Roderick Galdes, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Welfare has endorsed essential amendments to the Animal Welfare Act, said the GRTU.

This was on the part of Protection of Animals offered in Pet Shops, following several meetings with the GRTU on behalf of Pet Shop Owners and the Authorities concerned, the Union said.

The L.N. 244/2013 will come into force on April 2nd 2014. The GRTU said that it welcomes the new law as it will mean an increase in the level of protection of animals and as the Authorities themselves confirmed most of the pet shops will only need to make minor amendments to facilitate inspection.

The GRTU said it also welcomes this law as it will put anyone selling an animal, be it from a pet shop, a private residence and a website in a position of breach of law should they not follow any part of it. “This will establish a level playing field which till now is very lacking as pet shops are regularly inspected while other individuals selling animals are most of the time ignored.”

GRTU emphasises that it is “totally in favour of increased animal protection and condemns without reservation abuse, neglect and cruelty on any species.”

The Union said that it felt the need however, “to intervene as certain aspects of the law would have heavily burdened pet shop owners making certain aspects of their business unsustainable.”

It added that the GRTU representing pet shops ” managed to convince the authorities to accept amendments to the law without essentially reducing the level of increased animal protection which was the aim of this law in the first place.”

The Union said that it “also managed to postpone the date of the law coming into force earlier due to the fact that the discussions took longer and it was practically impossible for both sides to undertake the preparations and courses that have to be undertaken in time.”

The GRTU said that “the most important change brought about relates to record keeping. Record keeping is important as it can shed light on repetitive problems within an establishment and provide a tracking system, should a problem with a particular species arise. Record keeping however is burdensome therefore GRTU proposed, and its proposal was accepted to limit record keeping to the species which require it most, as some species enter and exit the pet shop too frequently to keep records of.”

“Purchasing records (the invoice) would be kept, but when it comes to sale records they would be kept only for cats, dogs, ferrets, horses, poultry and all other animals included in the Registration of Exotic Animals Regulations, 2010. This diminished the bureaucratic burden significantly and maintains record keeping where it is most needed,” the Union said.

“Another bureaucratic and costly burden that was alleviated was the requirement of having a Veterinary surgeon to verify all the mortalities,” the Union said. “this now will be done only for mortalities in access of 10% of individual species. Had this requirement been maintained the Veterinary inspection would cost much more than most of the animals themselves, jeopardising the sustainability of pet shops.”

The Union pointed out that “it is in the best interest of the pet shops to keep all pets alive as otherwise they would suffer loss of earnings.”

“Another difficult requirement in the law was the long acclimatization period for all animal species when entering the pet shop. These were considered too long and might have involved the pet shop needing a significant amount of extra space for quarantine.

“From seven days for any animal, acclimatization period was reduced to 2 days for birds and others, 12hrs for fish and 0hrs for chickens. A proposal accepted was to exclude hand reared parrots from the requirement of not selling animals that are not weaned this because there is a specific niche market that requires these birds before being weaned due to the bonding of the bird with its owner,” the Union said.

It added, that “also accepted was the change of wording that was proposed which leads to less stringent cleaning impositions which are now more related to need. Similarly the working was arranged to replacing of food when needed which means that dry food can be kept for longer periods than soft food. GRTU also claimed for and managed to get accepted the inclusion of enclosure sizes for other species of animals which were not yet included.”

GRTU emphasised the need to maintain the same level of cooperation GRTU managed to create between the public and private sector and therefore the cooperation of pet shops should not be lost by aggressive behaviour. The approach should be one to guide and teach. The authorities confirmed that inspectors were being coached into this attitude.

The GRTU together with the relevant institutions said that they “will be working on establishing the relevant qualification requirements and ensuring that pet shops having years of experience are treated and assessed on their experience and given the necessary recognition.”

Work is still ongoing the GRTU said, but would like to “thank Roderick Galdes, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Welfare, Dr Roberto Andrea Balbo – Director (Veterinary Regulation), Dr Duncan Chetcuti Ganado – Veterinary Officer and Emanuel Buhagiar – Officer Animal Welfare for the support offered from their end during the recent General Meeting held for pet shops.”

GRTU conlcuded that “more specifically it would like to thank all pet shops who participated in all the discussions and Dr Anthony Gruppetta for the excellent consultation and openness to understand the different situations and requirements of the sector. It is unfortunately very rare that real consultations like this one are carried out.”

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