Our organization has met with the Office of the Prime Minister and the Food and Veterinary Agency to discuss the identification & registration of dogs with keepers (owners) because this measure is urgent and FVA must contract the veterinarians as soon as possible.

The Directorate of Animal Welfare at the FVA has promised more than a year ago that they will deal with the issue of registration of dogs with keepers (owners), so they must work with greater intensity as we are extremely late with this important measure.

During the meeting, our organization also requested that a special sector be established within the FVA to address issues related to companion and stray animals, but above all to engage more human (or other) resources within the FVA, so that the implementation of policies and legal acts and bylaws in this regard is enforced accurately and seriously.

We discussed about the inspectors in FVA and the great lack of human resources to make efficient inspections in the field of companion and stray animals (but also in inspections of the welfare of other animals in general). We discussed the difficulties of the FVA in conducting inspections due to the small number of inspectors, but nevertheless we asked FVA to make an inspection plan that includes inspections about bad keeping of companion animals in households and in shelters, since we see many dogs kept in miserable conditions, and the Directorate of Inspectorate within FVA has never been interested in this aspect. We discussed during the meeting to conduct some training for inspectors, in order to train them on inspections of companion animal keeping and animal welfare in general.

Furthermore, we as an organization asked the Government to allocate a budget for the treatment of stray dogs with the CNVR method (catch, spay, vaccinate, release) throughout the country, as many municipalities have no or little budget to do castration and the release of stray dogs. This project should be managed by FVA or the municipalities, but in any case additional assistance is needed from the Government, for this aspect. We also requested that the Government and the FVA, share a budget to cover the expenses of identification & registration of dogs with keepers (owners) for an additional year (2023/2024). 

I&R is a very important component for managing the population of dogs with owners and preventing the abandonment and illegal breeding of owned dogs.

We also discussed the need for some veterinary medical preparations to be approved by FVA, such as anesthetics and some other preparations that so far are purchased and used illegally by veterinarians in the absence of legal supply in our country.

Anesthetics should be managed with strict monitoring so that they don’t fall into the hands of incompetent people. We will wait for the decision of FVA on this aspect.