About us
ICLAC, the International Canine Legislation Action Committee, has one job: to change the law so that dogs are trained and cared for without pain, fear or intimidation. We do it by putting the evidence, the people qualified to check it, and the legislative work in one place.
We are working for a worldwide ban on aversive training tools and harmful methods: shock collars, prong collars, choke chains, and any method that works by causing pain, fear or intimidation. We are also working towards the next step: qualified, force-free practice as the standard in dog training. By force-free we mean practice that does not depend on any of them.
We are forming as a non-profit so that the work is done in the open, with proper accounts and a clear separation from anyone's personal interest. The exact legal form is being settled with professional advice. What will not change is our purpose.
For years, many respected organisations have said the same thing in different rooms. Veterinary bodies, behaviour associations, academies and welfare charities have published the evidence. Some countries have already banned the tools. Others have tried and stalled. The work is real, but it is scattered and uncoordinated.
ICLAC was started so that the legislative work has one place to live. Nobody has to merge, agree on everything or give up their identity.
What has been missing is a place where the evidence, the legislative record and the model law can be assembled, checked and carried forward together. That is ICLAC: a shared global action group that can put a complete file in front of a retailer, a legislative committee or a government, and keep doing it in more than one country at once. ICLAC is not a training school. It is not a certification body. It is not a commercial training business. Its purpose is to change law and policy. That is all it does.
You can help without joining a committee. Review one page. Check one reference. Read one paragraph of draft law. You decide how much time you give.
Here is why we are asking. We hold a position and we do not hide it: aversive tools and methods should be banned. What we will not do is exempt our own claims from scrutiny. If something we publish cannot survive a hostile expert, we want to find that out before a legislator does. Where the evidence is strong, we say so. Where it is limited or disputed, we say that too.
So we are not asking you to lend your name to a cause. We are asking you to tell us where we are wrong. If you are a veterinary, clinical or applied animal behaviourist, a welfare scientist, a researcher, a veterinarian, a lawyer, a policy specialist or a qualified force-free practitioner, your expertise is what this work needs most.
Help can be small and still matter. A veterinary behaviourist or a researcher might review one page of the Evidence File, or check that we have read a single paper correctly. A lawyer might read one clause of draft law and tell us where the loophole is. A specialist in one country might explain how the law there actually works.
Others will want to do more, in a working group or on the International Advisory Council. Even one careful review can strengthen material that will end up in front of legislators, governments, retailers and journalists.
Your independence stays intact. Advising ICLAC does not mean endorsing everything ICLAC publishes. You advise within your own field, your name appears only where you have agreed it can, and you are welcome to contribute without being named at all. You do not give up any affiliation or role to take part. We ask only that you tell us about any conflict of interest that could affect the work.
Tell us your field and how you would be comfortable contributing. Offer Your Expertise
If you already run a force-free academy, a professional association, a credential course or a membership body, ICLAC is not here to take that from you or to compete with you. Your teaching stays yours. Your members stay yours. Your name stays on your work. We need that landscape. Dogs are better served when there is more than one good route into skilled practice.
What we ask is simple, and it matters. Get behind the legislative goal. Help us become the independent voice that can carry a shared file into parliaments, assemblies, councils and shops without any one school owning the outcome.
Endorse the declaration if it matches your ethics. Point your members to the petition and the Evidence File when a campaign is live. Put forward people who have the time and the skill to serve on the Committee, the International Advisory Council or a working group. Challenge our drafts when they need to be stronger.
We will not agree on everything, but we are here for one shared goal. On this one goal we agree, and that is reason enough to sit at the same table. Law that lasts has to leave room for every genuine force-free route to keep teaching.
These are working tools, already in use:
• the Global Declaration on the Protection of Dogs from Harm and the Promotion of Humane Training.
• a petition calling for a worldwide ban on aversive tools and methods.
• the Global Supporting Evidence File, a living resource.
• the Legislation Table, a living record of enacted, partial, draft and stalled measures.
• the list of aligned position statements from professional and institutional bodies.
In development: further evidence files, model law that any jurisdiction can adapt, so that no legislature has to start from zero. It has to be clearly defined, enforceable, able to survive legal scrutiny, and careful about unintended consequences.
These materials are meant to travel. A member writing to a shop, a country representative briefing a legislator, or a journalist checking a claim should be able to take these files and use them as they stand.
The Council advises. The Committee decides. ICLAC has three parts.
The Committee endorses public materials, sets the order of work, and speaks for ICLAC once a position has been agreed. Its officers include a chair, a secretary and a treasurer, and it will hold legal and financial responsibility once the non-profit is in place.
The Council is where the expertise sits. Its working groups cover scientific evidence, legislation and policy, media, and country and regional representation. They prepare the material, and the Committee accepts it, returns it for more work, or approves it for use. Country and regional representatives tell us what the law says where they are, what is being proposed, and who needs to hear from us.
The line between advice and decision protects the people who advise us. A behaviourist can review the science, and a lawyer can review a clause, without taking on the organisation's finances, its media statements or its legislative decisions. Those belong to the Committee.
This is the public engine. Members and supporters sign and share the petition, answer polls and questions, report what they see on the ground, add resources, and show up when a letter or a petition needs numbers. The work they do is what turns a file into pressure that a shop or a legislature can feel.
ForceFree.org is the planned international hub and directory for force-free professionals and related services. ICLAC is the legislative action group.
ICLAC is in its founding stage. The structure has been agreed, and professionals are joining both the Committee and the International Advisory Council.
The tools listed above are live, and they will keep being updated as the working groups complete their work. The model law is in development. The next priority is to fill every role.
Once that foundation is in place, we will take the full ICLAC file to the people who can change things: advocates, lobbyists and legislators, and the decision-makers in every jurisdiction where aversive tools are still sold and used.
You don't need a formal position, and you don't need to give us much time. If your professional experience could strengthen the scientific, legal, welfare or policy work of ICLAC, we would like to hear from you: https://iclac.org.uk/join-team.php
Whatever your role, here's a short list of things that would help to support us.
Thank you for your support.
For enquiries: rob.wright@iclac.org.uk