The Prosecutor General's Office has called for regions to make it more difficult to kill stray animals

The Prosecutor General's Office considers some provisions of the federal law on the treatment of animals to be unconstitutional. This was stated at a session of the Constitutional Court by the Prosecutor General's representative in the Constitutional Court, Vyacheslav Rosinsky, RBC reports .

According to Rosinsky, several provisions that give regional authorities the right to decide independently what to do with homeless animals should be declared unconstitutional. We are talking about parts 1, 2, 5 and 7 of Article 18 of the Federal Law "On Responsible Treatment of Animals". They list the rules for handling animals with the note: "unless otherwise established by legislative acts of the subjects of the Russian Federation."

Thus, in these four parts of the law, "the priority of the legislation of the subject over the federal law is declared," Rosinsky said. In practice, this allows regions to bypass the federal law.

He cited as an example how decisions are made to kill stray animals in the Republic of Buryatia. According to Rosinsky, Article 16 of the Federal Law allows animals to be killed only if they are experiencing unbearable physical suffering. This must be confirmed by veterinarians. However, in Buryatia, animals can be killed based on other criteria, for example, if they behave aggressively when being caught, do not eat food after being caught, bark and move toward the source of a loud noise, or try to escape from the enclosure.

“That is, in essence, the grounds for killing are natural behavioral reactions,” Rosinsky said.

In addition, according to him, in Buryatia, the degree of danger of a homeless animal to a person is determined by specialists of temporary animal holding centers, and not veterinarians. The representative of the Prosecutor General's Office called for getting rid of the contradictions that exist in the law.

Last summer, amendments to the law "On Responsible Treatment of Animals" were adopted in Russia. After that, some Russian regions, including Astrakhan and Magadan regions, Buryatia , Altai and Chukotka , adopted local laws allowing the killing of stray animals.

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