to completely remove it they still had some influence on parliament to restrict them to not add any more dog breed to the BSL.
