Problems and Purpose

Animal welfare in the UK is governed through a combination of statutory regulation, market mechanisms, and voluntary standards. However, public debate continues regarding farming practices, wildlife protection, pet breeding, and the broader ethical status of animals. These debates have intensified in the context of post-Brexit regulatory reform, climate pressures on food systems, and rapid technological developments in agriculture and biotechnology.

In 2024, the RSPCA commissioned the Wilberforce Report, a foresight study examining possible scenarios for animal wellbeing in 2050. The report identified structural drivers shaping future animal welfare outcomes, including climate change, food systems, technological innovation, legal standing of animals, and consumer behaviour.

The Citizens’ Assembly on the Future of Animal Welfare was established as a deliberative response to this foresight exercise, the first in the RSPCA’s history. Its purpose was to:

1. Engage a broadly representative group of citizens in structured deliberation on long-term animal welfare issues
2. Test public priorities against expert evidence
3. Generate recommendations to inform the RSPCA’s advocacy strategy and contribute to policy discussions The assembly was not designed as a statutory decision-making body. Its outputs were advisory in nature and intended to provide a publicly grounded mandate for future advocacy and engagement.

Background History and Context

The Citizens’ Assembly formed part of the RSPCA’s wider “Animal Futures” initiative, launched in 2024 during the organisation’s bicentenary year. The initiative combined strategic foresight, public engagement, and deliberative democracy.

The first phase of the project, “The Big Conversation,” took place between January and April 2025. This mass engagement exercise invited public contributions via an online platform, surveys, and educational outreach. Approximately 250 ideas were generated and subsequently tested through nationally representative polling. The most supported themes informed the agenda of the Citizens’ Assembly.

Between May and July 2025, 44 participants from England and Wales were convened through civic lottery to deliberate on four thematic areas: pet ownership and breeding, farming now, farming in the future, and the human impact on wild animals. Participants heard from 18 expert speakers and met over six facilitated sessions (approximately 25 hours in total).

According to project documentation, this was the first time in its history that the RSPCA commissioned a citizens’ assembly. While deliberative mini-publics have been used in UK policymaking contexts (for example, climate and constitutional issues), their application to animal welfare at a national level is less common. The assembly therefore represents an institutional experiment in integrating deliberative methods into the strategic work of a national animal welfare organisation.

Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities

The Citizens’ Assembly on the Future of Animal Welfare was commissioned and funded by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) as part of its wider “Animal Futures” initiative.

The RSPCA initiated the Animal Futures project during its bicentenary year (2024). As part of this initiative, the organisation commissioned the Wilberforce Report, a strategic foresight study conducted by the consultancy Firetail to explore possible scenarios for animal wellbeing in 2050. Following this foresight phase, the RSPCA commissioned a public engagement process consisting of two stages: a large-scale consultation (“The Big Conversation”) and a citizens’ assembly.

The deliberative process was designed and delivered by New Citizen Project (NCP), a participation consultancy specialising in deliberative and democratic innovation processes. NCP was responsible for process design, recruitment oversight, facilitation, managing hybrid participation, supporting expert selection, animal perspective-taking exercises, and evaluation and reporting.

An Advisory Group supported the assembly’s design. The group consisted of nine members with expertise spanning food systems, farming, animal welfare science and policy, law, environmental governance, and deliberative democracy. The Advisory Group contributed to topic selection and overall process framing.

Participant Recruitment and Selection

Participants were recruited through a civic lottery process designed to achieve broad demographic representation across England and Wales.

In March 2025, 15,600 letters were sent to randomly selected households across England and Wales, inviting recipients to register their interest in joining the Citizens’ Assembly on the Future of Animal Welfare. Recipients could register via QR code, website link, or freephone number.

To address historically lower response rates in more deprived areas, 20% of invitations were sent to households in areas classified within the most deprived deciles of the Index of Multiple Deprivation, while 80% were distributed randomly across all areas.

The invitation materials clarified that participants did not need prior expertise or a particular interest in animal welfare. Participants were informed that the assembly would take place between May and July 2025 in a hybrid format (online and in person), and that support would be available for digital participation.

A £300 “gift of thanks” was offered to participants, later increased by up to £30 to compensate for additional online activities.

