[ad_1]
October 4th marks World Animal Day, a world day of motion for the rights and welfare of animals that’s celebrated in Greece and throughout the world.
The day can also be the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals in Western Christianity.

The problem of the rights of animals in Greece is critical, and it got here to the forefront after a sequence of stunning and brutal crimes in opposition to animals occurred in Greece in 2020.
The Greek Parliament accredited a brand new regulation on pet possession in September, which PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated will create guidelines in order that no animal “will be abandoned, or abused.
“Greece is changing and is finally adopting a modern legal framework for the protection of pets,” Mitsotakis tweeted earlier than the vote in Parliament.
Major provisions of new pet regulation in Greece
The new regulation stipulates that pet abuse will carry stricter fines and can now embody acts akin to abandonment, capturing, intentional damage and poisoning.
Other provisions embody:
- Records of individuals who have been sentenced for torturing animals can be entered right into a database managed by the Athens prosecutor’s workplace and be cross-referenced with the Pet Registry in order that they might not register as pet homeowners in the future.
- A pet DNA evaluation and storage financial institution can also be being arrange, in order that if an animal is deserted the proprietor may be simply situated and be penalized accordingly.
- The main change introduced alongside by the new invoice is the new digital well being e book for all pets, which is able to embody a full medical historical past and can be accessible by each homeowners and veterinarians.
- Banning cat and canine gross sales at pet outlets, along with a ban on mating advertorials: the advantageous for publishing a mating advert can be greater than tripled when not referencing the pet’s distinctive ID microchip quantity and the new copy license.
- The sale of pets will solely be allowed by accredited breeders and homeowners. Pet adoption charges can be forbidden, aside from transportation and medical therapy prices.
- New guidelines are launched for breeding as effectively: homeowners can be licensed for one litter per pet, whereas potential homeowners of offspring should be formally registered.
- Neutering will develop into obligatory for all homeowners, with some medical exceptions. Approved licensed breeders can be fined 2,000 euros in the event that they mate a single animal greater than six occasions. Amateur (so-called ‘back yard’) breeders may even be subjected to a number of new restrictive guidelines.
- Neutering must be finished inside six months of the pet’s acquisition if the animal is a couple of yr outdated. In case of acquisition of an animal lower than one yr outdated, neutering takes place inside the first six months after the completion of the first yr. This deadline could fluctuate relying on the breed of the animal and different particular traits, after an intensive veterinarian opinion.
- Neutering isn’t obligatory for animals for which a pattern of their genetic materials (DNA) has been despatched to the Laboratory for Conservation and Analysis of Pet Material Genetic Material.
- In case the animal proprietor doesn’t sterilize his pet or doesn’t ship in a DNA pattern, a advantageous of 1,000 euros can be imposed and the proprietor can be given a three-month interval to sterilize or ship a pattern of the animal’s genetic materials. In the occasion that this deadline additionally passes with out motion, the advantageous can be imposed once more.
- Finally, a brand new National Pet Registry can be launched, the place all pets, both owned or stray, should be registered, together with pets put up for adoption. Animal welfare associations, vets, breeders and animal shelters will all must register too.
In order to encourage homeowners to take higher care of their pets, the invoice introduces incentives by municipalities, akin to a discount in metropolis taxes by as much as 10 %.
Scrutiny over therapy of donkeys in Santorini
Santorini is sometimes called a vacationer paradise. However, for the island’s donkeys, which can be thought of to be an attraction, the case is totally different.
Having to hold vacationers from cruise ships as much as the city of Fira below the scorching Greek solar of the summer season months for numerous hours day-after-day, these donkeys reside a life removed from paradise.
Many experiences have come out to the public exhibiting the ranges of neglect, over-work and mistreatment that these animals have endured for years.
”Their ligaments can develop into stretched over time to the level they’re crippled and their backs are progressively compressed right into a saddle again they usually can not carry something. They are resilient animals and simply maintain taking it again and again till one morning they drop lifeless,” stated Tim Wass, director of the Safe Haven for Donkeys in an interview with the British Daily Mail in 2018.
But it’s not simply donkeys.
World Animal Day brings consciousness to animal rights in Greece
Stray canines are half of an unbroken picture not simply of Athens, however of most Greek cities.
According to Greek animal charities, a couple of million stray canines and cats reside on Greek streets.
Most of them are pleasant however the inhumane circumstances below which they’re pressured to dwell, particularly throughout the scorching summer season days and chilly winter nights, would possibly make them aggressive, contemplating the lack of meals and assaults most of them expertise every day.
The monetary disaster that savaged Greece for almost a decade has made the state of affairs even worse.
Countless Greek households left their pets on the streets as they couldn’t afford their care anymore. This, mixed with the lack of training and funding by the Greek authorities has left hundreds of animals with out sterilization, leading to an growing quantity of canines and cats residing on the streets.
World Animal Day’s objective is to “increase awareness and education to create a world where animals are always recognized as sentient beings and full regard is always paid to their welfare,” and Greece’s pet regulation could also be a primary step towards that objective.
[ad_2]