Shame on the RSPCA! 

There are two possibilities here.

Firstly in the 18 months since the succession the highly paid leadership team of the RSPCA failed in their duty to risk assess the impact of this.

Or secondly they did their duty, understood the risk and went ahead anyway. 

In the second case the only reason would be to facilitate getting honours. 

Whatever happened it is an utter failure of leadership.