Growing numbers of travel companies are promoting holidays involving animal attractions through adverts that should be illegal in the UK under new legislation, campaigners say.
MPs passed a law more than a year ago that gave ministers the power to ban tourism adverts that offer animal attractions, including elephant rides, but it has not yet come into force.
Duncan McNair, a barrister who founded the charity Save the Asian Elephants (STAE), said that, in the first nine months of 2024, 1,201 companies had advertised unethical elephant attractions – many of them in Thailand – to people in the UK, and he expects that number to rise above the record 1,220 that advertised in 2022.
Last week, McNair and other campaigners met Helene Hayman, a junior environment minister, to discuss how the advertising ban can be introduced quickly.
Although the Animal (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Act was passed last year, ministers must create a statutory instrument listing the banned activities to make the law enforceable. “Year on year, the picture deteriorates as ever more reckless and ruthless travel businesses pile in, unbridled by any effective regulation,” McNair said. “The act should be implemented and robustly enforced without delay.”
As well as the act, which was passed by the last government, Labour is considering how to implement pledges to ban the import of hunting trophies and of heavily pregnant cats and dogs, trail hunting, puppy farming and the use of snare traps. An estimated 550,000 animals are used in tourist entertainment globally, according to a 2015 study by Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.
Activities that the campaigners say should be covered by the new law include petting zoos, circus performances, swimming with dolphins, trophy hunting, eating bush meat, camel racing and fish foot spas.
McNair, who founded STAE in 2015 and was named the Law Society’s legal hero of the year last month for his campaigning, said that most tourists do not realise that Asian elephants are badly treated by theirtrainers. After capture, young elephants are caged and beaten with rods or chains.
“They lead very despairing, lonely, sad and painful lives, and they are the ones that you will be riding on or having selfies with or watching play football,” McNair said. “But then they’re a ticking timebomb – they go mad.”
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In 2000, an elephant attacked crowds at Nong Nooch, a tourist attraction in Pattaya in Thailand. Andrea Taylor, a 20-year-old trainee nurse, died.
Her sister, Helen Costigan, said it was a “horrible, unregulated” market. “There are 300 other elephant venues like [Nong Nooch] advertised in the UK today,” she said. “I call on our government now to support Save the Asian Elephants and the enormous coalition of charities it leads, and the millions who have supported the rapid passage of the act into law, by implementing and enforcing these measures without delay.”
Abta, the association of travel agents and tour operators, said it “continues to support the intent of the legislation to improve the welfare of animals in captivity visited by UK tourists”. It said: “We’ve been engaged with officials to share the lessons of the work our members have undertaken for over a decade, using Abta’s existing animal welfare guidelines.
“We have also promoted linking any future approaches to recognised animal welfare accreditation and certification schemes to verify where attractions are meeting welfare standards, and to ensure clarity for the industry and its suppliers around the world.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “This government was elected on a mandate to introduce the most ambitious plans to improve animal welfare in a generation. That is exactly what we will do. We are considering the most effective ways to deliver these and will be setting out next steps in due course.”