2024-07-21 22:53:07
REPORT
The report for the first debate on the Animal Rights Protection Act warns that overregulation can lead to effects such as shortages, smuggling, speculation, illegal markets, corruption and the proliferation of clandestine markets.
The proposal, approved by seven of nine assembly members present at a session of the Biodiversity Commission on July 15, 2024, seeks to promote the rights of wild, marine, companion, working and consumer animals, safeguarding their well-being as sentient beings. In addition, it seeks to prevent and punish animal trafficking and abuse, and implement education, training, and dissemination programs on the rights of nature and animals.
However, the debate on the proposal, initiated by the Ombudsman’s Office, generated unrest in productive sectors and in the Biodiversity Commission itself, where it was warned that the project could encourage smuggling.
“Para la aprobación del cuerpo normativo, esta Legislatura debe considerar que la sobrerregulación puede generar efectos no deseados, como desabastecimiento, contrabando, especulación de precios, mercados ilícitos, economías irregulares, corrupción y proliferación de mercados clandestinos en los que se cumpla – en menor medida- los derechos de los animales que se pretenden garantizar”, dice el literal f. en el capítulo de las recomendaciones del informe para el primer debate.
The text adds that by imposing too many restrictions, prohibitions and sanctions, there is a risk of demotivating those who try to comply with the regulations, while habitual offenders can continue to operate outside the law.
Among the conclusions, the panel also considered it crucial to evaluate the possible socio-economic implications, especially with regard to the possible increase in the prices of foods of animal origin as a consequence of anti-technical legislation or legislation alien to the economic, social and cultural reality of the country.
What will not be accepted
For these reasons, the topics that generated the most controversy and were excluded from the original text for the first debate are:
- The display of whole, slaughtered or cooked animals (pigs, poultry, guinea pigs) in public spaces, display cases or commercial premises will no longer be prohibited.
- Caging of birds is not prohibited.
- Marketing, importing or industrially producing products with feathers or animal hair.
Rodrigo Gómez De la Torre, former president of the Chamber of Agriculture of the First Zone, said that the text for the first debate corrects obvious issues, such as overregulation that does not lead to productive development, and that the prohibition of displaying slaughtered animal bodies, raw or cooked, would force the consumer to buy protein of animal origin “literally blindly.” Prohibiting the display of chickens in rotisseries would also directly affect a culinary tradition of Ecuador.
One of the project’s statements indicated that it sought to impose a change in the sociocultural behavior of “minority groups” through prohibitions and sanctions, recalled Gómez de la Torre. For the businessman, it is praiseworthy that certain practices are being improved, but “not under conditions of that caliber; the project, in the way it reached the Assembly, is one of the most damaging to all levels of society; primary production, industry, manufacturing, textiles, leather, tourism.”
What remains in the project?
- Preventing the breaking of animals’ legs before slaughter.
- Transporting animals intended for consumption in a state of gestation to a slaughterhouse.
The National Assembly Board proposes a fine of 10 Unified Basic Salaries as a sanction for non-compliance. (SC)
Henry Kronfle, President of the Assembly, must put it on the agenda for the Plenary to be considered in the first debate, and then, the project will return to the Commission for the preparation of the report for the second debate. The initiative was presented to this legislative table by the Ombudsman’s Office in 2022.