Helping to train South Yorkshire Police Force’s sniffer dogs

Way back in February 2024 I had a rather unusual request from Dan Lumley, a police sergeant with South Yorkshire Police (SYP) Dog handing Unit: “I am hoping to speak with a member of staff, who may be able to advise on establishing an agreed, ethical route, for procuring seminal fluid. This human tissue would be used for training and maintaining our Victim Recovery (VR) / Forensic Evidence Detection (FED) police search dogs, and I intend on creating a gold standard for procurement, storage, training use, documentation, and disposal. It may even prove useful for other police forces across the UK for future benchmarking.” 

I was intrigued and messaged back to find out more. Dan told me they have 3 licensed VR/FED search teams, who deploy throughout the UK, in support of homicides, missing people searches, and serious sexual offences. He explained how crucial these dogs are in their investigations. For example, if they have a report of a sexual offence taking place in woodland, then a team of police officers could visually scour the area for days and not find any physical evidence of the crime. However, send out a sniffer dog, trained specifically to be able to locate scents such as semen, and they’re able to significantly narrow down the search area and increase the likelihood of finding crucial evidence that may lead to a conviction.

Dan also told me that, until early 2024, police officers across the UK were “unofficially” providing semen samples for this training, but around this time had been instructed to only use samples procured via a formal pathway. Without having this in place, police dogs across the UK were at real risk of losing their scent pairing for human semen. Put across in those terms, it felt like a no-brainer to at least try and help.

police dogs across the UK were at real risk of losing their scent pairing for human semen

The first challenge was figuring out which regulatory body this would fall under. The Human Tissue Authority (HTA) designated individual for our Trust had some helpful guidance. The HTA has remit over cellular human material except for gametes so, because semen contains cells other than gametes, in theory this project would fall under their remit. However, the activities we were proposing to use the semen for weren’t included in those licensable by the HTA.

Next stop was to contact the HFEA’s Director of Compliance, who was extremely helpful. She explained that the 2009 Special Exemption Regulations, developed for gametes to be used for “other purposes” without the need for a licence, could apply. For example, it is permissible to store gametes for teaching, provided they are not subsequently used for a licensable activity, and that no money is given or received for the gametes. What this didn’t take account of is that it would be dogs being trained in this instance, not people. A second option would be to use dead sperm, which wouldn’t fall within the HFEA’s remit. If using this option, we would need to validate whatever process we were using to render the sperm non-viable, and do this with minimum alteration to the semen scent.

This then led us on to the question of consent. There is a HTA principle that, in the context of research, if a sample taken for treatment (e.g. surgery for a cancer) is genuinely surplus and due for disposal, it can be used for research without consent if the sample is anonymised. Our HTA designated individual suggested that this principle could potentially apply in this case. However, the HFEA suggested that, if using the “dead sperm” route, “at the time of donation, the sperm is live and thus the clinic will need to comply with all the usual legal requirements including fully informed, written consent and provision of information”. Regulatory requirements aside, it just didn’t feel right to not inform patients that we might be using their leftover semen samples for this purpose, and to have their written consent.

To help us consider the moral and ethical questions, the project was presented at and discussed, at length, twice by Jessop Fertility’s Ethics Committee before being approved. There were, rightly, certain conditions attached, including informed consent for participants.

The project was met with varying degrees of approval as I presented it to the interested parties within our Trust: the legal team, the Quality Director and the Directorate Governance team were all involved.

the project was presented at and discussed, at length, twice by Jessop Fertility’s Ethics Committee before being approved

Once we had the go ahead from all parties, a protocol was developed to obtain consent from individuals attending for post-vasectomy semen analysis to donate their semen to SYP. Only azoospermic samples would be included, as it was thought that the absence of sperm may aid with recruitment rates although, in hindsight, this may not actually be the case. A memorandum of understanding between the Trust and SYP was put in place.

Now that the project is up and running, patients are sent an information leaflet in advance of their appointment and they provide consent on the day of semen analysis. Once analysis is complete, azoospermic samples are anonymised and stored at -20°C until collected by SYP in batches. If any sperm are observed then the sample is discarded.

Between April and August 2025, 15/17 patients who received the information leaflet consented to take part. 11/15 were azoospermic, so their samples were suitable for use in the project. What is encouraging is that feedback from patients has generally been positive, and uptake has been better than expected.

Although time-consuming and complicated to set up, this has been a worthwhile project. There was a real risk that UK police sniffer dogs may have lost the training to detect semen to aid investigations into suspected sexual crimes. Plus I got to meet Trevor, SYP’s expert cocker spaniel sniffer dog!

There are around 20 police forces in the UK that need access to human semen for training their FED/VR dogs. If you would be interested in talking to your local police dog handling unit about setting this up in your area, please get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to share our protocol and documents, and put you in touch with your local police force.

Helen Clarke, Jessop Fertility, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals HNS Foundation Trust. helen.clarke44@nhs.net