A bill has been submitted to the State Duma that obliges owners of pets to register them for identification and accounting. The text of the document was published in the electronic database of the lower house of parliament.
According to the initiative of the Legislative Assembly of Bashkiria, which introduced the draft law, it is proposed to supplement Art. 9 of the Federal Law of December 27, 2018 No. 498 “On the Responsible Treatment of Animals and on Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation”, which establishes general requirements for the keeping of animals.
The authors of the bill proposed to supplement the general requirements with a provision on the obligation of animal owners to comply with the requirements of the veterinary legislation of the Russian Federation “for the identification and registration of animals.”
Currently, the provisions on chipping animals are provided only by veterinary legislation, indicated in the explanatory note to the document. In particular, Art. 25 of the Law of the Russian Federation “On Veterinary Medicine” stipulates that animals, with the exception of wild animals, which are “in a state of natural freedom”, are subject to registration and identification in order to prevent the spread of infections.
Meanwhile, the above norm does not work in practice, and the general chipping of animals has not become a widespread phenomenon, the authors of the initiative pointed out. The absence of a mention of this procedure in the Law “On Responsible Treatment of Animals” makes many of the provisions of this law formal and ineffective, the bill notes.
Obligatory registration of pets will allow solving a number of important issues, for example, to facilitate the search for a lost animal or to bring unscrupulous owners to justice for animals abandoned or attacked by humans.
“Cases of attacks by dogs on people are quite common, but, as a rule, the owner who lets the pet go for a walk without a leash and muzzle avoids responsibility, since it is almost impossible to prove the dog’s ownership. If the dog is microchipped, it will be possible to establish the owner almost immediately, ”the text of the bill says.
It was proposed to entrust the procedure for registration of animals to the federal executive body. The list of animal species subject to identification and registration is approved by the order of the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia.
Earlier, on April 15, the head of the State Duma Committee on Ecology and Environmental Protection, Vladimir Burmatov, said that the draft law of the Ministry of Agriculture establishing the norms on compulsory registration and labeling of animals received a positive conclusion from the government and will be submitted to the State Duma in the fall.
He clarified that the project will prescribe in the Code of Administrative Offenses responsibility for discarded pets and animals that have harmed humans.