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MONTH: July-August 2007

T-61 debate resurfaces in Serbia

BELGRADE, NOVI SAD--Mid-summer 2007 festivals in Belgrade and Novi Sad, Serbia, became pretexts for street dog pogroms, reported journalists and animal advocates Jelena Zaric and Jelena Tinska.

Zaric, a frequent source for ANIMAL PEOPLE in recent years, forwarded coverage from a variety of media of dog captures in advance of the Youth Olympics in Belgrade. City veterinarian Milivoje Lazic acknowledged killing dogs with the parlaytic drug T-61, and claimed that the killing method was approved by the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

Tinska, an actress, talk show host, author, and reporter who may be the most prominent vegetarian in Serbia, alleged that the 2007 Novi Sad music festival will put mayor Maja Gojkovic into history as "the biggest animal killer" in the history of the city.

"Stray dogs have been killed by having detergent injected straight to their hearts or by being buried alive," Tinska wrote.

Informed of the reports by ANIMAL PEOPLE, WSPA director general Peter Davies wrote to Gojkovic to express "severe welfare objections to these culls," if they occurred as Tinska described, and offered WSPA help in "implementing a humane stray management program."

Davies mentioned that "Mass sterilisation of owned animals can be done at cost" to prevent stray populations from growing.

WSPA companion animals program director Sarah Vallentine wrote that "The WSPA guidelines on humane euthanasia of dogs and cats state that the use of T-61 for euthanasia is acceptable, but with strict caveats. T-61 should never be used without prior anesthesia. The drug must only be administered very slowly, by intravenous injection. The animal must be sufficiently sedated to allow slow, precise, injection.

"The drug should not be used if there is a more acceptable alternative," Vallentine stipulated. "WSPA recommends sodium pentobarbitone by intravenous injection. The operator must be suitably trained and skilled.

"If any of these cannot be guaranteed," Vallentine said, "the use of T-61 is totally unacceptable. T-61 is mixture of three drugs," Vallentine explained. "It contains a local anesthetic, a barbiturate derivative that renders the animal unconscious, and a chloroform-like agent causing muscle paralysis.

Death results from asphyxia following paralysis of the respiratory muscles. If T-61 is administered without prior analgesia, or too quickly, intense pain may result due to paralysis before loss of consciousness.

"Because of this risk," Vallentine elaborated, "there is disagreement amongst the veterinary community as to the acceptability of T-61. It is not accepted by the American Veterinary Medical Association and Humane Society of the U.S., and is no longer produced or licensed in the United States. It is, however, still legal in the United Kingdom and Europe, and is widely used in a number of European countries where barbitrates are hard to come by, as in Serbia."