With increasing cases of animal abuse being observed, there has been a tightening of legal framework surrounding the treatment of animals, making animal torture into a felony.
The Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure, Makis Voridis, decided to tighten the legal framework regarding the torture of animals after the increasing cases of reported animal abuse.
According to a statement from the Ministry, “the specific initiative of the Minister follows his announcements for further tightening of the existing legal framework in order to make the prosecution and punishment of tortured animals more effective.”
The minister adds that, “incidents of violence against animals have no place in a favoured state and constitute a serious insult to both the state and Greek society, while pointing out that there is an urgent need to toughen penalties in order to eliminate this kind of unacceptable phenomena”.
Based on data from the Report Animal Abuse Greece website, 809 complaints were registered in 2014, while in 2018 the number jumped to 3,734. The number of people arrested nonetheless remains disproportionate to the number of complaints. For example, in the first half of 2019, there were 1,799 complaints, of which only 117 were arrested.
For thirty years, there have been many academic studies showing that animal abuse is also linked to violence against humans, such as domestic violence, child abuse, and even murder.
