It is a picture of the online article.

Born Innocent - Dangerous Dogs Act

Claim made by: Born Innocent
Location: It was an online article in the Times (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fatal-dog-attacks-rise-after-ban-on-dangerous-breeds-pitbull-terrier-tosa-and-brazilian-and-argentine-mastiffs-0cn8q03vr).
Spotted on: 2017-08-15

I am a daily reader of the Times. On August 15 2017, there was an article published online by the title of “Fatal dog attacks rise after ban on dangerous breeds.” The article quotes a lot of figures and claims made by Born Innocent, which wants the Dangerous Dogs Act reformed. These included that;

1) in the ten years before the act, 11 people were killed, but in the 26 years since there have been 73 deaths,
2) the number of bites in Calgary have halved (presumably since fines have been introduced to the owners),
3) Sahila Bux claimed: “If we go by statistics then current legislation has failed in every area that it was set out to tackle.”,
4) Sahila Bux said figures showed that more people died from bee or wasp stings or being attacked by cows and pigs; that there were ten deaths from dog bites in the three years from 2013 to 2015, compared with 14 from stinging insects and 27 by pigs, cows and other mammals.

I would like to see some evidence for these claims from Born Innocent, and how they fit the wider body of evidence around this topic. Since you are using absolute numbers, could the increase in number of dog bites and dog deaths be explained mostly by a combination of;

• increase in human population,
• increase in dog population,
• and better reporting of these incidents,
• and other reasons not indicating a failure of the Dangerous Dogs Act?

I also think that comparing the number of dog deaths to those from other, dissimilar animals is not a productive line of argument. Cows are much larger animals capable of inflicting more damage, perhaps even accidentally. Bees and wasps are venomous animals, and are not considered tamed.

Thank you. I look forward to your response.

Update 2017-08-18

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