MikeLigalig.com

a relevant feature story:

It will take a stronger law to prevent animal cruelty

By Alya B. Honasan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Sunday, October 7th, 2012

The stories are enough to reduce animal lovers to tears.  There was Popeye, the dog whose owner poured kerosene all over him last month and set him on fire to allegedly manage a flea infestation. (Popeye eventually died.)

There was the picture that went viral on Facebook (God bless social networking) in March this year, of a dog in a sack tied to the back of an SUV; the establishment under whose name the vehicle was allegedly registered, Apollo International Cagayan Trading Corporation, was located, but caretakers at the house refused to comment, and the fate of the dog remains unknown.


THE DOG behind the SUV, a picture
that went viral on Facebook. Sadly,
the animal’s fate remains unknown.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

Earlier this year, in what was probably the most brazen and shameless case yet, several Korean nationals were held last March 30 after they were caught running an Internet dog-fighting operation in Laguna.  The infuriating fact was, they had already been busted just three months earlier, Dec. 2, operating a similar ring in Cavite.







After some months in captivity, the Koreans were recently found guilty, and fined a laughable P5,000 for violation of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and P6,000 for violating the anti-gambling law.  The incredible part is, they are now suing the National Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Immigration.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

On the agenda were proposed amendments to the AWA, Republic Act 8485, “An Act to Promote Animal Welfare in the Philippines,” which became law on Feb. 11, 1998.

The original act basically put the responsibility of policing any “pet shop, kennel, veterinary clinic, veterinary hospital, stockyard, corral, stud farm or stock farm, or zoo for the breeding, treatment, sale or trading, or training of animals” in the hands of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), and creates a Committee on Animal Welfare attached to the Department of Agriculture.


HEART FOR ANIMALS. Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) spokesperson
Heart Evangelista believes there’s a need to amend the Animal Welfare Act.
Here she speaks her mind at the recent Senate hearing on the AWA. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

In short, strictly speaking, if your neighbor beats his dog, or fails to feed it, he or she is violating a national law.  Then again, who’s afraid of the consequences?  Certainly not the Korean dog-fighters, for example, who probably never even blinked at the fine.

That’s because Section 8 of the current Act specifies: “Any person who violates any of the provisions of this Act shall, upon conviction by final judgment, be punished by imprisonment of not less than six (6) months nor more than two (2) years or a fine of not less than one thousand pesos (P1,000.00) nor more than five thousand pesos (P5,000.00), or both at the discretion of the Court.”

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

Some of these defects, and the limited jurisdiction, have already resulted in some problems.  “It is the private organizations which are taking the lead, because all these years the BAI has not filed a single court case for violation of the AWA,” says Cabrera.  Meanwhile, PAWS has filed over a dozen cases.  In 2001, PAWS and another animal welfare NGO, Earth Island Institute, filed a case against Ocean Adventure for failure to secure a permit for the dolphin show.

In a nutshell, the case didn’t progress because whales and dolphins, the ruling read, were not covered by the AWA, but were considered “fish/fishery/aquatic products,” covered only by the Fisheries Code of 1998.  Read: it’s okay to be cruel to “food”—or better yet, dolphins aren’t, uh, animals.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

Heftier penalties

Most significantly, PAWS is pushing for heftier penalties: imprisonment of 10-12 years and a fine of P300,000 if the animal dies; imprisonment of eight to 10 years and a fine of P200,000 if the animal survives but is severely injured and needs human intervention to sustain its life; and imprisonment of six to eight years and a fine of P100,000 for subjecting any animal to cruelty, maltreatment or neglect, but without causing its death or incapacitating it to survive on its own.

Sen. Pangilinan himself expressed openness to the increased fines, based on the gravity of the offense.  “Baka pagtawanan lang ng mga Koreano yung P50,000 fine, if they make millions a day,” he said during the hearing.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

“We are inclined to strengthening the Animal Welfare Act, but we need to ensure that penalties for animal cruelty are not higher than penalties for inflicting injuries upon persons,” concluded Sen. Pangilinan.  “This matter would have to be studied more closely… Still, if we are to move away from impunity and a culture of violence, then we must include the animals.”

“Legislators have taken the initiative to amend the law,” Kayaban says, “and we, as the people in the field who have tested the existing law and have firsthand knowledge on its defects, are helping re-craft it into a more perfect and workable piece of legislation.”

Now, with the government concerned with other seemingly more “pressing” issues like disaster management, it’s a waiting game for this law that urgently needs to be updated.



Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

What to do when you see animal abuse

IF YOU see animal cruelty in progress (such as persons slaughtering or selling and buying dogs for the dog meat trade, or inflicting harm on animals), please report the incident immediately to your barangay officials and/or to tel. 117.  PAWS needs citizens as witnesses to help file charges so that we can prevent this cruelty from happening again.  (Call PAWS at tel.  4751688; e-mail [email protected].)

In order to prosecute criminals for the violation of the AWA, PAWS needs complete details (date, time, exact location, people involved).  If you are not willing to execute an affidavit, please recommend another eyewitness who will.

If the persons committing the crime are not known, the best we can do is alert police officers to the exact location in the hope that they will be catching the criminals in the act.  Kindly call 117 immediately, and take down the name of the one receiving your call.  From experience at PAWS, all “117 officers” treat these reports seriously and send a mobile patrol right away (but it would still be good to take down the name).

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0

If your barangay officials refuse to act during the time that you reported the crime to them, please execute an affidavit re: their names, what happened, etc. so that we can file administrative charges against them.

PAWS needs and encourages everyone to take action: report cases and/or file charges against cruelty.  Verbally complaining (even through e-mail or Facebook posting) is not enough. (From the PAWS website, paws.org.ph)

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=55900.0