Don't Pet Me – what would you do if your pets were banned?

Summary

The Scottish SPCA is urging the Scottish Government to introduce a pet 'permitted' or positive list – a new law that would ban most pet animals.

Our film, DON’T PET ME, examines what these bans mean in practice, including warnings from animal-care professionals about harming animal welfare, underground keeping, reduced veterinary access, added strain on rescue services, and increased illegal wildlife trade.

Featuring:

• Tony Wigley (RRK, The Pet Charity, REPTA) on why positive lists fail in practice.

• Svein Fosså (European Pet Organization, NZB) on Norway’s 1977 reptile and amphibian ban and what followed.

• Dr Martin Singheiser (BNA) on the lack of evidence behind positive lists.

• Scottish breeders and keepers Chris Hogg and Lisa Birrell, responding to claims in the campaign document, which appear to link low incomes and neurodivergence to poor welfare.

Should Scotland impose a positive-list ban, or enforce existing laws and improve standards through keeper education?

Transcript

In May 2025, the largest animal charity in Scotland made a move that shocked pet experts around the world.

The organisation joined forces with radical animal rights groups to campaign for new laws that would ban thousands of pet animals.

If the campaign succeeds, pet care experts warn that the unintended consequences will be severe, fueling illegal wildlife trade, undermining conservation efforts, and creating animal welfare problems.

So, what's going on?

All around the world, millions of people keep pets that many would consider unusual. Snakes, lizards, birds, fish, and, for some, even invertebrates can make ideal pets. And Scotland is no different.

The campaign frames all these pets as wild animals. But in reality, almost all have been bred in human care, and many are bred in Scotland by people who care for them and love them in the same way as others might love their dog or cat.

But that may soon change if a new campaign gets support from the Scottish government. The Scottish SPCA is Scotland's largest animal welfare charity. The organisation has worked with animal care professionals and responsible pet keepers for decades, earning wide respect across the sector.

That is why the Scottish SPCA's support for a campaign launched in early 2025 has come as a surprise. The campaign calls for the introduction of a pet keeping permitted list, or positive list, a law under which most species of pet animals will be banned. Promoted through the Don't Pet Me campaign, the positive list proposal is being pushed by known radical animal rights groups such as One Kind and Born Free. And, most controversially, by the Scottish SPCA itself.

So, what is a positive list?

A positive list is a list of animals the government permits you to keep. Any species not on the list is banned. The law will ban some of the most commonly kept animals, species that have been kept as pets for centuries and are well cared for. If it's not on the list, you're not allowed to keep it.

Positive lists are also known as whitelists or approved lists, and in the Scottish Don't Pet Me campaign, they're called permitted lists. But they're all the same thing. A ban on every type of animal that is not specifically approved by government officials.

Animal rights campaigners argue that imposing such restrictions protects animal welfare, conservation, and public safety. And while everyone agrees that sensible legislation to protect animals is a good idea, animal care experts warn that positive lists have major unintended consequences and actually cause more harm than good.

Many are also concerned that the Don't Pet Me campaign contains shocking assumptions, seemingly linking low-income families and neurodivergent people with poor animal welfare. And the positive list problems don't end there.

Tony Wigley is one of the founders at Responsible Reptile Keeping, an internationally renowned organisation that promotes responsible pet keeping and effective policymaking. He's seen how positive lists have played out in other countries where they've been introduced. And it's not good news for keepers or animals.

Positive lists fail on so many different levels. They're unscientific, they're almost impossible for authorities to enforce, and they punish good keepers without doing anything about the relatively few bad ones that there are. Essentially, they're forcing good keepers underground, and if people are operating underground, then the likelihood of them finding veterinary care or seeking veterinary care is reduced.

They damage conservation programs and breeding programs by wiping out the very expertise that's enhanced welfare for decades.

Scotland wouldn't be the first nation to inflict widespread pet-keeping bans. If we want to know what happens when pet-keeping bans are imposed, we don't need to guess. We can ask someone who lived it.

Svein Fosså is president of the European Pet Organization and secretary general for the Norwegian Pet Trade Association. He's lived with reptile-keeping bans and positive lists in Norway and has first-hand experience of the consequences.

