A new bill has been approved in parliament that could see the end to Portugal’s municipal kennel system putting down thousands of cats and dogs each year.
The proposal still requires final approval to be passed into law but MPs say that in this case the new law almost certainly will pass through the necessary legislative process and animals can look forward to the chance of freedom and happiness, rather than lethal injection.
Local council chiefs are not all happy as many already over-stretched kennels face serious overcrowding with a consequent need for additional funding for food and medical supplies. New facilities may have to be built in many council areas.
Council vets will have to sterilise animals in their care (within 15 days) before trying to find suitable new owners. Cats can be released back onto the streets after they have been sterilised if the council facilities are overcrowded.
If the animal is seriously ill or vicious, killing it ‘will be considered’ at the newly named Animal Collection Centres.
The People Animals Nature party claims that 100,000 cats and dogs are killed off by council vets each year. If this figure is correct, then under the new legislation, close to 100,000 cats and dogs each year will be looking for new homes as soon as the legislation is passed.
Comments
Damien's follow up remark "OK calling all Portuguese pondlife when so many are supposedly mixed race was unfair to the other races diluting the mix." is just more of the same.
Where do you draw the line? The constant anti-Portuguese racism, coming from what I suspect is a handful of posters using multiple pseudonyms, needs challenging at least.
"Us northern lot imagine that laws are there to be followed when in fact they are there as a challenge."
I know what you mean, and I think the Portuguese may be ahead of us in this one: Laws in the UK are increasingly only there to control the common people - the rich elites can afford the right lawyers and avoid any inconveniences the rest of us suffer.
Senseless bureaucracy and incomprehensible rules are a hangover from any dictatorship which aimed to keep order by establishing a huge military, a sprawling civil service - and a basic agricultural sector
to keep the majority of workers busy and too tired to complain.
Forty years later the grip of the old system still holds firm at local government and council level.
The national government tries from time to time to introduce changes, the current Simplex+ scheme is a good example but this already is years old and only just being picked at.
There is joy when simple things like doing away with the need for addresses on driving licenses is introduced. The fact that a replacement license was taking well over a year to process is lost in the celebration and getting a icense every time you moved house was annoying for anyone moving.
The dog and cat cull might end but chaos may reign as some kennels may stop accepting animals when the facility is full, stop accepting animals when there is no medicine, refuse to get involved with 'homing' animals - relying on the charitable sector- and not sterilising animals due to lack of equipment and medical materials.
As for the pond life quote, it takes a degree of ingrained cunning to get around the various laws with an ease which many locals have learned from the cradle. Us northern lot imagine that laws are there to be followed when in fact they are there as a challenge.
The microchipping fiasco is a good example. Yes, dogs are microchipped but often with no link to their registered owners who wish to remain anonymous. Viola, the law is adhered to and is completely useless for the intended purpose.
As Ms Williams asks - why is there no 'common sense' direct linkage between the vet micro-chipping an animal and direct entry on the pan European National Database? A UK micro chipped animal can be checked anywhere in Europe and each micro chip can be cross referenced back to the UK vet allocated it. In Portugal even the neighbouring Concelho can check nothing.
Why does anyone in the UK want to keep in a Trade Grouping that is attempting to standardise all it does but which includes another country that - so often intentionally - continues doing the opposite of what is required?
And in a month or so, in a cruel parody of BBC Springwatch's fledglings leaving the nest - we will see the annual Summer release of Portuguese abandoned dogs whilst the unidentifiable owner goes on holiday for weeks.
I remove very few readers' comments but you are close...
Ed
Fortunately this time around the Northern European Master Race doesn´t need to break out the Zyklon B, austerity does the job just as well and is great for profits too!
Given Portugal's hopeless situation at the moment have any of the more travelled Portuguese figured out that it is not black cats and dogs that have caused the country its dire problems? That far more obviously to an impartial observer the cause is the Portuguese genetic mix - a cross between pondlife with some traces of ape ?
As a previous commenter pointed out - still the intentional gaps in place when micro-chipping the animal. So that a vet microchips the animal but makes no record of doing so. Even though being allocated microchips 100 - 120 but this list having being conveniently 'lost'. To widen the gap between owner and dog the legal requirement is that the owner must then register the animal at the Freguesia. Who inform the National Record. Common sense should make it the vets responsibility to combine chip with owner at the Freguesia and in the National Record but this is Portugal. The phrase 'common sense' not being comprehended here or easily translatable into everyday meaning.
But this scam usefully allowing untold thousands of Portuguese citizens - particularly hunters - not to make the journey to the Freguesia. So if the dog is ever found it remains unidentifiable. Unless just conceivably the dog is linked to the hunter who then gets let off with an un-logged caution rather than any punishment.
Then realise that exactly the same staff that were killing the animals as before will remain in place. Collecting them as before but now keeping them and in theory - re-homing them. No new thinking or energy. No idea of re-training the animals for new homes. Or the staff for a new approach.