Constitutional court backs sterilisation of animals

The other day, when I was at the IPA (animal protection institute, where I give training about matters relating to the protection of animals to law enforcement officers and local authority personnel), a local police officer asked my opinion on the recent sentence of the Constitutional Court (TC), dated July 15, 2020, about obligatory sterilisation of dogs, cats and ferrets.

This sentence is 47 pages long with legal arguments related to the protection of animals in the law and related public policies.

When I analysed this sentence, I remembered the words that Irene, from the Jumillabased animal protection association Cuatro Patas, told me at the beginning of this year:

“Raquel, sterilisation is super-important, because at our shelter more than 70% of the stray animals collected during 2019 were puppies less than a year old.”

This sentence was due to an appeal which claimed several articles of the Animal Protection Law (Ley 6/2018) in La Rioja region were unconstitutional. One of the articles being appealed against was article 11, which made sterilisation of pets (dogs, cats and ferrets) obligatory.

From my analysis of article 11, I drew the following five conclusions:

1. Sterilisation of all dogs, cats and ferrets is obligatory in the whole La Rioja region.

2. This sterilisation must be done before the first time they are in heat, or at the latest before they are one year old, or otherwise within one month of taking ownership of the animal.

3. Dogs, cats and ferrets that are sold or purchased, or given away, also must have been sterilised.

4. A vet is the only person who can carry out the sterilisation, at a proper veterinary clinic, and must in turn record the date of the operation in the regional register of pets and also in the animal’s passport or veterinary card.

5. The only animals exempt from sterilisation are those which a vet has advised against them having the procedure for health reasons, and only as long as this is stated on a certificate issued by a vet. In these cases, the owner of the animal must take the necessary steps to prevent their animal from having descendants.

One of the arguments defended by the senators who appealed against this law was that it violates the right to private property, as regulated by article 33 of the Spanish Constitution.

Basically, and in more colloquial language, the senators were defending pet owners’ right to private property, and with their position arguing that animals are mere things or objects, but ignoring that animals are sentient beings.

Nevertheless, the TC, in its legal reasoning (pages 10 and 11 of the sentence), said loud and clear that it is legal to oblige sterilisation according to the terms of the above mentioned law, for two reasons:

1. Sterilisation is designed to prevent the overpopulation of pets and hence, their being abandoned, as the law itself states in its article 2.2g.

2. The European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, signed in 1987 and ratified by Spain, establishes in its article 12.b that the signatory States ‘undertake to consider reducing the unplanned breeding of dogs and cats by promoting the neutering of these animals.’

My conclusion about the sentence is as follows:

It is not only legal that all autonomous regions of Spain (as well as La Rioja) can regulate obligatory sterilisation of pets in their animal protection laws, but they must do so for the following five reasons:

1. To put an end to the physical and psychological suffering ensured by the thousands of animals that are abandoned in Spain.

2. To prevent the emotional suffering of people, as we are empathetic to the suffering of animals.

3. To comply with the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, to which Spain is a party.

4. To reduce the economic costs, which include the expense of catching stray animals, looking after them and even putting them down (many municipalities in Spain still put down dogs and cats under the cover of an unethical and archaic regional and/or municipal law).

5. To make progress with our values as a society.