Japan Press Weekly

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2016 June 29 - July 5 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JCP policy drawing attention to unclaimed pets gains support from animal rights groups

The Japanese Communist Party has a policy of making efforts to find alternatives to animal testing and create a more accessible adoption system in order to reduce the number of killings of unclaimed and unwanted pets, drawing a lot of attention from animal shelter organizations.

The number of stray dogs and cats being killed dropped to about 100,000 in fiscal 2014 from about 200,000 in fiscal 2010, thanks to the efforts made by civil groups and public health and sanitation centers.

The JCP policy of minimizing the number of slaughters, in principle, urges pet owners to take responsibility for their pets but at the same time stresses the importance of increasing the number of people willing to adopt unwanted pets.

On June 25, a symposium on the slaughter of abandoned pets took place in Saitama City. An organizer of the symposium took up the JCP policy as a good example in the effort to eliminate unnecessary killing of such pets.

The JCP calls for: the strengthening of public support for animal welfare groups and NPOs; the need to let people know more about the option of adopting sheltered dogs/cats, not buying them in pet shops; and reorganizing municipality-run animal shelters into facilities to protect abandoned pets and find new owners. The JCP policy also refers to other challenges such as disaster evacuation with pets and the avoidance of animal testing as much as possible. The JCP in its policy demands that the central government help municipalities have a vision of communities coexisting with animals, and that the central government create a subsidy system for spaying and neutering surgeries and assist the effort to increase pet adoption.

An official of an animal support NPO, a panelist at the symposium, talked about the situation of abandoned animals and administrative measures to deal with it. The official then expressed her expectations for a JCP advance in the upcoming Upper House election by saying, “There is a limit to what private pet shelter groups can do. Sales and purchase of pets, the large number of animals undergoing euthanasia, and animal experiments are, after all, issues of human society. I hope JCP representatives will press the Diet to enact laws that take into consideration the issue of animal rights.”