A dispersed institutional response
Animal protection is distributed across municipalities, police, prosecutors, agricultural and health authorities, environmental institutions, and courts. This fragmentation makes it difficult to identify responsibility, maintain specialised knowledge, and ensure that legal rules are applied consistently.
Animals are affected by public decisions in many areas, but rarely have a public institution whose central mission is to represent their interests and monitor how the State fulfils its duties toward them.
Institutions that make protection real
A specialised animal ombudsperson or prosecution service could investigate systemic failures, participate in proceedings, issue recommendations, gather information, and coordinate public bodies. An oversight function could also examine whether public decisions comply with animal-protection duties.
Such institutions would not replace civil society or existing agencies. They would make visible an interest that the current system too often leaves without a permanent advocate: the interest of animals themselves.