1. Section 5 of the current Animal Protection Act requires the euthanasia of an animal that has ended up in a shelter after 14 days if the owner has not been found. We believe that in a 21st-century civilized society, such a time limit and approach are unjustified. Shelters must not function as slaughterhouses for animals, but rather as safe havens and way stations in finding a new home.
2. Section 37, subsection 2 of the Veterinary Act clearly distinguishes between two completely different situations: an "ownerless animal" (which has no home) and an "escaped animal" (which has an owner but is temporarily unsupervised). Nevertheless, Section 5, subsection 1 of the Animal Protection Act merges them both into a single term — "stray animal". This means that even if the owner of the animal is known (e.g., a pet that ran away from home in fear, or a microchipped animal that is not registered, etc.), it is automatically labeled a "stray animal" upon entering a shelter. This status grants the local government the legal right to sentence the animal to euthanasia after 14 days if no one comes to retrieve it from the shelter. It is wrong to treat an obviously owned or temporarily lost pet on the same grounds as a wild, stray animal. For example, in rural areas, cats roaming freely outdoors and catching mice has always been customary. It is impossible to explain legal property boundaries to a pet (a cat). If an animal that clearly has a home wanders around, it should not be called "stray", but rather considered a natural part of wildlife or the rural lifestyle, and the greatest effort should be made to return the animal to its home as quickly as possible, not to send it to a shelter. (This would be conceivable if there were no obligation to euthanize. An animal's life should not be in danger in a shelter.) The law should not automatically turn every animal moving in the wild into a stray, thereby posing a real threat to the animal's life. Although such a restriction on movement is understandable in densely populated urban environments for the sake of bird protection and road safety, it is detached from reality in sparsely populated rural areas, farms, and villages, and turns rural residents who allow their animals to live a natural outdoor life into lawbreakers.

1. Proposal: Delete Section 5, point 2 of the Animal Protection Act, which provides for the euthanasia of animals in shelters after a 14-day waiting period.

2. Proposal: We propose to separate the terms "ownerless animal" and "unsupervised/escaped animal" in the law so that they are not classified under a single term, "stray animal". The Animal Protection Act should protect the animal's life as a value and provide it with legal protection, rather than treating the animal merely as a public order problem; otherwise, this law does not deserve its name, the Animal Protection Act. We also ask to distinguish between densely populated areas (cities) and sparsely populated areas (small towns, agricultural lands). In rural areas, a cat must have the right to move freely around its home to fulfill its natural function (e.g., rodent control on a farm). It is reasonable that the same strict requirements cannot apply to a major city and a rural area.