In a statement, FEDRA explains the need for existing public resources "to be used to provide preventive care to animals from associations, vulnerable families, and the general population."

"Today, the system acts mainly when abandonment has already occurred. The animal enters a CRO and gains access to identification, vaccination, deworming, sterilisation, and veterinary medical care. But, before that, when it still lives with a family without resources or is in the care of an association without financial capacity, the public response is unequal, limited, or non-existent," according to Rodrigo Livreiro, president of FEDRA.

Contradictory measures

This body considers it contradictory that the State and municipalities have the means to collect, house, and treat animals after they enter a CRO (Animal Collection Centre), but there is no "sufficiently clear and uniform national framework" that allows the same actions to be applied preventively to animals belonging to low-income families, legally constituted animal welfare associations, colony caretakers, or citizens in general.

For FEDRA, abandonment does not begin when an animal is left at the door of an association or collected on the public road, but rather when sterilisation is delayed due to lack of resources or when vaccination and deworming are no longer ensured.

"The question is simple: why does the State only ensure certain essential actions after the animal loses its family, is abandoned, or enters a public structure? Is it more expensive, more unfair, and less effective to wait for the problem to happen than to prevent it?" asks Rodrigo Livreiro.

Recognising veterinary acts

Thus, FEDRA argues that legislation should "expressly recognise as preventive veterinary medical acts of public interest" electronic identification, vaccination, deworming, sterilisation, initial preventive clinical consultation, and the basic examinations strictly necessary for the safe performance of these acts.

The Federation emphasises that the proposal "does not concern complex treatments, hospitalisations, emergency surgeries, or specialised veterinary medicine."

"It is essential to distinguish prevention from treatment. We do not advocate that municipalities replace private hospitals and clinics, nor that they assume all the costs of illness or accident. We advocate that they have clear legal competence to guarantee the minimum acts that prevent abandonment, uncontrolled reproduction, sanitary risk, and overload of the Regional Councils of Dentistry themselves," explains the president of FEDRA.

The institution also believes that municipal veterinarians should be recognised as central professionals in preventing abandonment and promoting public veterinary health, noting that their role "cannot be limited to the management of animals already collected, to inspection, or to responding to situations of mistreatment and emergencies."

In addition, FEDRA argues that preventive veterinary medical procedures should be ensured in CROs that have adequate technical, human, and material conditions, under the responsibility of municipal veterinarians.

"It is contradictory to reinforce the Official Collection Centres to respond to animal abandonment and, at the same time, limit the use of their technical and human capacity in preventing that same abandonment," emphasises Rodrigo Livreiro.

FEDRA argues that CROs should "progressively evolve from structures focused on collection and housing to municipal centres for prevention, health, and animal welfare."

Legislative change

Therefore, the body considers that legislative change can be achieved through a review of the regime applicable to companion animals, Official Collection Centres, and municipal competencies regarding animal welfare.

The federation emphasises that this model does not represent unfair competition with private veterinary medicine, but rather aims to "guarantee a preventive public response" in areas of collective interest, especially when economic vulnerability, risk of abandonment, or animal overpopulation are at stake.

FEDRA is a non-profit organisation, recently founded by the associations NIRA - Animal Intervention and Rescue Centre, Portuguese League for Animal Rights, Street Animals Association - Sterilisation and Protection of Animals at Risk, Animalife - Association for Awareness and Social and Environmental Support, and Animal Protection Society, with the objective of promoting the well-being, protection, defence, and rescue of animals at risk.