Since October 2017, the lower house of the Russian parliament has passed more laws on the protection of animals than six previous convocations - about 15 initiatives. This was stated by Vladimir Burmatov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology and Environmental Protection, in an interview with Parlamentskaya Gazeta.
At the same time, the State Duma cannot pass the bill on the responsible treatment of animals, which has not advanced beyond the first reading since 2010.
Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology and Environmental Protection Vladimir Burmatov, who headed this committee exactly a year ago, explained what and who is hindering the adoption of the law on the responsible treatment of animals:
“Formally, a number of departments do not have positions on key issues that cannot agree on these positions with each other.
For this reason, we had to separately adopt a law prohibiting contact attachment.
Now such a stumbling block is the issue of registration of animals and a number of controversial issues that we had to completely take out of this law.
Probably, we are slowly holding conciliation commissions, where we invite all ministries to work out a common position, we try to take into account all comments, hear everyone, and so on.
We sort of remove all disagreements, and then they arise again. This law never hangs with us. This question should be addressed to those departments that cannot find a common language, being in neighboring offices or neighboring buildings."
Promotional video:
Further, the interlocutor shared information about the existence of groups of persons who prevent the case from moving forward:
“There are a number of very good legislative acts on veterinary medicine, which, since 2015, allow the registration of all animals, including chipping, accounting and everything, everything, everything. But since the Ministry of Agriculture had no desire, this norm has not worked since 2015.
This law is actually dead. We absolutely do not need such a situation. Another point that should not be removed from the accounts. Various lobbying groups are extremely not interested in adopting this law: for example, licensing circuses, additional guarantees for the operation of shelters, which makes it possible to return sterilized and vaccinated animals from the shelter to their natural habitat, contact zoos, which we unequivocally prohibit this law.
A huge business - traveling circuses and tent, which go through the licensing procedure, according to this law, for the most part will be forced to close.
This is hundreds of millions of rubles in turnover. At one time, I called them the conveyor of death, because there really is a massive and painful extermination of animals.
But there are people who make money on it. We consider it our priority to adopt a law on the responsible treatment of animals, but not everyone is satisfied with our zeal in this direction."
As for the problem with fighting dogs, Vladimir Burmatov said that the committee headed by him proposed "to introduce their registration, but not to use the term 'fighting dogs' itself, because there are no fighting dogs."
“We will discuss the list of dog breeds, registration of which is mandatory, and for which the rules of walking are introduced - a muzzle and a leash.
The list is formed by the government of the Russian Federation. We have a clear position on the prohibition of keeping potentially dangerous breeds of animals in apartment buildings, garden associations, summer cottages, and so on.
This is a very serious problem. Enough of the tragedies associated with the death of the animals themselves, and with the death of people from the attack of such animals.
We definitely need to stop this. This is a bad practice. Tigers, bears, cougars, lynxes, crocodiles, poisonous snakes - all these animals are now kept in apartments, in high-rise buildings.
And when they attack people, you cannot even start a criminal case, because according to the current legislation, the rules for keeping such animals are not violated. Such an owner cannot be charged, so we are definitely in favor of banning the keeping of such animals,”added Vladimir Burmatov.
GORGE BOOKKER