In January 2012 during a routine inspection German customs noticed that dogs were sold from a truck of Ukrainian origin at a motorway stop in the North of Germany. The truck was then subject of an investigation revealing that alongside a number of passengers, seven dogs were transported either in cages or between passengers.

Documentation for the dogs was shown to the customs officers, however they decided to involve the responsible veterinary authority of the district where the truck was stopped for identification checks of the microchipped dogs. While microchip numbers matched those in the pet passports and other provided documents, it was noticed that four of the seven dogs were obviously less than 7 month of age, as they did not show signs of secondary teeth. Because the Ukraine is an unlisted third country and because according to requirements of Regulation (EC) No 998/2003 (European Community, 2003) for movement into the EU a dog must be microchipped, vaccinated, and serologically tested at least 30 days after followed by a three month waiting period, thus, dogs from the Ukraine entering the EU should be at least 7 month of age. Due to these discrepancies and the fact that the dogs were destined for Belgium and the Netherlands the dogs were put in quarantine.

The dogs appeared to be pure-bred and during the following days some “owners” requested their dogs to be handed over. In fact, even the Ukrainian Kennel Union requested the pedigree dogs be handed over to their new owners in Belgium without recognizing the fact that current EU-regulations were violated. For three dogs additional documentation, i.e. pedigree certificate was provided revealing that the pet passports, serological results and veterinary certificates were falsified (table 1). Therefore a serological testing was initiated for each dog, with the result that only one older Pommeranian dog had a sufficiently high titre of >0.5 IU/ml.

In this case, the transportation of dogs was a professional business as some owners declared that they had paid €200 for the transport of one dog. The costs for quarantine (€1500 per dog) were requested from the owners as well as a fee of €2000 (paid in cash) was requested from the driver. Later it was found that both drivers license and papers for the van were also falsified.

As summarized in table 1, except for the two Golden Retrievers none of the dogs complied with the regulation on pet-movement into the EU. Furthermore, the maximum number of five dogs for non-commercial movement was violated. The official documentation provided here was professionally falsified or signed without proper identity check of the animals. Also, veterinarians or veterinary clinics that sent dog sera to EU-approved laboratories seem to be involved in this illegal movement of pedigree puppies into the EU as some of the dogs were not born by the time the titre was measured (table 1). The information on this case was forwarded to the German embassy in the Ukraine to hamper further gratification of Schengen-visa to the people involved.

Breed	Birth date (passport)	Birth date (pedigree certificate)	Date of vaccination	Serological test Ukraine (date/titre)	Serological test Germany	Official veterinary certificate
English Cocker Spaniel	2011/06/15	2011/11/11	2011/08/30	2011/10/02   (0.8 IU/ml)	0.06 IU/ml	Yes
English Cocker Spaniel	2011/05/30	2011/10/26	2011/09/01	2011/10/02 (1.62 IU/ml)	0.06 IU/ml	Yes
Pommeranian	2007/12/18	-	2008/08/05 2011/12/11	-	6.81 IU/ml	No
Pommeranian	2011/10/08	-	2011/12/11	-	no titre	Yes
Pinscher	2011/06/09	2011/10/08	2011/09/12	2011/10/11  0.55 IU/ml	no titre	Yes
Golden Retriever	2011/06/19	-	2011/09/15	2011/10/16    0.5 IU/ml	0.19 IU/ml	Yes
Golden Retriever	2011/06/19	-	2011/09/15	2011/10/16  0.75 IU/ml	0.57 IU/ml	Yes

Table 1: Details of dogs quarantined

 

Besides this case where animal disease regulations are violated, illegal puppy trade within the EU and from third countries is often also a serious animal welfare issue. Puppies are still weaning, and they are often in bad circumstances. Driven by a demand for apparently cheap dogs with the internet as perfect market place, puppies sometimes bred in so called puppy-mills are transported at a too-young age across Europe often under terrible conditions. For instance, in Germany in February 2012, during a routine police control a lorry was checked and 92 puppies were detected. All dogs were put into quarantine. In this case the origin was Hungary and the destination of the dogs was The Netherlands. Likewise, a bus from Spain with 41 puppies on board was stopped near Düsseldorf in 2010. In the latter two cases, traffic and customs controls can only detect the tip of the iceberg as within-EU border controls belong to the past. Given the fact that in some EU-member states rabies is still endemic the risk for disease translocation is given.

The same holds true for importation of pets from third countries where rabies is endemic. As seen in table 1 most dogs in this case were not adequately protected against rabies thus providing opportunities for rabies to be introduced into the EU. In previous years a large proportion of imported rabies cases into the EU were puppies or young dogs (Johnson et al., 2011). In Germany, recent imported rabies cases involved a juvenile dog from Croatia in 2009 where entry into the EU occurred without customs controls (Weiss et al., 2009). A second case was detected in 2010, when an unvaccinated puppy was brought to Bavaria and eventually did of rabies. In this latter case border controls did not check for the proper age and vaccination status of the animal (Eismann et al., 2010). Thus at least controls at EU-borders need to strict and customs officers need to be vigilante to also discover falsified documents.

The drivers behind this are dog-owners across the EU. People that buy dogs with an unknown background should be aware of the rabies risk they introduce to their homes.

 

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References

 

Eismann, A., Ewringmann, T., Just, F., Mller, T. & Freuling, C. (2010). Rabies in Bavaria (Germany) in an imported puppy from Bosnia-Herzegovina  Rabies Bull Eur 34, 5-6.

European Community (2003). Regulation (EC) No 998/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the animal health requirements applicable to the non-commercial movement of pet animals and amending Council Directive 92/65/EEC. Official Journal of the European Communities L 146, 1-9.

Johnson, N., Freuling, C., Horton, D., Müller, T. & Fooks, A. R. (2011). Imported rabies, European Union and Switzerland, 2001-2010. Emerg Infect Dis 17, 753-754.

Weiss, B., Hoffmann, U., Freuling, C., Muller, T., Fesseler, M. & Renner, C. (2009). Rabies exposure due to an illegally imported dog in Germany. Rabies Bull Eur 33, 5-6.