Breeding of Companion Animals
By the Animal Protection Act "Pet breeding for the purpose of sale with three or more breeding females cannot commence without decision on the fulfillment of the requirements issued by the competent authority." (�l. 49, st. 1).
Existing text should be altered: "Pet breeding for the purpose of sale cannot commence without decision on fulfillment of the requirements / registration issued by the competent authority."
Explanation: The Animal Friends Croatia association is completely opposed to breeding and selling animals as well as their exploitation and the manipulation of their reproductive systems. However, with citizens' current state of awareness and existing pet breeders in mind, it is necessary to register anyone engaged in pet breeding and selling animals, regardless of the number of "breeding females," because those with less than three breeding females are now out of control and represent the grey zone of pet breeding.
There is no legal basis for only those with three or more "breeding females" to be registered. As an example, someone can have two dog "breeding females" and each female can have two broods per year with the average of five puppies. That means an unregistered pet breeder could be making an unrecorded profit on twenty dogs per year, and more importantly, that profit would not subject to the Rules governing the conditions under which pet breeding may be intended for sale.
Therefore it is clear that pet breeding with less than three "breeding females" can affect the market as well as the well-being of the animals. Supervision and registration of such pet breeding would contribute to concrete control and protection of animals, as well as influence the reduction of animal abandonment.
Legal regulations define the same market conditions for everyone, regardless of the number of "breeding females" or any another kind of trade not related to living beings. It's absurd that those making brandy for their own purposes must be registered or face a fine of 2-6 thousand kunas, while registration for selling living beings and earning money by breeding them is not required and thus the conditions of their breeding are unregulated.
It is unquestionable that unregistered pet breeders violate provisions of the Personal Income Tax Act and the Act on the Prohibition and Prevention of conducting unregistered business. The law defines a taxpayer as a physical person with income. Pet breeders in general, and especially those with less than three females, are often unregistered but still profiting several times per year, and are therefore damaging their country by a substantial sum.
Thereby, they are in violation of The Act on the Prohibition and Prevention of conducting unregistered business which penalizes cases in which a legal or physical person performs actions not inscribed in the court Register or another corresponding register, and respectively when a legal or physical person performs actions not registered by competent authorities or not reported to the tax authorities and there are no statutory acts on fulfillment of conditions for performing registered activities.
Sanctions for these breaches range from 10.000,00 to 30.000,00 kunas, but sanctions are only levied in very rare cases. So called "purebreed dogs without papers" are advertised daily, thereby jeopardizing the well-being of those animals and violating the law. The frequency of those cases can be seen in the example of the internet advertisement, "Njuskalo". In the "Pets" category on the day of survey (January 2016), there were 874 ads offered in the animals for breeding category, and in the "Dogs- dogs for sale" category, there were 1422. It should be emphasized that along with the ads mentioned here, which are mostly from unregistered pet breeders, there is a separate category for registered kennel - "Dogs with Pedigree".
This matter is about a big area that is not adequately covered by the Law. The Law must be equal for everyone and must ban all forms of advertisement for sale if the animals are not from registered pet breeders, and everyone should be registered in the same way.
The proposal of the Association for this amendment to the Law on the Protection of Animals is from 2012, and is complemented in 2015/2016.
![Dog pregnancy [ 42.28 Kb ]](/data/image_2_7902.jpg "Dog pregnancy [ 42.28 Kb ]")
