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“MOSKVSKAYA PRAVDA” newspaper
dated 12.05.2006
LEGISLATIVE INCONSISTENCY
Yevgeny Ilyinsky
Autonomous non-profit organization
“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”
Four years ago, radical animal-protection circles pushed through the adoption in Moscow of the municipal program of “humane reduction of the homeless animals population". They began neutering stray dogs and returning them back in the street. As a result, hordes of stray dogs have settled everywhere in Moscow, including areas intended for use by medical institutions, kindergartens, as well as areas reserved for transport and attended to by nature-conservation bodies..
Official data alone say that around 40 persons are bitten by stray dogs in Moscow every day. This year, rabies disease has been registered in two municipal districts of Moscow (South-western administrative district And North-western administrative district). Hundreds of letters requesting to trap the dogs stream to Moscow District Councils and Unified Customer Management Offices each month, but these appeals remain unheeded, because since the neutering decree was passed, removal from the streets of even aggressive stray dogs is regarded illegal, provided there is no animal shelter in the district. But even if there is an animal shelter in a district, nobody can guarantee there are vacancies in it. However, there is a principle of priority of preventive measures in the area of citizens’ health protection, provided for by Article 2 of the RF Law “Fundamentals of RF Legislation on Protection of Citizens’ Health ". Obviously, as far as bites by stray dogs are concerned, preventive measure here may be the trapping of stray dogs before they inflicted bites on humans, not after they did this.
The statements made by executives of municipal services (Comment by site editor: see article "Guardianship became farce" published at "A&F - Moscow" newspaper ¹ 06(656) of 08.02.2006), attending to the handling of homeless animals, contain instructions for humans how to survive if faced by stray dogs. In particular, the instructions say that “when encountering a street horde of stray dogs, it is dangerous to shout, wave one’s hands, jerk, run or ride a bicycle as well as carry meat products". It is also noted that it is necessary “to pass by a stray dog if it is asleep or feeding the pups, not to look a growling dog in the eyes or turn one’s back on the dog". Besides, citizens are advised "not to walks one’s dog in the vicinity of metro stations, foodstuffs storage areas, food stores so as not to disturb the local hordes of stray dogs". And, finally, the survival kit says that if one is attacked by a stray dog, one should “turn one’s side to the dog, put out the elbow-bent arm and where possible, back away slowly”, and if attacked by a horde of stray dogs, one should “climb a tree or a fence”.
Judging by the aforesaid instructions, some areas of our capital city, in my view, may well be regarded as “public disaster” zones. This is exactly a definition of such situations given in the manual titled “Environmental Law in Questions and Answers” issued by the RAS Institute of the State and Law (Moscow, Prospekt, 2001). We have some letters of young mothers who, for fear of stray dogs, cannot go for a walk with their kids; a letter of a pregnant woman who was once attacked by a huge horde of dogs. One of collective letters that reached our organization reads: "We are denied the facilities of the district doctor, postman, janitor for these people have been dog-bitten more than once …". Here is a quotation from another letter: "A horde of stray dogs barely torn my mother to pieces as she was coming out of the temple to the carriage-way so as to board a bus.". All this enables us to suggest that the presence of stray dogs in the streets has changed the economic-and-legal status of some areas in the city, the result being that citizens cannot exercise their right to free movements and access to training facilities; such areas fail to comply with the requirements of health protection and sanitary-epidemiological welfare of the population, security and labor protection, etc.
As I see it, such shameful treatment of Muscovites is a violation not only of the RF Constitution, but also of the Moscow Law “On Provision of Free Access of the Disabled to Moscow Facilities of Social, Transport and Engineering Infrastructure”. This Law was passed in 2001 by way of implementing international agreements and protects the freedom of movements of all slow-moving citizens: the aged, parents with small kinds, and, of course, the disabled. Besides, there are indications of labor protection legislation being violated, including ILO Convention No 155, signed by Russia, on the safety and hygiene of labor and on in-plant environment. After all, media reports indicate that over the last five years attacks of stray dogs on humans in Moscow resulted in the loss of lives: two men (watchmen) died on the job and one woman died as she didn’t have time to walk a few meters to the enterprise where she worked.
