Thanks for your question. I think it is fair to say that the majority of RSPCA’s efforts to date have gone into your first option. We have skills, expertise, reach and resources to enable us to make a real difference to the lives of animals in this way through both our RSPCA Assured scheme, and through campaigning for changes to legislation and corporate behaviour. This work has resulted in real and significant (and evidenced) better lives for millions of animals than they would otherwise have lived.
However, we recognise that to get to a world without intensive farming, we also need to significantly reduce the number of animals farmed. We are developing our strategy here, but have already begun looking at the role of alternative protein in improving welfare (i.e. how could it have the most welfare benefit). For example we sponsored this report: https://www.smf.co.uk/publications/alt-proteins-animal-suffering/ which concludes: “If alternative proteins reach the 30% market share predicted by respondents by 2040, it would result in over 300 million fewer animals being raised in factory farms and slaughtered every year.”
As our strategy work develops in this area we will be considering how we best play our role in contributing to all three of these approaches.
We are here for all animals, including fish and insects. For example we have RSPCA Assured Standards for salmon and trout to try to drive up standards on farms, and we are working to secure legal protections for farmed fish.
We also work to end the use of animals in research (that causes them harm) and these animals are often fish. Whilst we work to end their use, we also work on improving their lives and have improved industry practices around environment and slaughter which has reduced the suffering of many fish in laboratories.
We take a precautionary principle approach to sentience i.e. unless there is evidence an animal isn’t sentient, we treat them as though they are. Our work on insects is less developed than other areas from an advocacy point of view, but it is something we focus on extensively in our work around human behaviour and education. As an aside, I also founded the Wasp Appreciation Society some years ago.