To protect animals effectively from cruelty, Ukraine needs to refine its legislation and establish clear regulatory approaches at the level of local authorities and civil society organisations. A new working group set up by the Ministry of Economy will determine what currently hinders animal protection and how to address it.
As reported by the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture, the group comprises 30 members and will be headed by Deputy Minister Oleksandr Krasnolutskyi.
Work priorities
Regulation should address pressing problems, so the group is to study the current situation and identify what exactly prevents the effective protection of domestic, stray and wild animals.
The working group must analyse the current legislation and provide recommendations on how to amend it so that animal protection is truly effective and follows the principles applied in the European Union.
Any law should work in practice and have a clear hierarchy of those responsible for different areas of work. The group therefore plans to improve the enforcement of legal provisions and to establish cooperation between all parties involved – state authorities, local self-government bodies, the public and experts.
The Ministry of Economy added that the working group's proposals should become the basis for legislative changes and for improving their practical application. Particular attention should be paid to solutions that give the authorities and civil society organisations more tools to respond to cases of animal cruelty.
As a reminder, in January the Verkhovna Rada supported in the first reading Bill No. 11328, which is intended to strengthen liability for animal cruelty and broadens the list of its forms. In particular, it is to ban "cosmetic" veterinary procedures such as ear and tail cropping or devocalisation. A more detailed analysis by EcoPolitic is available in this article.
At the same time, a group of MPs has initiated Bill No. 15431 on hunting, which experts and the public consider extremely cruel. The document would allow hunting during the silence season, add a list of "harmful animals" and create a controversial Agency that would oversee itself.