Norway completely banned reptile and amphibian pets in 1977, but that didn't stop people keeping them. According to pet specialist Svein Fosså, people largely ignored the ban, bringing animals across the border from neighbouring countries where they were legal.

The ban was certainly not respected by the people who had an interest in keeping animals. Norway has always had a very relaxed border control to our neighbouring countries, which means that any species that were legal in Sweden or Denmark, or for that matter in the Netherlands, Germany, were quite easy to get hold of for Norwegian hobbyists who could import them illegally by travelling by car or ferry from the neighbouring countries.

And in those cases where the authorities did enforce the law, the results were grim.

There were quite a lot of cases of animals being confiscated at the border or even in people's homes. Illegal reptile keepers at the time were very careful who they told that they had animals. But it did happen that some neighbour heard that they had snakes in their apartment and told the government about the illegal keeping of reptiles, in which case the animals were always confiscated. And since the majority were quite common species that no zoo was interested in having, they were euthanised.

In Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands, positive lists have repeatedly been challenged in court for a variety of failings. Positive lists have been proven to conflict with people's legal rights and freedoms. There's also a lack of scientifically robust evidence to justify widespread pet-keeping restrictions and a lack of consistency when determining which species are permitted and which are prohibited. And as a result, in some places, positive lists have been overturned by the courts.

Enforcement has also been inconsistent or non-existent in areas where they were introduced. It's clear that local authorities or government agencies don't have the necessary time, funds, or expertise to enforce or prioritise widespread pet-keeping bans.

Dr Martin Singheiser is a biologist and managing director at BNA, where he advises German and European policymakers about species conservation and animal welfare under human care.

Examples from Belgium show that although there are positive lists in place, they are not controlled. So we have heard from Flanders that there are some species not on the list, but the competent authorities know that they are still kept. But there are no measures of regulating this. So there is no seizure of the animals, nor is there any attempt of the keepers of those animals to get those registered.

We do not believe that positive lists make a good job in those countries where they have been implemented. Since we do not see positive effects and we do not have evidence by the countries themselves that they are a good measure to increase all the tackled issues like animal welfare, species conservation, invasive alien species or zoonotic diseases.

Svein Fosså: There are many problems in having legislation based on whitelists. For one thing, there are very few people on border controls or anywhere in government who know the species and certainly not all the many morphs that are of different species in trade and hobby.

Tony Wigley: Positive lists have failed everywhere that they've been introduced because they seem to fall at so many different hurdles. They're routinely ignored because they're unfair and unjustified and they infringe on people's basic rights. They're essentially unenforceable because governments lack the resources to do the job. And it comes as no surprise that they're routinely ignored and non-compliance is rife.

Which leads us to the next major issue with unfair and unenforceable positive lists. What underground keeping does to animal welfare.

In Norway, it was estimated that at least 100,000 animals were being kept illegally.

Svein Fosså: It was a widespread hobby, but being illegal, it had a lot of negative effects on animal keeping in general because people never dared to take the animals to a veterinarian if they were sick.

And then there's a rehoming issue to consider.

Dr. Martin Singheiser: Introducing a positive list might also create a rehoming crisis because it's not clear yet what happens with all those animal species that are not on the list. Rescue centres and rehoming centres are already full and a positive list might increase the situation.

Tony Wigley: These laws don't stop people keeping animals, and we've seen it in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and everywhere else that they've been imposed. Welfare is much harder to achieve, rehoming is nearly impossible and illegal wildlife trade is far, far more likely. Positive lists have been a disaster for animal welfare.

If positive lists don't work, why are campaign groups pushing so hard to change the law and bring them in?

Is there any evidence to justify the need for new regulations to prevent poor welfare and protect wildlife? The European Union recently commissioned research to find the answers to these questions.

Following a two-year study, a report focused on this topic consistently stated that data demonstrating welfare problems or conservation issues is lacking. And there was no evidence to support the notion that so-called exotic pets cause significant or disproportionate risks.

If a government is going to ban the keeping of thousands of species, surely it should have a robust scientific basis. Not only to justify why such an extreme ban is necessary, but also to guide how the list of permitted species is created.

Dr Singheiser makes the core scientific problem plain.

