“One of the big changes in this initiative is related to the limitation of the use of pets in hunting activities”, said Inês de Sousa Real from the People-Animals- Nature (PAN) party.

For Inês de Sousa Real, one cannot “continue to treat pets in the way they have been treated so far, placing them in packs, in completely obsolete and degraded kennels, transporting them under any conditions, and leaving them to be abandoned when the hunting activity ends or even, often, without any conditions of food or water in what are their lodgings”.

The PAN leader said that the legislative initiative, delivered on Monday, "creates a National Council for the Protection of Biodiversity and Nature, instead of the National Hunting Council, and that it would also prohibit hunting activities,” such as the one that took place in Torre Bela, in Azambuja (Lisbon), where there was a controversial slaughter of more than 500 animals, which “may be carried out without any prior authorisation”.