THE issue of dog attacks on livestock will come under the spotlight at a major event on Friday (June 22).

An impressive array of speakers and participants is due at the third SheepWatch UK conference, including representatives of police forces, Defra, the NFU, national parks, the British Veterinary Association, the CLA and the Kennel Club.

SheepWatch UK is a national body set up in February 2016 to support sheep owners, particularly those affected by dog attacks, and to raise awareness about their impact. It asked farmers across the country to report incidents to the group.

It was founded by shepherd Terena Plowright after a friend's sheep were attacked. Ms Plowright said she put a post on Facebook wondering if this was a big issue – and got 250,000 responses.

The Northern Echo, the Darlington & Stockton Times and the Northern Farmer are running the Lead The Way campaign, raising awareness of the issue of dog attacks and calling for the law to be updated to help prevent them, including making it compulsory for dogs to be kept on a lead around livestock.

Ms Plowright said SheepWatch UK's first conference was quite small, then the next one drew police involvement and things began to change. "Then we carried out research to find out how many sheep are being killed, and once we had this a number of people said this is a welfare issue for dogs and sheep and it is an economic issue."

The group fed its data into work being done by other organisations, including a police report which also looked at attacks in five force areas, including North Yorkshire, from September 1, 2013 to August 31, 2017. This found there were 1,705 recorded incidents across the police areas, leaving 1,928 animals dead and 1,614 injured, at an estimated cost of £250,000.

SheepWatch UK says about 15,000 sheep are killed a year in attacks, a figure also quoted as the reported death toll for 2016 in a report last year by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare.

Ms Plowright said more robust evidence had been needed because there had been 'huge under-reporting' of attacks to the police. She said because there was not 'a clear path' for farmers to get a conviction they tended to see reporting incidents as 'more wasted time'. Also livestock attacks are not a recordable crime, which affected the data available.

But when the group and the five police forces found their figures matched they realised they were not a fluke.

She wanted the law to be updated so attacks became a recordable crime, and so police were 'enabled to act' whenever there was a crime of this nature. "If we were to say 'it's dogs on leads in fields with livestock' it's very clear what's going on," she said. The present law, which said dogs should be 'under control' around livestock, was very subjective. It was also important to reclassify the definition of livestock so it included animals such as alpacas.

Livestock owners who suffered attacks should report them to the police, make sure they get a crime number and check what happened as a result. There was information to help with this on the group's website at www.sheepwatch.co.uk/.

She said today's conference, in Petersfield, Hampshire, was about the welfare of dogs as well as sheep, saying dogs running a long way from their owners were 'at enormous risk' from accidents with vehicles, running into streams, and so on. "This is not about dog owners being victimised, this is about supporting the welfare of dogs and sheep, 100 per cent both," she said.

Ms Plowright was 'moderately optimistic' about the prospects for change because animal welfare was high on the Government 's agenda due to public feeling. "The general public hates cruelty to animals," she said, adding if farmers were hampered by the impact of attacks they would not be in the best position to get good deals after Brexit. "It's also about the UK's ability to trade successfully and to reduce the costs of the farming industry," she said.