24th March 2009.
SAV officially write to the Mayor of Subotica City, Serbia, Mr. Vucinic and also to the President of Serbia – Mr. Boris Tadic, requesting a meeting with them both to discuss a No Kill sterilisation, vaccination and microchipping programme for stray animals in Serbia. This to be undertaken after a full public awareness and education programme.
A copy of the letter, including the two attachments (dog and cat Multiplication Pyramids) can be seen directly below. Serbian governments and authorities appear to have an inherent, completely blinkered attitude that the one and only way to rid Serbian towns and cities of stray dogs and cats is to round them up and kill them; in very often barbaric ways, as we have outlined previously – see one of our previous SAV posts for evidence – https://serbiananimalsvoice.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/photographs-warning-animal-suffering/
A huge amount of Serbian taxpayers money in being spent every year on this approach. We have learned from sources within Serbia that yesterday, 23rd March, the local Parliament of just one city approved the funding of 70,000 Euros simply for the capture of animals and for killing.
70,000 Euros would cover all the costs of humane sterilisation of every animal within that city. It would only need to be done once, as we are certain that there is a very remote chance that sterilised animals are capable of producing further offspring once they have been treated !. For just one pair of unspayed dogs, the results over a six year period of all their (unspayed) offspring happily producing yet more stray animals would result in a staggering 67,000 extra animals on the streets ! – and that is just for one pair of animals. Multiply this by the thousands on the streets of major serbian towns and cities and the numbers are astronomical. And still the government seems to pour money into the bottomless barrel which they call round up and kill.
But what will happen in future ? – this year, the money will be spent killing dogs and cats; next year, when the authorities still have a huge (or possibly an even bigger) problem of population numbers for stray dogs and cats, they will what ?, allocate yet another 70,000, 80,000, 100,000 Euros in some futile attempt to inform the tax paying public and their own personal conscience that what they are doing is correct ?
This is the basis why a letter had to be sent to the mayor of Subotica and President Tadic today. At the moment, the European Union (EU) is currently reviewing policies and procedures which will hopefully and almost certainly see all stray animals become protected under new EU legislation; legislation which will be issued as an EU Directive and which will have to be followed and adhered to by all member states of the Union. Serbia is not currently a member state but wishes to become one in the near future.
Surely, for Serbia, better and wiser now to start speding money on a humane, no kill sterilisation, vaccination and microchipping programme of stray animal population reduction rather than a massive expenditure as will be necessary once EU legislation is approved and Serbia becomes a member state; which means having to conform to the EU Directives on stray animals ?
The welfare lobby is going to continue to press for a national no kill programme for all strays and pet animals within Serbia. We do not want conflict, but we are getting it from the governments and authorities attitude to what is basic, proven, cruelty free science.
Ther campaign continues.
Copies of the SAV letter have already been sent on 24/03/09 to major contacts within the current EU. Over the coming days the letter will be forwarded to media contacts internationally. Other campaigning plans on this specific issue are in the early development stages at this present time; more information and requests to support will be posted as things develop.
SAV have asked that the Serbian President and the Mayor of Subotica contact us within one month informing us of their decision for a meeting based around the public education, stray and pet animal sterilisation and (stray) no kill programme.
Below is a direct copy of the letter sent today.
We will keep you informed of any progress, or lack of it, depending on the approach of the Serbian authorities.
SAV
Dear Mayor Mr. Vucinic and President Mr. Tadic; 24th March 2009.
I write to you as a representative of “Serbian Animals Voice” https://serbiananimalsvoice.wordpress.com/category/serbia-central-serbia-capital-belgrade-and-serbiavojvodina-capital-novi-sad/ and also as the EU Legal Correspondent for another animal welfare organisations within the United Kingdom. Based on this, copies of this letter will be supplied to senior politicians /persons within the EU within the next twenty four hours.
Your prompt and positive response to the following requests is therefore requested.
In Serbian national legislation for animal welfare, every community should have its own reasoning and policy for solving the problem of stray animals. The policy which has been used in the past by the majority of authorities – of simply building a relatively small shelter to house stray animals, is not sufficient. Due to their inadequate sizes, these shelters become overloaded with a very small percentage of the regions stray animals within a matter of days, whilst many, many other stray animals still continue to roam the streets. Eventually, these animals are also collected and taken to the aformentioned shelters. Because the shelters are inadequate to even start to deal with such a throughput of animals, the simple ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ as viewed by government and authorities until now has been to systematically kill the current intake of strays to make room for yet another intake, which in a relatively short time, will also be killed off.
It is an endless cycle which achieves nothing for Serbian taxpayers who are currently paying their hard earned money for animals to be collected and destroyed, with no end result on the horizon, continually. At the same time and most importantly, the actual numbers of animals existing on the streets does not decrease.
You are therefore, in our opinion, and the opinion of global animal welfare organisations with much experience in stray animal management, currently operating a policy of stray animal control which is both a waste of money, and which is most important, achieving no actual results in reducing the numbers of stray animals in your towns and cities.
