On January 5, the new Law 1/2021, of December 15, on Lamodification of the Civil Code, the Civil Law, the Law of Civil Prosecution and the legal regime of animals, entered into operation.
However, the application of this legal text does not respond to another legislative development that prepares the Government for the incorporation of the new animal DNI, or pet DNI, which will allow a unification of criteria and formats between the different administrations in relation to domestic animals
And its owners.
According to the College of Veterinarians in Madrid, this modification identified now regarding animals affects the possible measures to be adopted by the Courts in relation to the custody of the animals as a result of divorces, separations, distribution of the times of coexistence and the
Charges associated with the care of the animal, among other topics.
This new regulation departed from a popular legislative initiative driven in 2015 by the Justice and Animal Defense Observatory.
A proposal endorsed by more than 500,000 signatures in which animals were requested to let themselves be “things in the civil code to be considered sentient beings” as will happen from now on.
This regulation in the legal treatment of domestic animal management is added to legislative changes approved in this field in other countries such as Austria (1986), Germany (1990), Switzerland (2003).
Belgium (2009), France (2015) and Portugal (2017).
So far the administration only has information from animals that incorporated a registration chip performed by veterinary centers.
In addition, of the animals enrolled in the public databases of potentially dangerous animals and the reports of animal societies with pedigree.
Throughout 2022, all autonomous communities are expected to expose a unified format and procedure for the digital registration of pets, dogs or cats, which will facilitate obtaining a mandatory DNI that will finally identify animals.
For better control over the good state of animals and with the objective of avoiding the high rate of animal dropout, the new DNI will also incorporate the name of the owner and maximum responsible for the animal.
As progressed, the ANIMA DNI will also include the data and characteristics of pets, its vaccine calendar and its veterinary treatments.
An information base that will be accessible in the network in all the autonomous community and will be complementary to the animal chip.
The Animal Electronic DNI will also have also a QR code that will allow the Bodies and Security Forces of the State to identify the animal registration data in case accident, abandonment or damage produced by the animal itself.
