Dear Animal Lovers,
While Maya is slowly recovering from her surgery last week, our investigation continues. More and more witnesses and organisations are reporting their stories and it is becoming more and more obvious why Ben Weyts prefered to let our Maya almost die in the hands of her thieves, rather than correcting her false registration in dogID and saving her from her abusers.
It turns out that dogID does not only legalize dog theft, it also legalizes the illegal import of way too young Eastern European puppies, who often arrive more dead that alive in Belgium. European studies show that Belgium is the central point in the illegal European dog trade, estimated at 5 to 8 billion euros profit each year. It is the third most profitable trade, after weapons and drugs.
A documentary from 2020, where journalists went undercover, showed how veterinaries sell blanco pet passports and register 7 to 10 weeks old, often sick puppies in dogID as pups of 15 weeks and above, without any control or any sanctions and without ever seeing these pups. East-European pups thus become "Belgian" pups and the illegal breeders and traders can not be traced anymore.
The documentary shows how hundreds of pups are gathered in East-European "collection centers" and then transported to Belgium. The Belgian Minister Ben Weyts has found nothing better now than to give these large scale "collection centers" (and the mostly illegal breeders that deliver pups to them) a monopoly to import pups. At the same time, he gave a monopoly to some Belgian puppy supermarkets to collect and resell these puppies upon arrival. It basically boils down to legalizing the illegal dog trade, creating a dog trade cartel, protecting a handful of puppy mill and puppy supermarket owners, and centralizing the dog trade by the government, which goes against the principles of the free market and which is a tragedy for animal welfare. In the future, if this evoution is not stopped, you'll only be able to buy a puppy mil pup from a government approved puppy supermarket. You can read more about it in this article.
But there is more. It turns out that the Belgian government has CREATED the puppy mil trade problem itself. Legislation of the past years has been specifically designed to benefit a handful of puppy mil and puppy supermarket owners. DogID has been designed to legalize these illegal imports.
Animal protection organisation IOFPA has given Ben Weyts a 1 month deadline to make amends, after which it will sue the Belgian government. If you can spare some euros, please donate something to IOFPA to help fund their legal costs.
At first I had a hard time believing the scale and impact of this information, but it turns out that the chief of the Dienst Dierenwelzijn (animal welfare agency) who has been protecting Maya's thieves for almost 2 years and who has refused to apply legislation correctly and who refuses until this day to investigate Maya's case, is the same man who created the legislation mentioned above and who created dogID. According to Ben Weyts, in close collaboration with and with the approval of the European Commission, which means your country also may be concerned. As our investigation continues, surely more information will come to light. How is it possible that a man with close ties to the dog trade has a monopoly to create legislation for 36 years ? Especially after having been implicated in a corruption scandal called Puppymex.
In the meanwhile, member of parliament Els Sterckx is preparing an audit to have the Dienst Dierenwelzijn and MayaGate investigated from A to Z. She has publicly appealed to animal owners, rescue organisations, veterinaries, animal protection organisations to provide as much information as possible. She welcomes all suggestions to create a real animal welfare policy. If there is something you'ld like to share or report, you can do so at : els.sterckx@vlaamsparlement.be. Animal activists from all over the country, who are sick of hearing false promises and being lied to for years, are now demanding the resignation of Ben Weyts.
His solution : paying adds on facebook to promote false messages of how he is "ensuring severe punishment in case of animal abuse" and considering the adoption of a rescue horse in an attempt to re-establish some popularity ...
With Love from Maya (the Leo), Maya's mum (me) and Maya's sis (Anaya)
More information on www.gestolenhond.be