Home » Bulletin 2004
News from Italy
Court declares ban on cat and dog use to be illegal
The Italian Constitutional Court has declared a law introduced in the Emilia Romagna region to be illegal. The law banned the breeding, use and movement of dogs and cats for research purposes throughout the region and also the use of any animal for teaching purposes.
The law provoked a wave of protest throughout the scientific community. Rectors of the universities in Emilia, personalities from the academic world, the Italian pharmaceutical industry association Farmindustria, and scientific societies (including the Italian section of EBRA) asked the central authorities to take a firm position against this law.
The President of the Cabinet took this appeal to heart and repealed the law, passing it to the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court agreed with the appeal, declaring the regional law unconstitutional, on the following grounds: "Fundamental principles on this topic should be governed by the laws of the State...".
"Current legislation (law No. 116/92 in response to Directive No. 86/609/CEE) carefully balances the respect due to animals involved in experimentation and the collective interest in this work involving animal experimentation which is considered indispensable, in the light of current scientific knowledge, under national and community regulations."
"...On the question of "scientific research" the need to take account of developments in the field while also safeguarding the animals involved as far as possible, has given rise to the regulations set out in law No. 116 dated 1992, which establish a fundamental principle as they express the point of equilibrium in experimentation. Hence the fact that they cannot be substantially modified in any way by regional legislators to further limit the relative freedom of scientific research or reduce the current level of safeguards for animals used in experiments."
The full text can be downloaded from:
http://www.giurcost.org/decisioni/2004/0166s-04.html