ROMANIA, PARLIAMENT VOTES FOR EUTHANASIA AFTER 14 DAYS AS MAIN TOOL - TO MANAGE THE STRAY DOG POPULATION. The Government is ignoring the European Convention on Companion Animals and Written Declaration 26/2011 approved by EU Parliament. After being stuck for 2 years at the Public Administration ommission, suddenly the new law on dog population management was pproved this morning by Romanian Parliament with a relevant majority of votes. Dogs will be killed after 14 days in municipality pounds, unless Mayors will have the financial resources to keep the animals longer. The new law cancels the principle stated in the 9/2008 law, which forbid euthanasia on healthy and sociable dogs. The reason of this unexpected evolution is evident: the tragic death of a 4 years old boy, last week, allegedly killed by a pack of stray dogs in a very unclear context, has given the opportunity to Romanian politicians to finalize a killing law almost without a protest rising from the public. In fact, the law has been lying at the Commission without a reasonable explanation for 20 months, and the pressure of animal welfare groups didn’t succeed in accelerating the process. We think there has been a political will to wait for the right moment to finalize the law, and the right moment has come. Counting on the emotional wave created by the sad death of the little boy, all political parties – even those who had previously supported other approaches – have voted for the killing law. Only a few Mayors (among which the ones from Timisoara and Sibiu) dared to make public statements against euthanasia, not considered to be an effective tool to fight the plight of stray dogs. “Bucharest Municipality killed 144.000 dogs between 2001 and 2007 – states Save the Dogs president Sara Turetta – and spent 14 million euro on the program. After the no-kill law was approved in 2008, the public administration kept pouring 3 million euro per year in the stray dog department, without performing more than 6.000 sterilizations per year, which is a ridiculous amount. Now everybody claims that sterilizations have failed, but they have not been performed intensively as they should have and all the other measures suggested by NGOs have been ignored”. Indeed, neither the mandatory identification of owned dogs was introduced nor the compulsory sterilization of dogs kept in yards. The new law, in fact, brings Romania back to 2001, when a similar Ordinance allowed the killing of hundreds of thousands of dogs all over the country. Even if that Ordinance has showed not to be efficient, Romania prefers to ignore the European Convention on Companion Animals – which says clearly that euthanasia is not effective in solving the problem – and even the Written Declaration 26/11, launched paradoxically by two Romanian MEPs: Daciana Sarbu and Adina Valean, both extremely quiet during these days. Source: Save the Dogs savethedogs.eu/romania-il-parlamento-reintroduce-l’eutanasia-come-strumento-per-la-gestione-del-randagismo/lang-pref/en/
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:59:15 +0000
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