Who we are
In April 1993 The Association of Private Pet Cemeteries and Crematoria was founded in order to promote companion animal facilities, to set and maintain a code of conduct to ensure quality of service and to have a voice with regard to legislation being introduced.
The members operate independent businesses but are all committed to the same high standards of professional conduct and client care. You are assured of an honest and reliable service that will operate to strict standards and handle your pet with care and respect at all times. With British and European legislation constantly changing the Association will fight to preserve sensible regulations that allow their members to maintain this personal and caring service. With the veterinary world consolidating into large commercial organisations there is a tendency for practices to move to large scale animal incineration plants that take away the local, personal service that serves you so well.
The APPCC will continue to represent and promote the smaller, respectful, personal pet crematoria and cemeteries. In this way you will be protected and businesses will be able to compete on a level playing field with a strong representative voice over new legislation.
How do the standards protect pet owners?
We know from letters we receive that people expect a certain service when they hear the term pet cremation. They immediately think of the human equivalent. Therefore we set our methods of working to reflect this.
When the term cremation is used it has to cover the whole process – dignified handling, the actual operation of cremation and where the ashes go afterwards. You should be able to either have your pet’s ashes back or be able to say ‘this is my pet’s last resting place. So, for individual cremation your pet will be cremated on its own in the chamber and the ashes carefully collected before the next cremation starts. For a communal cremation all the ashes will be collected at the end and buried or scattered in a recognised memorial area that an owner may visit. It is simple, straightforward and easy to understand.
But doesn’t this happen already?
No. Unless a crematorium is one of our members all kinds of systems may be used to cut costs and increase profits. Over the years various methods of cremating pets together and inferring they are individual have been used. Most of the communal or mass cremations carried out are simple waste disposal operations where the remains go off to a waste site after a large scale incineration. Even if cremations are carried out on their own very often the handling will be more akin to waste transportation with bodies heaped into the back of a van or into wheelie bins. The Association Code cuts through all this to ensure a service described as a cremation or burial is carried out with care and respect from start to finish. Other services are described as they are – normally disposal services. That way you have control over the service you want for your pet.
Pet crematoria are controlled under the Animal By-Product Regulations and, in some areas, Waste Management Licensing. This has caused us many difficulties in the past but with the help of the Environment Agency and Defra we have carved out our own niche within the regulations that allows us to operate as genuine pet bereavement facilities. However, the regulations are designed for waste. This allows any disposal operation to gloss up their services and call themselves by any number of tempting and appealing names. Licensing for Pet Crematoria and Cemeteries is only concerned with the operation as a disposal site. There are no regulations controlling how the cremations should be carried out to ensure the correct ashes are collected, for the dignified handling of the animals or to distinguish between ashes going to a normal disposal site or to a specific memorial area. The standards set by the Association are the only ones that provide this distinction.