The initial response rate was lower than the anticipated 1%. To ensure a sufficiently large and diverse pool for selection, additional invitations were distributed by email via the Sortition Foundation’s database, which includes individuals who had previously expressed interest in or participated in deliberative processes. This combined recruitment strategy resulted in a pool of 336 individuals who registered interest. From this pool, participants were selected using stratified random sampling to achieve broad demographic representativeness across criteria including age, gender, geography, education level, and attitudes toward animals. The initial stratified selection did not include individuals recruited via the database.

Sortition Foundation contacted selected individuals to confirm participation. Following confirmation calls, a group of 52 individuals was handed over to New Citizen Project for Onboarding. During onboarding, some selected participants withdrew or were replaced due to availability constraints. Replacement participants were drawn from both the original letter-based recruitment pool and the database pool.

The final assembly consisted of 44 participants described as broadly representative of the population of England and Wales. Recruitment and participation were limited to human citizens. While the assembly incorporated expert evidence relating to animal welfare, animals were not formally represented as participants in the selection or deliberative structure.

Methods and Tools Used

The primary method used in this case was a citizens’ assembly, a form of deliberative mini-public using civic lottery/sortition to convene a randomly selected, demographically diverse group of citizens are convened to learn about, deliberate on, and make recommendations regarding a public issue. In this case, the citizens’ assembly was commissioned by the RSPCA as an advisory deliberative process within a broader public engagement initiative. The assembly was embedded within a broader structured participation framework referred to in project documentation as the RAPID Democracy framework. This framework includes sequential phases:

1. Input (public idea generation and consultation)

2. Recommend (citizens’ assembly deliberation)

3. Agree (stakeholder feedback on draft outputs)

4. Decide (organisational response and uptake)

5. Proceed (implementation and follow-up)

This layered design combines large-scale participation with in-depth deliberation. The

approach reflects a hybrid model in which a mini-public is informed by earlier broad

consultation and later tested against stakeholder feasibility.

The assembly combined in-person and online deliberation . Online discussion forum enabling continued discussion outside scheduled sessions, and AI-supported tools to assist facilitators in synthesising discussion outputs. The documentation describes the AI tools as supporting facilitators in ensuring that outputs reflected discussions without requiring excessive manual synthesis . The report notes that technology was used to augment, rather than replace, human-led facilitation .

What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation

The Citizens’ Assembly took place between May and July 2025 and consisted of six

sessions totalling approximately 25 hours of deliberation. The process combined in person

and online meetings, with at least one in-person session designed to support

relationship-building and trust formation among participants.

The deliberative phase followed the earlier “Input” phase (“The Big Conversation”),

meaning participants entered the assembly with a pre-structured agenda derived from

nationally gathered public ideas .

Each thematic area began with structured learning.Eighteen expert speakers presented evidence across topics including:

1. The moral and legal status of animals
2. Pet ownership and breeding
3. Current farming systems
4. Emerging farming technologies
5. Human impacts on wild animals

Participants were also introduced to insights from the Wilberforce foresight research and to themes emerging from The Big Conversation . Sessions included polls measuring perceived “need for change” on specific topics . These tools were used to gauge initial reactions and structure subsequent discussion. Expert input preceded deliberation, consistent with deliberative mini-public design, and served to provide shared informational grounding before participants formulated recommendations.

Following the learning phase, deliberation took place in a combination of facilitated small group discussions, plenary sessions and structured breakouts. Discussion combined personal experience, ethical reflection, and engagement with expert evidence.Facilitators supported turn-taking, guided discussion prompts, and helped synthesise emerging ideas. An online discussion forum enabled continued exchanges between sessions . Facilitators used AI tools to support synthesis of contributions.

Participants discussed issues including:

1. Regulation of pet breeding and ownership
2. Transparency and labelling in animal product supply chains
3. The ethical and welfare implications of intensive farming
4. The role of alternative proteins
5. Wildlife habitat protection and enforcement
6. The legality of certain hunting practices

The assembly was explicitly designed to produce recommendations. Following thematic deliberation, participants worked collectively to draft and refine proposals. Before finalisation, stakeholders were invited to provide feedback on draft recommendations to assess realism and feasibility. After incorporating feedback, participants voted on final recommendations. Each recommendation required and received at least 75% support from members . Most

recommendations reportedly exceeded 90% support. The use of supermajority thresholds functioned as a signal of strong collective endorsement rather than simple majority rule. The documentation does not describe a requirement for full consensus. The RSPCA retained responsibility for deciding which recommendations to adopt in its campaigning and advocacy work . The assembly therefore functioned in an advisory capacity. The final outputs of the Assembly included a collective statement, four thematic vision statements and fifteen recommendations.The RSPCA committed to formally responding to the recommendations at its Wilberforce Lecture in November 2025.

