Serbia- Implement Existing Animal Welfare Legislation To Protect Strays

The Serbian government, Ministries and regional authorities have never treated stray animals in accordance with existing Serbian animal welfare legislation. The government has always decided to ignore its own laws for animals, and kill as many strays as possible even though stray animals have been protected by a No Kill policy verified by the Serbian Constitutional Court from 2 October 2005.
There is a meeting in Belgrade on 17th April 2013, to which no Serbian NGO's have been invited to submit written data or have been invited to take part. It is expected by many animal welfare NGO's that at this meeting, the Serbian government will attempt to re-introduce legislation which will legally allow them to kill as many stray animals as they need. This is not acceptable. The Serbian government needs to keep its existing animal welfare laws, but also needs to work much harder to promote responsible owned pet ownership - this includes sterilisation, microchipping and vaccination. Sterilised owned animals cannot mate with stray animals and produce yet more strays. Irresponsible owners are not having their animals sterilised; they mate with stray animals and the cycle of more strays being born all the time continues.