Romania: Tougher laws for acts of cruelty against animals

Recipients:

Government of Romania
Romanian Parliament
General Prosecutor of Romania
Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform
National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority

We the undersigned urge tougher laws to prevent abuses on animals and tougher sanctions against those who violate these laws.

ANIMALS NEED PROTECTION AGAINST ABUSE!

PEOPLE NEED THE ANIMALS TO BE PROTECTED AGAINST ABUSE!

Animals cannot defend themselves!

Defending the defenceless beings is both ethical goal and practice without which no civilization can exist!

Cruelty to animals IS preamble to cruelty towards humans.

Protecting animals - protect the people.

We, the undersigned ask you urgently to enforce the law and punish those who commit abuses against animals and those who refuse to sanction such abuses.

BECAUSE:

In Romania a man, Adrian Priscu, was killed because he stepped in to defend a stray dog;

In Romania thousands of puppies and kittens continue to be abandoned each year;

Stray animals in Romania continue to be beaten, tortured, poisoned or killed by the tens of thousands by more or less barbaric methods in the city halls shelters;

In Romania the dogs continue to be kept for years in chains, beaten, starved, deprived of veterinarian and minimum, basic care, abandoned and sometimes brutally killed by their owners;

In Romania the horses continue to be beaten, exploited to exhaustion, abandoned and sometimes cruelly killed by their owners;

In Romania the bears continue to be caught and kept in squalid cages by owners of hotels and lodges ;

In Romania still there are zoos with undernourished animals, deprived of minimum care, living encaged for their whole existence in tight cages;

In Romania the so-called scavenger bears, bears feeding on rubbish bins, continue to be relocated in hunting areas patronized in shadow by some politicians so that they become "hunting trophies" that can be obtained without any effort;

In Romania young deer continue to be killed by poachers by snare or scythe;

In Romania, the Eldorado of Europe's wildlife, a crowned head shot in a single day three pregnant bears; dozens of multimillionaires from around the world continue to take delight year after year by slaughtering wild boars kept in enclosures while other hundreds of hunters spend hundreds of thousands of Euros in real mass killing of animals;

In Romania, a representative of the authorities cynically proposed to organize a referendum on the battery hens by asking the hens "to say%u201D whether they are stressed or not with the conditions they live in;

In Romania, travelling circuses continues to flaunt unashamedly their collections of
tortured lions, tigers, crocodiles, elephants and hippos;

In Romania foxes continue to be killed by %u201Ccautious%u201D landowners by bludgeoning them to death with bats, stones and axes;

In Romania people continue to NOT to stun pigs and lambs before slaughtering them, maintaining that it is the suffering of animals that is the nature of these 'traditions'

Even if the animal cruelty has become an offence in Romania since January 2008 
                                                 YET

In this country NOBODY has ever paid any criminal fine or has ever been jailed for cruelty to animals!

Therefore we ask you urgently to complete and update the legislation on animal
welfare by:

1. putting in place programs for civilized and efficient management of stray animals;

2. banning the use of wild animals in circuses;

3. ensuring real protection to the wildlife of Romania

4. banning the fur farms;

5. replacing experiments on animals with alternative research methods

6. providing shelters for abandoned horses and other large animals;

7. providing the animal protection organizations wider powers to monitor the compliance with the law;

8. setting up the Animal Police as a government institution

9. increasing the fines and penalties / criminal penalties for animal abuse;

10. imposing to all persons working with animals to attend mandatory education on animal welfare;

11. introducing courses on animal welfare into school curricula;

12. banning all slaughter methods that cause animal suffering and imposing mandatory stunning of all animals that go for slaughter

We ask you to make these laws tougher and to enforce them!
 It stands in your power and is your duty!