Influence, outcomes and effects

Results were communicated publicly by the RSCPA through publication of the full report, web materials, media coverage and an official response.The report also indicates an intention to maintain engagement with assembly members beyond the formal conclusion of the process.

The assembly’s outputs were explicitly framed as informing the RSPCA’s campaigning and advocacy priorities. Public materials indicate that several assembly priorities aligned with the organisation’s existing advocacy goals. The assembly therefore appears to have reinforced and publicly grounded aspects of the organisation’s strategic direction. The RSPCA also described plans to explore specific proposals (for example, community habitat initiatives) in collaboration with governmental actors, though there is no documented evidence of formal uptake by other NGOs at the time of reporting. At the time of reporting, the assembly’s recommendations were advisory. The RSPCA retained authority to determine which recommendations to adopt in its campaigning and advocacy work. The documentation indicates that the RSPCA committed to responding formally to the recommendations at its Wilberforce Lecture in November 2025 . Public materials also positioned the recommendations within broader national political discussions on animal welfare, but there was no direct link to any political decisionmaking authority. Although the recommendations addressed issues relevant to farming systems, food production, and animal breeding, official documentation does not indicate if or how the Assembly recommendations connected to these industries.

The Animal Futures initiative engaged over 7,000 members of the public through The Big Conversation phase , potentially broadening public discussion on animal welfare issues.Media coverage and publication of the report contributed to wider visibility of the Recommendations, but more systematic analysis is needed to understand any effects. Although behavioural change was not a formal objective of the assembly, post-process evaluation data indicate that some participants reported anticipated changes in personal behaviour towards animals, such as changing their food choices or likelihood of relevant civic engagement. The average self-reported likelihood of behavioural change was 6.9 out of 10. These effects were self-reported and captured through post-process surveys.

Analysis and Lessons Learned

The report evaluates the assembly primarily through indicators of participant experience, perceived fairness, and willingness to engage in similar processes. Participation evaluations suggest the assembly may have functioned as a civic learning environment and space for ethical confrontation across differing perspectives, although this was not the primary stated objective. Evaluation data indicate that most participants felt they had opportunities to speak and be heard. However, evaluation responses also indicate that some participants perceived instances of uneven participation. Seven members reported that certain individuals spoke more than others and suggested facilitators could have taken a firmer role in managing dominant voices in breakout rooms. These reflections suggest that while facilitation largely succeeded in enabling broad participation, some tensions typical of small-group deliberation remained.

Notably, evaluation criteria focus on whether participants felt heard, informed, and respected. They do not attempt to evaluate the perceived adequacy of representation of animal interests. Animals were not formally represented within the procedural structure, nor were proxy or guardian mechanisms incorporated into the design. Some guided perspective-taking exercises were included but these sat alongside the standard deliberative format rather than being the main focus.

The case therefore highlights a broader question in more-than-human democratic design: does more-than-human representation require additional epistemic or institutional adaptation? The report does not directly address this tension. Its design choices align with established deliberative practice rather than with emerging multispecies governance frameworks, suggesting that the assembly adopts a generalised deliberative template without fully theorising its adaptation to more-than-human governance contexts. The implicit assumption is that informed lay citizens, given time and structured facilitation, can deliberate competently on complex issues. At the same time, when deliberation concerns beings who cannot self-advocate, questions arise regarding epistemic thresholds and representational competence.

