Zurich government against mandatory rules for outdoor cats
Keystone-SDA
The Zurich government does not want to combat the uncontrolled breeding of outdoor cats with compulsory chipping or neutering. It rejects mandatory measures and wants to continue to focus on raising awareness.
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In November 2023 the cantonal parliament referred a postulate to the government calling called for an assessment of measures that could curb the uncontrolled proliferation of outdoor cats. Mandatory chipping and castration were explicitly mentioned.
However, the government does not want to know anything about this, according to a submission to parliament published on Thursday.
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At national level, initiatives to introduce a national obligation to identify and register cats have always been rejected, the cantonal government said. It also assumes that the “much more far-reaching castration obligation” will still not be approved by the federal parliament.
Furthermore, according to the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office, cantonal labelling and registration or castration requirements are not legally permissible for animal welfare reasons, the bill states. The government considers “Zurich going it alone” on this issue to be “not very sensible”.
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The government therefore refrains from “further mandatory measures”. Instead, the focus should be “as before” on awareness-raising measures such as information campaigns on the issue of free access.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
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