How does it happen? How does an organisation end up doing the opposite of what it was established to do? This month marks the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: the world’s oldest animal welfare organisation. I wonder what there is to celebrate.

If you mistreat your dog or cat or horse or rabbit, you can expect an investigation by the RSPCA. If the case is serious enough, it could lead to prosecution. If you abuse animals on an industrial scale, you might face not investigation and prosecution, but active support and a public relations campaign to help you sell your products.

This is the conclusion of the deepest and most wide-ranging report yet conducted into something called RSPCA Assured. When you see meat or fish or eggs in the supermarket, you might find the RSPCA’s stamp of approval on the packaging, telling you that the animals they came from benefited from “high welfare” farming. It might seem odd that an organisation devoted to animals is promoting their exploitation and killing. It seems odder still when you discover that this “high welfare” farming includes massive factory farms, indistinguishable from the norm, in which animals live short, distressing lives before being trucked away to be stunned and slaughtered.

The new report, by the organisation Animal Rising, is by no means the first exposure of shocking standards on farms assured by the RSPCA. But while most previous investigations have revealed specific instances of abuse, and have been treated by the RSPCA as isolated cases, this is the first whose scale appears to suggest that the problem is systemic. Animal Rising reporters conducted 60 investigations across 45........

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