Currently, information that a positive list is beneficial are lacking, but also information to build up a positive list are lacking as well.

Dr Singheiserr also believes positive lists are entirely unnecessary.

Because we have existing laws and it's not a lack of laws and legislation, it's a lack of enforcement.

There's no question that welfare problems do occur. But the Don't Pet Me campaign exaggerates and sensationalises the issue regarding so-called exotics, presenting poor welfare as widespread and routine. There's no evidence to support this aspersion. And while comprehensive data isn't available, a common-sense look at the reality provides enough empirical evidence to disprove the welfare claims.

Chris Hogg is a Scottish reptile keeper and breeder who specialises in breeding rare species. He's familiar with the situation in Scotland, and he does not agree that reptiles are difficult to care for, or that they suffer widespread welfare issues.

If they are impossible to keep, there wouldn't be millions of them out there. I myself wouldn't have my collection and the hundreds of thousands and literally millions of them in the UK would be suffering. And this isn't the case. There's no data to suggest that's happening. Can't prove something when they don't have the evidence.

The limited data that is available supports Chris's statement. The most up-to-date report sourced from the RSPCA, the Scottish SPCA's sister organisation covering England and Wales, revealed that in 2019 the organisation had brought 810 prosecution cases involving dogs, 196 involving cats, and 182 involving horses. Whereas pets the RSPCA deems to be exotic accounted for just 64 prosecutions combined.

And remember, that covers all so-called exotic pets, including fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals.

Tony Wigley: Welfare issues do exist, of course, but that's true for all kinds of pets. That said, we can't find any evidence to say that welfare is a greater issue for exotics than it is for other animals like cats and dogs.

So if you apply this campaign's logic consistently to all pets, then we would need to apply that to cats and dogs as well. There would need to be a ban or a regulation for those animals. But that campaign isn't happening. Nobody's calling for that. And that's the point, because the logic isn't being applied fairly or consistently. It's unfair to ban and regulate reptiles and exotic pets when the problems with other pet taxa are far more prevalent.

Chris Hogg: At the end of the day, should all the people that are responsible suffer because there's a few that are irresponsible. There's a majority of people who are very responsible. They shouldn't suffer because some people are irresponsible. Positive lists would not help that in any way.

Which begs the question, why are campaigners so focused on banning exotic pets?

To understand this campaign's focus, it's worth looking at the claims being made about pet keepers in the campaign document, implying that people on low incomes and neurodivergent individuals are more likely to exercise poor animal welfare.

After expressing concern that reptiles are not well kept, the document then claims that ‘most owners appeared to have low socio-economic status.’ ‘Research suggests a high prevalence of neurodivergence within the wild animal keeping community.’ ‘Owners were not adequately providing for them, specifically due to poor mental health.’

Lisa Birrell is a Scottish reptile breeder, and she is shocked by the claims made by the Don't Pet Me campaigners.

Neurodivergent people aren't a risk factor. Traits like routine, hyperfocus, consistency, precision, these are strengths in animal care. For many people, animals provide structure, purpose and mental well-being. Taking that away doesn't protect welfare, it damages it.

And she asks the question that sits underneath all of this.

Should the Scottish Parliament be deciding who is fit to have companionship based on income, background or neurotype?

Tony Wigley: In a document that focuses on supposed animal welfare issues, to focus on someone's income or neurotype as a frame of reference is absolutely shocking. Statements like this just don't belong in charity campaigning.

There's another often overlooked issue with positive lists that you won't find discussed in the Don't Pet Me document. What happens to all the knowledge and scientific breakthroughs generated by private keepers?

Dr Martin Singheiser: We do believe that positive lists curtail science because, due to the keeping of non-domestic and more rare species, we learn a lot about the needs of the species. And if there would be a positive list, all this knowledge would be gone.

Dr Singheiser isn't exaggerating. If experienced private keepers are pushed underground or pushed out completely, welfare progress slows to a crawl.

Svein Fosså puts that risk in human terms.

I fear that with a positive list you are removing a lot of the very good reptile keepers from the public scene, thus reduce the speed of new advancements in husbandry of reptiles. Which should be a serious consideration if you are making a positive list to improve animal welfare.

