Training the Environmental Military Police in the State of Sao Paulo for science-based assessment of animal mistreatment

The aim of this study was to analyze the perception of police officers within the Environmental Military Police of the State of Sao Paulo about animal abuse occurrences and to implement the Protocol for Expert Report in Animal Welfare (PERAW) as guidance for the first approach to complaint cases related to animal mistreatment. 608 officers filled a pre-implementation questionnaire, followed by a training for PERAW use, and filled a post-implementation questionnaire after two months of Protocol use; these last two were accomplished by only 200 officers. Feeding and water inadequacies were quoted as the condition most easily identified as maltreatment. After training, more officers mentioned two and three animal welfare segments of physical, behavioral, and mental aspects. The concept of sentience was known by a significant higher number of officers after training. Officers reported that the main PERAW advantage was that it enabled greater discrimination and more appropriate assessment of occurrences, besides providing a technical basis to the assessments. Overall, PERAW implementation provided some guidance for a first approach to animal mistreatment cases; however, continued training may provide further improvement.