Mayor of Slovak town urges gypsies to eat stray dogs

Animal rights groups are demanding a Slovak mayor be sacked after he urged gypsies to help him tackle the stray dog problem - by eating them. Andrej Sabol who is mayor of Druzstevnej pri Hornade in Slovakia admitted to animal welfare officers that he had given permission to gypsies to catch and eat the dogs - although it was normally forbidden - to cut down on the numbers.

And he confirmed the ruling in an email to animal rights activists saying: 'The large number of stray dogs is a big problem, but I am proud that we have found a solution, because the Roma people eat them. So we are now letting them have them free of charge. People are always complaining about the number of dogs roaming around. But rounding them up and keeping dogs in shelters is not cheap. This is a satisfactory solution for everyone.'



And he rejected the animal rights activists that complained about it saying: 'Dogs do not vote for me, but people do. And the people here require me to protect them from stray dogs. To be honest these [Roma] people would probably eat them anyway, we are just helping them along.'

Slovak animal protection society spokeswoman Romana Serfelova said: 'We know that many communities have problems with stray dogs, but this is not a solution.' She has now called for the mayor to be sacked and charged under the country’s animal cruelty laws which forbid the eating of domestic animals.