The main thesis of radical protectionists of freedom of the dogs is not to trap stray dogs, but leave them all in the streets, proceeding with the “humane” neutering program. However, in my view, it is absurd to talk about humaneness of the said program towards the dogs! It is not uncommon of a horde of dogs to destroy another horde in the struggle for the territory; besides, in any horde, hierarchy is based on incessant bloody fights, in which the weak die. I think, this way dog fights are actually legitimated (incidentally, prohibited by Article 245 of the RF Criminal Code)! As for other, less protected animal species, in these artificially created conditions of “natural selection”, they are simply fed to the dominant predator, i.e. stray dogs that not only have exterminated nearly all homeless cats in some Moscow districts, but also have annihilated part of the land fauna in the city’s nature-protection zones. Biologists and game scientists worldwide have long regarded feral dogs number one exterminators of wild fauna. 15 species of the currently exterminated animals in the capital city have been entered in the Moscow Red Data Book. Meanwhile, in keeping with the Moscow Law “on the Scheme of Development and Location of Specially-protected Natural Areas in Moscow” passed in 2005, such territories as ecological and natural-and-historic parks, game reserves and reserve areas, natural monuments will occupy up to 40% of the area of some of Moscow’s administrative districts. And one of the main functions of all these nooks of nature is defined as conservation and restoration of biodiversity, habitats of rare and vanishing animal species. However, it is rather problematic to talk about conservation in conditions of free habitation of the dogs, all the more so about restoration of biodiversity, and, consequently, about the implementation of federal legislation and international agreements signed by Russia. As a result, funds allocated by Moscow Government for the protection of rare and vanishing animal species will be wasted, adding to the costs of the failed adoption of the municipal program of neutering homeless animals. The said costs have amounted to Rbls. 175.9 million over the last four years, not counting the Ruble equivalent of the harm inflicted on the state by the said program. According to the Federal State Health-care Facility: “In Moscow as a whole, in 2005, economic damage resulting from animal bites inflicted on humans, without counting the price of anti-rabies drugs, amounted to Rbls. 79 million,164 thousand.". However, although the program, in my view, is inconsistent with its main goal of “humane reduction of the homeless animals population”, Rbls. 76 million is allocated to finance it from the 206 Moscow budget.
Besides, in my opinion, the Moscow neutering program runs afoul of the ecological standards of handling animals that are integrated into the economic-and-legal system of the European Community countries. The Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation between Russia and the European Community signed in 1997 necessitates the development of like codes and standards in the field of ensuring environmental safety of citizens, including the context of removal of stray dogs from the streets. Organizations regarded as the leaders of the world animal-protection movement have never advocated the presence of stray dogs in the streets, as protection of humans from animals constitutes an integral part of the European animal-protection doctrine. Even more unacceptable to the countries of the European Community are the attempts of our capital-city managers to finance from the state budget programs encouraging the habitation of dogs in abeyance, which programs, in fact, are the programs breaking all regulations of keeping the dogs. In all advanced countries, dogs found in a city without the owner are subject to mandatory trapping and placement in state-run animal shelters that are obliged to admit animals without any restrictions. The animals, for which the owner cannot be found during the period of their stay at the shelter, shall be given a painless lethal injection. Unless this is done, any animal shelter is sure to get congested in no time, which will paralyze further admission of animals, and they will again be thrown out into the street. Such is the procedure used in countries, where animal-protection legislation may be regarded as a model of humaneness. These countries are the whole of Western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan… As far as neutering is concerned, this is applied not to homeless animals, at all: they neuter pet dogs and cats to prevent a possible surplus of animals, which leads to the arrival of homeless animals. Such neutering is not financed from the state budget, but at the expense of the pet owners: they are interested in neutering their pets, because in return the state reduces the animal tax they have to pay and provides other benefits for them.
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