Britains Ban Tail Docking

The Council of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), the regulatory body for vets in the United Kingdom, has voted unanimously to support a ban on non-therapeutic canine tail docking. The ban is included as an amendment to Animal Welfare Bill. The ban will be reviewed after five years to see if there has been a significant increase in tail injuries due to undocked tails.

The previous RCVS standards forbid tail-docking except in therapeutic or truly prophylactic cases. So why add the tail-docking amendment into this bill? Because the RCVS said there were still too many vets docking tails for other reasons (as in maintaining breed standards of tail length) and that it was too hard to enforce their previous standards without making offending vets prove that the docking was only done for therapeutic reasons.

What do you think about tail docking? Should it be respected as part of a breed standard or should it be banned and breed standards made to change?