Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said the mounting public outcry over incidents of animal cruelty should be a “wake-up call” for the 19th Congress to toughen up laws promoting and protecting the welfare of all animals.
The latest of which was the brutal killing of a three-year-old Golden Retriever named Killua in Camarines Sur, which was caught on video and has gone viral on social media.
Villafuerte noted that the incident underscores “the increasing consciousness of Filipinos on animal welfare that needs to be matched by our existing laws’ ability to ensure the humane treatment in all aspects of caring, keeping, maintaining, handling,
transporting, breeding, selling, training, treating and use of animals, and meting out the appropriate or just punishment to violators.”
“We are hoping that Killua’s senseless death in the hands of its owners’ neighbor would be,” he said, “a wake-up call for the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate to act on proposed amendatory laws meant to tone up the 26-year-old Animal Welfare Act by establishing a better system of state supervision and regulation for dealing with animals; enhancing public awareness of responsible pet ownership through education and information dissemination; and strengthening interagency, multisectoral and local-government cooperation for promoting good animal welfare.”
Villafuerte, president of the National Unity Party and majority leader for the House contingent’s Commission on Appointments, said that in the House, for instance, he has introduced House Bill (HB) 6059 that aims to put more weight on the law by, among others, slapping harsher penalties on errant individuals, establishing a Bureau to be attached to the Department of Agriculture (DA) to safeguard the rights of animals, and deputizing animal welfare enforcement officers with the powers to seize and rescue maltreated or illegally traded animals and arrest violators.
HB 6059, which is pending with the House committee on agriculture and food, seeks to tweak Republic Act (RA) 8485, or the Animal Welfare Act of 1998 and RA 10631, which amended RA 9485.
Villafuerte expressed the hope that both the House and Senate could
attend to pending legislations promoting animal welfare when the 19th Congress reopens after its March 23-April 28 Lenten break.