The Scottish SPCA has historically supported responsible pet keeping and evidence-based regulation. Its decision to align with organisations that openly seek to end private animal keeping has unsettled many of its long-standing supporters, which should cause concern because it's in the charity's best interests to maintain public trust.

We invited the Scottish SPCA to respond to the concerns raised in this film.

In a written statement, the charity said its involvement in the Don't Pet Me campaign is based on animal welfare concerns. The charity also stated that it does not support blanket bans and views a permitted or positive list as a regulatory framework, not a ban, which it believes could be adjusted over time based on scientific and welfare evidence. But the animal care experts interviewed for this film believe this contradicts the available evidence.

Positive list legislation, as proposed by the Don't Pet Me campaign, has invariably banned thousands of suitable pet species that have been kept successfully for decades and has repeatedly failed to improve welfare outcomes wherever it has been introduced.

A growing number of animal care membership organisations say they have little alternative but to reconsider their support for the charity if they continue to push for pet-keeping bans via positive list legislation, and particularly when endorsing a campaign framed with class-based and neurotype-based narratives.

They believe the Scottish SPCA should think carefully about aligning with organisations whose aim is a widespread restriction on pet-keeping, because pet keepers notice, and so do the people who fund animal welfare.

Chris Hogg: The SSPCA is definitely going to lose some of its credentials as being a very well-respected organisation based off this. They have always been evidence based, but unfortunately on this occasion they've really let the Scottish people down.

If the objective is better welfare, improved conservation, and better understanding of these fascinating creatures, evidence is clear about how this is best achieved. Through education. Not by banning suitable pet species.

In a letter circulated to Scottish politicians, a broad coalition of animal care specialists makes the same practical request: reject harmful positive lists and focus on education for all pet owners.

One way to achieve this is through initiatives such as Pet Know How, a newly launched digital resource that helps people choose the right pet and prevent welfare problems. Using simple, clear, informative guidance followed by a short quiz, it tells prospective pet owners what different animals really need.

Educational tools like this are far more effective than banning species, helping to prevent impulse buying, reduce rehoming, and improve animal welfare effectively. Exactly the kind of outcomes welfare charities like the Scottish SPCA exist to achieve.

Tony Wigley: Education for keepers is something that all animal care experts will get behind. If keepers are well informed about the needs of their animals, they'll have a far more positive experience. Not to mention fewer pet welfare and health issues. And pet businesses would be supportive of that because happy customers and happy pets are good for business.

Plus the animal welfare organisations will be pleased because animal welfare gets better. It's basically a win for everybody who cares about animals.

Sadly, there are people who will never support responsible pet ownership of any kind. And these are invariably those pushing positive lists, regardless of the consequences.

Tony Wigley: Policymakers are going to need the support and help of animal care specialists and businesses, especially if they want their animal welfare proposals to work.

Lisa Birrell: Education works, support works, and collaboration with keepers works.

So what does all of this mean for responsible pet keepers like you? When strong laws already exist to deal with cruelty and neglect, a positive list doesn't strengthen animal welfare, and it doesn't make bad practices any more illegal.

Instead, it criminalises caring pet owners, not because they've caused harm, but because campaigners object to the very idea of them keeping animals.

Do positive list campaigners have a darker agenda?

Tony Wigley sums it up.

Positive lists aren't about welfare or conservation. We've seen that these issues get worse when positive lists are introduced, but campaigners won't want to discuss that. They're just a tool to stop people keeping pets and basically a step on the road towards a total ban.

Svein Fosså: We have gone down that road in Norway, and I do not see us getting out of that anytime soon. But I would certainly advise any other government who are thinking of whitelists from staying away from it. It is not an effective tool.

Tony Wigley: Trust me, even if the animal you love is allowed today, it won't always be like that, because campaigners are just pressuring governments to expand the ban. That's just what they do. It won't stop with reptiles and it won't stop with exotics, because once the principle of a positive list is accepted, any pet could be next. But if I know anything about pet-keepers, they're not going to take this lying down.

Ask the Norwegians, ask the officials in British Columbia in Canada, ask the Spanish and Dutch and Swedish governments. They've all faced this situation before, and they're all aware of the backlash that happens when pet-keepers feel like they're being attacked.