New laws set to keep pet breed­ers on tighter leash

Dubbo Photo News - - Dubbo Works - By LY­DIA PEDRANA

NEW laws for those sell­ing, giv­ing away or pur­chas­ing pets came into ef­fect this week to help im­prove an­i­mal wel­fare and give fam­i­lies more his­tory about their furry, friends.

The leg­is­la­tion re­quires peo­ple sell­ing or giv­ing away cats or dogs to in­clude an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber in all ad­ver­tise­ments. This num­ber can be ei­ther a mi­crochip num­ber, a breeder iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber or a re­hom­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion num­ber.

Dubbo vet­eri­nar­ian, Dr Ross Pedrana said this will help pro­mote the re­spon­si­ble an­i­mal breed­ing of cats and dogs, as well as giv­ing prospec­tive pet own­ers con­fi­dence they are pur­chas­ing an­i­mals from a rep­utable source.

“This leg­is­la­tion will al­low trans­parency of who is breed­ing and sell­ing dogs and cats, as well as al­low­ing trace­abil­ity of the an­i­mals,” he told

“Cor­rect vac­ci­na­tion ad­min­is­tered by a vet­eri­nar­ian and ver­i­fied with sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing the mi­crochip num­ber, is vi­tally im­por­tant when pur­chas­ing a cat or dog.”

Dr Pedrana stressed it is also im­por­tant for peo­ple to un­der­stand that the sale or pur­chase of pets that are less than eight weeks of age is not per­mit­ted.

The new leg­is­la­tion has been in­tro­duced fol­low­ing a par­lia­men­tary in­quiry into com­pan­ion an­i­mal breed­ing prac­tices and is sup­ported by the up­dated NSW Pet Registry, a data­base of mi­crochipped and reg­is­tered cats and dogs that live in the state.

Min­is­ter for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Shel­ley Han­cock said this data­base gives prospec­tive pet own­ers easy ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion about an ad­ver­tised an­i­mal in­clud­ing breed, age, gen­der and whether it’s de-sexed.

“The NSW Pet Registry is an im­por­tant tool that al­lows pet own­ers to eas­ily regis­ter their cat or dog, up­date con­tact de­tails, re­port their pet miss­ing, trans­fer own­er­ship and pay the one-off reg­is­tra­tion fee.”

Its im­ple­men­ta­tion will also al­low rel­e­vant agen­cies to iden­tify and deal with any prob­lem breed­ers.

The new rule re­gard­ing ad­ver­tis­ing the sale or give­away of a cat or dog ap­plies to:  All an­i­mals, no mat­ter the age, even it is un­born;

 To all breed­ers, pro­fes­sional, ac­ci­den­tal or one-off;

 All sell­ers, even if you did not breed the an­i­mal your­self. Disclaimer: Ly­dia Pedrana is daugh­ter of Dubbo vet Ross Pedrana

Hay­ley Dor­ring­ton, Sarah Pye and Tay­lor Hind with cat Nina and dog Floyd whose well­be­ing is the aim of newly in­tro­duced leg­is­la­tion. PHOTO: DUBBO PHOTO NEWS/WENDY MER­RICK

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