A total of 19 representatives were sent this Monday to consult the Constitutional Court on the draft Animal Welfare Act.
According to Representative Otto Guevara, of the Movimiento Libertario party, revisions requested in the 50-page document include the definitions of some terms that, according to the legislators, are inaccurate.
“To start, the concept ‘animal’ is not defined, it encompasses vertebrates, invertebrates, production, wild, in danger of extinction, pets; and on the other hand, there are some behaviors that do not exactly specify the behavior being practiced. In the case of animal cruelty, it says ‘that which causes suffering,’ but what is the definition of suffering? Everything is very open, and we believe it should be reviewed by the Constitutional Court,” said Guevara.
Another point to which the revisions refer are the proportionality of sanctions contained in the draft law.
“We believe that many of the sanctions established by the criminal code, such as those that are laid out in the Animal Welfare Act, are sanctions that go beyond the proportion and the reasonableness that the same Constitutional Court has indicated in many other cases,” he added.
According to Guevara, it is precisely the Constitutional Court who has defined the parameters of proportionality and reasonableness.
In this way, it will be the entity in charge of deciding if the said draft law is constitutional and interested persons can follow the procedure in the Plenary.
The consultation was carried out by members of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), of the Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN) and the Movimiento Libertario.
The draft law was approved by legislators in the first debate of the 26th of July.
Source: elmundo.cr