The Trade as It Stands
The Assured Breeder Scheme: What an Audit Covers
The Kennel Club's voluntary accreditation programme sets out minimum welfare, health-testing and documentation standards — and sends inspectors to verify them.
The Kennel Club's Assured Breeder Scheme — the published standards breeders must meet, the inspection and audit process, the health tests required for specific breeds and the scheme's own published figures on active members and annual inspections.
Photo: Breeder and sportsman (1898) · Wikimedia CommonsA Scheme with Published Teeth
The Kennel Club's Assured Breeder Scheme (ABS) sets out a body of written standards covering the environment in which dogs are kept, the socialisation of puppies, record-keeping, and the health tests required for specific breeds. Membership is voluntary, but once enrolled, breeders are subject to periodic inspection by independent assessors — and the scheme publishes what those assessors are expected to examine.
Inspections cover physical conditions: whelping areas, kennel dimensions, hygiene, access to exercise and the social exposure of puppies before sale. Assessors also check documentation: registration papers, veterinary records, and evidence that the breed-specific health tests mandated by the scheme have actually been carried out. For breeds on the Kennel Club's health-testing requirements list — a document the KC updates periodically — the ABS classifies certain tests as mandatory for continued membership, rather than merely recommended.
A grade is recorded against the individual dog, never against the breed.
Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels
Bench numbers double as the day’s entry record.
Photo: Brixiv / PexelsHealth-test requirements vary by breed. Cavalier King Charles spaniels, for instance, are subject to mandatory cardiac and MRI screening requirements as a condition of ABS membership. Hip and elbow scoring, DNA tests for conditions such as progressive retinal atrophy, and eye examinations are mandatory for a range of other breeds under the scheme's published tables.
The scheme operates on a cycle in which new members receive an initial inspection and existing members are subject to re-inspection at intervals, with additional spot checks possible. The Kennel Club publishes headline figures on ABS membership through its annual registration and activity reports; as of figures published in 2023, several thousand breeders held active ABS status across the United Kingdom.
Scheme membership does not, of itself, confer a guarantee of welfare outcomes, and the KC acknowledges that inspections are periodic rather than continuous. Critics have noted the gap between voluntary accreditation and the statutory licensing framework that applies to commercial breeders under the 2018 animal welfare licensing regulations.