Domestic animals want to be "driven" into a single registry.

      The Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg has submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation a draft law on the creation of a unified register of domestic animals and their marking, reports Interfax.

      The draft law introduces the definition of the concept of "unified register of domestic animals" and establishes the necessity of registering and marking pets in a unified state information system. It is reported that the legislative initiative aims to foster a responsible attitude towards animals in society.

      The authors of the initiative propose to empower the government to approve the list and types of domestic animals subject to marking and registration, the procedure and timelines for these processes, the list of information about domestic animals and their owners, the procedure for creating and maintaining the unified register of domestic animals, as well as the procedure for integrating existing regional databases of marked and registered domestic animals into the unified register.

      The explanatory note states that the draft law will also provide opportunities to search for the owners of lost domestic animals, ensure the process of proving the ownership of a domestic animal to a specific owner, introduce legal regulations for the breeding of domestic animals, and reduce the number of stray animals. "Since one of the main sources of replenishing the population of stray animals is domestic animals that are lost or abandoned by their owners," the authors of the bill note.