Bad science

and shady politics

Documents acquired by Dutch animal specialists reveal the Dutch Government ignored experts and manipulated science to push its positive list for pets. Animal welfare group Stichting Animalia exposes the political agenda disguised behind this woeful policy.

Positive-list facts

A positive list is a list of animals the government permits you to keep. Any species not on the positive list are banned.
Positive lists are sometimes known as ‘whitelists’. A blacklist contains things that are banned and everything else is allowed. A whitelist contains things that are allowed, while everything else is banned.
If you already own a banned animal (a species that does not appear on the positive list) most governments provide ‘grandfather rights’ which allow you to keep it until it dies, but usually you cannot breed or sell the animal.
While some campaigns call for positive lists allowing a limited number of species, some animal rights groups want all captive reptile keeping to be banned.

Damning evidence has surfaced regarding the Dutch Government’s positive list for pets policy – a supposedly science-based framework for determining which animals are suitable to be kept as pets. Documents unearthed by Stichting Animalia, a Dutch animal welfare advocacy group, suggest that civil servants manipulated scientific insights to align with their predetermined political agenda.

Internal correspondence reveals that expert opinions which contradicted the Government’s position were sidelined or dismissed. According to Stichting Animalia, the process was riddled with bias, undermining claims that the policy is grounded in objective science.

‘This is not about animal welfare or public safety,’ said Stichting Animalia spokesperson Sebastiaan Scheffer. ‘It’s about pushing a political agenda masquerading as science. The evidence Stichting Animalia obtained shows just how far officials are willing to go to ignore inconvenient truths.’

‘This is not about animal welfare or public safety, It’s about pushing a political agenda masquerading as science. The evidence Stichting Animalia obtained shows just how far officials are willing to go to ignore inconvenient truths.’

Sebastiaan Scheffer

Selective

science

At the heart of the controversy is the Government's reliance on the distinction between domesticated and non-domesticated animals to justify the restrictive positive list. Civil servants sought validation from a domestication expert at Utrecht University, requesting scientific evidence to support their claim that domesticated animals pose less risk than their wild counterparts.

However, the expert’s findings failed to support the Government’s narrative. In correspondence seen by Stichting Animalia, the expert warned that domestication does not automatically reduce the likelihood of injury caused by animals. She noted that poor socialisation in domesticated animals, such as dogs, could lead to aggressive or fearful behaviour.

'Domestication alone is not a safety guarantee,' the expert wrote, pointing to thousands of incidents involving bites and attacks by pets each year. Rather than revisiting their assumptions, officials dismissed her input, choosing instead to search for alternative evidence to bolster their claims – even citing studies on chickens, which have little relevance to mammal behaviour.

'The Government’s approach was to cherry-pick studies that suited their agenda while ignoring those that didn’t,' said Sebastiaan Scheffer. 'This is a shameless misuse of evidence and it cannot be considered scientifically robust.'

A facade

of expertise

Stichting Animalia has accused the Government of creating a 'facade of expertise' to lend credibility to policy decisions that were politically motivated from the outset. The group claims the positive list was not developed through objective research but constructed to fit pre-existing ideological preferences.

Dutch court rulings have previously criticised positive list policies as lacking scientific objectivity and transparency. In 2021, the Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal (CBb), the Netherlands’ highest administrative court on economic law, ruled that earlier positive lists failed to meet the European Union's legal requirements for scientific rigour. 'The principles of expertise, independence, and transparency have been ignored,' the CBb stated at the time. Despite this, the Government continues to defend the list, insisting it reflects the input of a team of experts.

Calls for

transparency

Stichting Animalia vows to continue its fight against what it describes as 'unjust and unscientific policy' and plans to release further evidence of inconsistencies and bias in the positive list’s development.

In a statement, Stitching Animalia said 'If the Government genuinely wants to promote animal welfare, it must abandon this manipulative approach. Scientific insights, no matter how uncomfortable, must guide policy – not political expedience.'

This latest revelation raises serious questions about the integrity of the positive list and the Government’s commitment to evidence-based policymaking, leaving animal welfare advocates and pet owners demanding accountability.