The State Duma in the first reading approved amendments to the draft law «On Responsible Treatment of Animals», according to which the regional authorities will be given the authority to decide how to control the number of stray dogs. Information about this is published on the website of the legislative support system.
According to the text of the bill, governors and legislative assemblies plan to give the authority to establish the procedure for the treatment of homeless animals in their territories. In particular, the subjects of the federation will be able to make decisions on the euthanasia and shooting of stray dogs — in fact, the bill will allow the killing of stray animals. At the same time, during the discussion of the bill in the first readings, writes SOTA, some deputies proposed to introduce euthanasia of homeless animals within the framework of federal, not regional legislation.
The corresponding amendments were submitted to the State Duma on April 12. On April 25, it became known that the government gave a positive response to the bill. “Taking into account the unfavorable situation in a number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation related to the treatment of animals without owners and the need to prevent them from causing harm to the life or health of citizens, the proposed changes seem reasonable and ensure the safety and legitimate interests of citizens,” the government recalled.< /p>
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According to the current legislation, it is impossible to euthanize stray animals or apply to them means and medicines that will lead to injury and injury. The only treatment scheme currently permitted for such animals is called OSVV: capture — sterilization — vaccination — release. At the same time, if the bill is passed, the regions will be able to bypass this scheme — for example, they will euthanize or shoot homeless animals.
Opponents of the initiative call the amendments the «law on euthanasia», in many regions they collect signatures against the adoption of the bill and go to protests. In the meantime, animal rights activists do not exclude that the Russian authorities are deliberately in a hurry — the country is running out of money, and killing animals will help save them for some time.
A federal official who is familiar with the progress of the bill’s approval told the Agency that if the regions get the right to decide for themselves how to treat homeless animals, then “this may mean in practice not only shooting, but 90% of this is shooting, which in practice rarely carried out in humane ways.”
Earlier, the authorities of several regions of Russia at once — Bashkortostan, Astrakhan, Saratov, Orenburg and Samara regions, Trans-Baikal, Krasnoyarsk and Primorsky territories — proposed returning to the practice of shooting and euthanizing stray dogs that lead themselves aggressively.
According to Rospotrebnadzor, from 300 to 400 thousand cases of animal attacks on people are recorded annually, of which several dozen are fatal. In March 2023, two people were bitten to death by homeless animals in the Astrakhan region; in April, stray dogs attacked an 8-year-old schoolboy in Orenburg, as a result of which he died.
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