Animal Neglect 91 Children may also simply grow out of human-animal companionship as other priorities dominate When dietary and mental health needs are not provided for, such that this constitutes abuse; even where such abuse is accidental, this neglect can have severe mental and physical consequences for a non-human companion Secondly, accidental neglect can be indicative of an anthropogenic notion that non-human animal lives carry less importance than human lives and indeed of wider negative attitudes towards (all) other vulnerable members of a family including spouses or children (briefly discussed later) Thus neglect may be symptomatic of tolerance towards animal abuse which Nurse (2013) concluded includes inflicting cruelty either directly or indirectly, or failing to comply with statutory animal welfare standards such that a non-human animal incurs harm, injury, suffering or distress, either by human act or omission Omission is central to neglect, but arguably whether the omission is deliberate or accidental is irrelevant; this chapter argues that neglect, in its various forms, constitutes animal abuse Actions arising from well-meaning activity but which nevertheless result in neglect are also abuse This chapter considers both deliberate and accidental neglect and also examines how some neglect, in addition to being accidental, may arise from good intentions Nathanson (2009, p 307) and other researchers have also examined the phenomenon of animal hoarding, ‘a deviant behaviour associated with extremely deleterious conditions of comorbid animal and selfneglect’, where individuals attempt to take care of more animals than is practical and neglect is the result While hoarding is covered in more detail in another chapter within this volume (see chapter on Animal Hoarding herein), Nurse (2013, pp 92–93) identifies that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) and environmental health agencies in the UK (and their respective organisations in other countries) frequently deal with these unlawful neglect cases The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) also estimates 900–2,000 new cases of animal hoarding every year in the USA (ASPCA 2015) The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) has also identified that over a third of the thousands of cases on its animal cruelty database are of neglect It states neglect as being among the most common animal abuse problems reported and one of the most significant animal cruelty problems in the USA today (Otto 2007, p 4) Reliable UK figures on neglect are unavailable Hoarding is, thus, a social problem and, represents neglect through omission where abuse is caused by a failure to adequately care for companions The RSPCA defines a hoarder as somebody who has accumulated a large number of