Welsh e-collar ban needs 'urgent rethink' amid quadrupling of dog attacks

Farmers have slammed the Welsh government's inaction as the cost of attacks on livestock show that the situation in Wales has gone from bad to worse.

Farmer and well-known media personality Gareth Wyn Jones has criticised Cardiff's inaction over what he says is “the slaughter of defenceless animals on the hills of Wales."

A year ago the media was reporting that there were four times more attacks in Wales than in comparable parts of the UK.

Now new figures published by NFU Mutual show that, just in the last year in Wales, there has been a further doubling of attacks.

Elsewhere, in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the increase in dog attacks on sheep was only 11%.

This means that over the last three years, while attacks on livestock in the rest of the UK were up a third, in Wales there was a staggering four-fold increase in dog attacks.