Because of this, we suggest that you need to very urgently review and completely change your policy of dealing with stray animal population management. The two graphics attached to this mail, one for dogs and the other for cats, show the numbers of new stray animals which can produced by just ONE single pair of un-sterilised (stray) animals over a period of several years.
If you multiply these figures in the graphics by the literally thousands of stray animals which are on the streets in all towns and cities within Serbia, and anyone in their right mind can work out why you are wasting taxpayers money and getting nothing in the way of results when it comes to stray animal population management and numbers reduction. Again I repeat, you are wasting taxpayers money.
Should you wish to resolve the national problem of stray animals within Serbia, one method which you could undertake for effective and permanent, long term stray animal population management, is by introducing a high level national sterilisation programme for all strays and owned pet animals – which would involve both dogs and cats.
This sterilisation programme would need to be supported by a good public awareness /education programme to inform citizens that by humanely sterilising stray animals and thus making them physically unable to reproduce and produce yet more strays, within a relatively short period of time, the numbers of strays on the streets will start to reduce.
In addition, current owners of pet animals within Serbia must be informed that they should personally take responsibility for:
Having their own animal(s) sterilised; possibly with government support and regional funding; ie. Money currently used for killing dogs and cats diverted into an effective population management programme for the future; and also,
Not turning / throwing their own (currently un-sterilised) animals out onto the town or city streets every day. By their owners doing this, these innocent but often young, healthy and virile pet animals, when un-sterilised as the majority are, mate with every stray animal on the streeets they can find, thus continuing to add to the never ending cycle of stray animal overpopulation figures which you now nationally experience.
Your lack of action to undertake a national humane, ‘no kill’ sterilisation programme for all stray and pet animals, combined with good public education, will continue to mean that you will annually waste vast amounts of public money on attemtpting to stop an un-stoppable problem; a problem which can only be prevented by humane means, ie. A no kill sterilisation programme.
Finally, I request that you please both allow yourselves to undertake a meeting with Dr. Slavica Mazak Beslic of the welfare organisation EPAR, in order that she can present you both with an overview and suggestions for the introduction of a national sterilisation programme as outlined above.
I would appreciate it if a date for a meeting with Dr. Slavica Mazak Beslic could be arranged very soon, say within the next four weeks.
For your information, the European Union (EU) is currently reviewing policies and procedures which will see all stray animals become protected under new EU legislation; legislation which will have to be followed by all member states of the union. The basic outline of this new legislation includes:-
The European Parliament,
– having regard to the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals (CETS
No.125),
– having regard to Rule 116 of its Rules of Procedure,
A. whereas there is no uniform or specific text relating to the protection of pets and stray animals that applies to all the Member States,
B. whereas the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals is incomplete and has not been signed by all the Member States,
C. whereas in many Member States there are still cases of mistreatment of pets and stray or abandoned animals,
1. Calls on the EU to introduce measures to ensure that Member States impose severe punishments on people who abandon or mistreat a pet or a stray animal, and to mandate Member States to put in place a system of management at national level for collection, sterilisation and vaccination;
2. Calls on the Commission and Council to call upon all the Member States to sign the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals and to adopt the new measures;
3. Calls on the Commission and Council to sanction any Member States that fail to comply with the above Convention and the new measures to be adopted;
4. Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the parliaments of the Member States, the Council and the Commission.
Serbia wishes to become a member of the European Union. Serbia, by the actions of yourselves, is being given the chance to introduce humane and practical stray animal population management BEFORE it will be enforced on you under the new EU legislation.
European wide animal welfare organisations currently involved with stray animal population controls will ensure that the legislation above DOES become law throughout the EU, hopefully a Union of which Serbia will then be a member state should it decide to adhere to EU legislations.
Rather than have legislation forced on you under EU directives if and when you do become a member state in the future, can I suggest that Serbia starts to undertake its own national stray animal humane, No Kill sterilisation, vaccination and microchipping programmes based on the above EU programmes in the very near future. The endless killing of stray dogs and cats in Serbia, with no reduction in population numbers, shows as previously declared, your current methods of dealing with the stray problem are outdated, cruel and completely unnecessary.
Dr. Slavica Mazak Beslic is available to meet with you in the very near future; hopefully within four weeks, and discuss these programmes further. As declared above, senior EU politicians will now be informed that this request has been made to you in person by ourselves in the animal welfare movement. These contacts are included in the ‘Bcc’ part of this mail as proof. Additional copies of this letter are being forwarded to international press and media within the next few days via our international contacts listings.
For the sake of future good relations relating to Serbian EU membership, I trust you will consider the request positively and be in communication with Dr. Slavica Mazak Beslic within the next few weeks to arrange a meeting.
Dr. Slavica Mazak Beslic can be contacted on epar@yunord.net
We look forward to hearing from you very soon and to working towards an effective but cruelty-free way of managing the stray animals of Serbia.
Yours Sincerely
Mark Johnson.
Co-Founder – “Serbian Animals Voice”
Photographs and two ‘Pyramid’ graphics supplied with the letter are as follows:
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Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 