The killing of dozens of stray dogs in a shelter in southern Romania this month has caused outrage with public funds earmarked for educational and sterilization campaigns being used to pay for the cull.
More than 60 dogs were taken from a public shelter in Targu Jiu in the Oltenia region, southern Romania on Aug. 12 and slaughtered in a six-hour period in the middle of the night, animal rights groups reported. A local official confirmed the killings and claimed they were carried out legally.
The cull was permitted under a rule that allows dogs to be euthanized if they aren’t adopted within a month of arriving at the shelter. Other dogs from the shelter had already found new owners.
Animal activists have launched a national petition and will stage a protest on Aug. 23 in Targu Jiu. Police have opened a criminal investigation.
Patricia Paraschiv, a vet and vice-president of the Pro Animals Association, posted a grisly video from the shelter after discovering the dogs had been killed, all of which, she said, had not been euthanized according to standard humane regulations.
The dogs were culled at the night to avoid public scrutiny, she said. No representatives of animal activist groups were present although the law provides for that. Officials dumped the dogs’ bodies and have refused to reveal the location so postmortem examinations could not be carried out, she said.
However Nicolaie Oprean, the Executive Director of the „Regional Department for the Protection of Homeless Animals” defended the killings which he called “perfectly legal.”
Animal rights activists claim similar culls are being repeated in other places in Romania with shady organizations receiving public money for sterilization and educational campaigns. Instead, they reportedly use the money to kill dogs inhumanely without proper clinical euthanasia methods being applied, activists claim.
Romania set up an ‘animal police’ department in 2020 to protect animals that are mistreated or in distress.
The National Federation for the Protection of Animals (FNPA) and PETA Germany – People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, estimate that 2.2 million dogs, including 1 million from shelters were killed or died due to poor living conditions in public shelters from 2001 to 2021. Town halls received approximately 750 million euros for care and euthanasia.
A national media report also focused on an organization in the Hunedoara region which purportedly received around 190,000 euro from public funds to support educational and sterilization campaigns but used the money instead to facilitate the mass killing of captured dogs.
In 2010, police investigated a man who killed 40 dogs at a shelter in Constanta in the Dobrogea region, near the Black Sea in Romania’s east.
