More than six dogs are placed on a dying boar in a video from an Instagram account dedicated to hunting. In the harsh images, the animal can be seen bleeding while being attacked by the dogs, and they are accompanied by text that glorifies the ferocity of the attacking dogs: “The security they give me in the grips will not paid with money.” writes the owner of the account. There are dozens of pages and profiles on Instagram or Facebook that, according to the Franz Weber Foundation, explicitly spread content about “maximum cruelty” towards animals in Spain.
This organization dedicated to the defense of animals has been analyzing public Instagram profiles open to any user for more than six months and has infiltrated others of a private nature, limited to followers, to verify the veracity of accounts who spread this kind of pictures. Foundation spokesman Rubén Pérez assures that no content has been removed from Instagram, despite the videos showing open wounds, tears and animal suffering and despite the fact that they were reported using the platform’s form. . “We see on Instagram that in practice there is no kind of control, they give free rein to these instincts and it is also accompanied by comments or texts that emphasize this violence. They basically turn dogs into killing machines,” he explains.
Attorney Ana Mula, who specializes in environmental law, explains that these practices can lead to a misdemeanor and even to animal cruelty offences. Mula assures that, according to the Autonomous Community, the administrative sanctions can be up to 200,000 euros. “It is a very severe sanction and is accompanied by precautionary measures during the proceedings, which can be deprivation of keeping animals and confiscation of animals.”
In one of the profiles of a hunter on Instagram, a calf in an enclosure is bitten by a hunting dog for no apparent reason. Another report shows a dog with a torn neck. The description of the photo, like that of other profiles, praises the fierceness of this breed of dog trained for hunting called Spanish Alano, which is characterized by its ability to bite when attacking its prey. The Franz Weber Foundation, which calls these images “sadistic,” asserts that Instagram has not removed these pages, despite their claims. According to the incident, the platform’s response was, “We have determined that it does not violate our community standards.”
In fact, many of these Instagram profiles are also dedicated to selling specimens of this breed and using the videos to promote their aggressiveness. According to the spokesman for the Franz Weber Foundation, using social networks in this way can be considered illegal breeding because it does not meet legal requirements. “They had litters and gave them out to other people for a fee. And we can say that they also used Instagram as a promotional method to publicize these litters, taking advantage of the alleged advantages that these dogs had for hunting or capturing cattle,” Pérez explains the analyzed profiles.
According to Mula, this depends on the regulations of the particular Autonomous Community where the violation is committed, as he states that there are 17 animal welfare laws, one for each Autonomous Community. “Currently there is no homogeneity and there is differential legal treatment,” he claims. For Pérez, being sanctioned in Catalonia with a stricter law is not the same as in other municipalities like Castilla-León or even Castilla-La Mancha. “The Castilla-La Mancha case is also notable because the regional animal welfare law excludes hunting dogs,” he says.
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At the state level, the Animal Welfare Act currently being debated in Spain’s Parliament envisages banning these practices and restricting the breeding of hunting dogs to professional breeders. However, this Tuesday the PSOE registered an amendment to exempt hunted animals from regulations which, if approved, would limit the new legislation to pets. As the amendment itself states, wild animals would have this case “with their own legislation as set out in the National Game Management Strategy”
On the part of the Franz Weber Foundation, they reject this change and claim to be in talks with other parliamentary groups such as Más País, Esquerra Republicana, Compromís, EH Bildu and others in order to establish an opposite position. According to Pérez, if the change is passed, it will not be possible to sanction people who raise these hounds in this way and use Instagram to promote their aggressiveness with violent images. The organization’s spokesperson believes this change would also prevent the protection of the dogs themselves, as they could be injured in these practices. “At this time there is no sanction for the hunter as it is assumed that these are normal situations. The new law states that if you abandon a dog, you are responsible for what might happen to him,” says Pérez.
Likewise, Mula defends that the future law is an opportunity so that owners of dogs dedicated to herding, guarding and hunting are not left out of obligations and can prosecute and sanction bad animal practices. “When fighting these animals, you would have to be more sophisticated,” says the lawyer.
In this sense, the spokesman for the Franz Weber Foundation calls for better control systems to prevent these practices: “We cannot always get civil society to spend hours looking on a social network to see whether this can be a criminal offense or not.”
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