Demonstrators have deposited the dead body of a lion in front of La Moneda Palace, Chile’s presidential palace, in a protest against the Agriculture and Livestock Service (SAG).
«The government kills animals. No more political pitutos in the SAG», read the banner displayed next to the lifeless body of the animal, which had been carried with a blanket, reports the Chilean press. Pitutos are occasional jobs without a contract.
The four protesters are workers from the Los Angeles zoo, in the Biobío region, who accuse the SAG of forcing their animals to be sedated in order to read the identification chip, including the lion Zeus, who died in the procedure. The 1st Carabineros Police Station intervened to remove the demonstrators.
«There was no problem with the traceability of lions because we have not entered or removed African lions of these characteristics from our enclosure, but they still forced us,» a spokesman for the zoo explained to the television channel T13.
«In the SAG there are no competent professionals, but there are militants of political parties. Today, the person who heads this institution is not a veterinarian, not an agricultural engineer», he reproached.
The SAG has expressed its rejection of the protest and has warned that they are analyzing the possible filing of legal actions. The agency’s communiqué stresses that the established protocols were followed. «Unfortunately, one of the animals that underwent the procedure died during its implementation,» the letter acknowledges.
The SAG has also highlighted that the zoo is «being part of an administrative sanction process by the SAG since a few months ago for serious irregularities derived from an inadequate handling of the animals that are in this establishment».
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