The available documentation does not explicitly address questions around representation of nonhumans animals, or the legitimacy of such representations. Nonetheless, these elements are implicit throughout the process. Future processes could raise these fundamental questions explicitly through participatory design and dialogue through the Assembly, to acknowledge the assumptions that underpin deliberation on more-than-human subjects. Relatedly, the documentation does not explore how facilitators addressed anthropocentric framing, species hierarchies, or emotional asymmetries between companion animals, farmed animals, and wildlife. In contexts where the represented beings cannot speak, facilitation plays not only a procedural role but also a representational one. This could require, for example, species-sensitive facilitation training or framing strategies to adapt a general deliberative model to a domain with distinctive representational challenges. The RSPCA CA demonstrates that deliberative mini-publics can be mobilised within NGO strategy to generate publicly grounded recommendations on animal welfare. At the same time, the case exposes a structural tension: established human-centred deliberative models cannot be applied to more-than-human issues without addressing their epistemic and representational foundations. The assembly therefore illustrates both the possibilities and the limits of extending citizens’ assembly design into multispecies governance contexts. This surfaces several questions relevant to future more-than-human deliberative processes:

1. Should evaluation frameworks include criteria assessing substantive representation of non-human interests, in addition to participant satisfaction?
2. Should knowledge acquisition and epistemic competence be measured explicitly in assemblies addressing complex scientific and ethical domains?
3. Would incorporating structured proxy or guardian roles strengthen claims of representing animals?
4. How might deliberative designs move from sequential knowledge transfer toward more explicitly co-productive epistemic models?
5. How should democratic inclusiveness be balanced with species-specific expertise when the represented group cannot participate directly?

See Also

1. RSPCA Animal Futures Initiative
2. Wilberforce Report (RSPCA, 2024)
3. The Big Conversation (Animal Futures public engagement phase)
4. Citizens’ Assembly (method entry)
5. Civic Lottery / Sortition
6. Deliberative Mini-publics in the United Kingdom

(If Participedia entries exist for any of these, they should be linked directly. If not, stub entries may be created for: “Animal Futures Initiative” and “The Big Conversation (RSPCA)”.)

References

Animal Futures: The Big Conversation and the Citizens’ Assembly on the Future of Animal Welfare – Report and Recommendations (October 2025). Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).

Animal Futures Project Report (Digital Edition). RSPCA.

Wilberforce Report (2024). Commissioned by the RSPCA; conducted by Firetail.

Citizens’ Assembly on the Future of Animal Welfare – Full Response. RSPCA.

Citizens’ Assembly Urges UK Government to Act on Animal Welfare Pledges. RSPCA Press Release.

Farming News: “Community Habitat Service” Among Ideas from Landmark Animal Futures Citizens’ Assembly.

(Where possible, full URLs should be included in the Participedia reference field exactly as they appear in the published materials.)

External Links

1. RSPCA Animal Futures Project Page
2. Citizens’ Assembly Final Report (PDF)
3. RSPCA Wilberforce Lecture (November 2025) – Organisational Response
4. Sortition Foundation (participant recruitment partner)
5. New Citizen Project (delivery partner)

Notes

1. This was the first citizens’ assembly commissioned by the RSPCA in its history .
2. The assembly operated in an advisory capacity; it did not possess statutory decision-making authority .
3. Evaluation data are based on post-process self-reported surveys; no longitudinal follow-up data on behavioural change are included in the available documentation .
4. At the time of publication, no direct legislative or regulatory changes had been formally attributed to the assembly .

Contributor Positionality Statements

This case entry was prepared by Claudia Fernandez de Cordoba (2026), founder of Living Imaginaries. Living Imaginaries is a social enterprise focused on reimagining how societies govern, relate to, and live with more-than-humans. Working at the intersection of climate, biodiversity, food, health, and justice, it combines creative re-imagination with practical pathways for structural change. She is also a doctoral researcher at University College London, where her research examines more-than-human democratic innovation and biodiversity governance.

The contributor was not involved in the design, commissioning, facilitation, or evaluation of the RSPCA Citizens’ Assembly on the Future of Animal Welfare. She did not participate in the assembly sessions, recruitment process, advisory structures, or stakeholder review phases.

This case draws exclusively on publicly available documentation, including the Animal Futures reports, the Citizens’ Assembly final report and recommendations, evaluation materials, organisational responses, and associated press coverage. All descriptive claims are based on documented sources. Interpretive analysis is confined to the Analysis section and informed by the contributor’s broader research on emerging practices of nonhuman representation and participation.

The entry was developed as part of a project Developing a typology of emerging practices of nonhuman representation and participation: laying the groundwork for more-than-human democratic innovations, conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Deliberative Democracy, the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA), the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, Participedia, and the University of Westminster.