Moroccan Animal Welfare Groups Demand End to Mass Dog Culling, Urge Humane Alternatives

"Despite the high instructions of His Majesty King Mohammed VI [...] and the framework agreement signed in 2019, under the aegis of the Ministry of the Interior, the TNVR program (capture, sterilization, vaccination and release), - supposed to put an end to diseases like rabies -, has still not been implemented," laments the collective in a press release, denouncing "brutal and inhumane operations of capture and slaughter of animals throughout the country, including those already sterilized, vaccinated and identified".

In the eyes of the associations "Le Cœur Sur la Patte", the Société Protectrice des Animaux du Maroc, the Sanctuaire de la Faune de Tanger (SFT), Cœur & ACT and the RAPAD which make up this collective, this situation also gives a totally degraded and depreciated image of our country in the eyes of those who witness it. "Visible to all, these shocking scenes also shock the tourists who, despite themselves and more and more often, are the appalled and outraged spectators... They then echo this to the international media, which in turn strongly denounce this situation, which is causing considerable harm to our country, to its tourist attendance and to the vision of modernity in which it is inscribed," the collective believes.

It firmly condemns "the inadmissible excesses of the killing of these animals, either by poisoning or live ammunition, or by leaving them to die of hunger and/or thirst or by capturing them in a horrific way..." and also demands "the immediate cessation of the slaughter of street animals, in all the cities of the kingdom, the implementation of the TNVR program following the recommendations of competent institutions such as the OMSA, the FAO and the WHO and the integration of official and historical animal protection associations in the entire TNVR program, in a transparent manner". The collective also "urgently" calls for "the immediate dissolution of all fictitious private or associative entities, which would not be genuine field animal protection associations".