Voice of the 2025 Shanghai Two Sessions: Building a "Pet-Friendly City"

From January 14 to 18, 2025, the two sessions of Shanghai were held successfully.

At this meeting, the pet industry became a hot topic of concern for the delegates. Many representatives put forward constructive views and suggestions from different levels to help the development and standardization of the pet industry.

The following are some of the main views of the representatives:

1. Municipal Council Member Lu Huiwen: Make pet travel more legal

During the two sessions of Shanghai last year, Lu Huiwen, member of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, deputy director of the Science and Education Committee, and president of the Shanghai Union Education Center, proposed a proposal to "build a pet-friendly city", which attracted widespread attention.

During this year's two sessions, Lu Huiwen once again paid attention to the pet field and submitted a proposal on "making traveling with pets legal".

It is recommended to adopt legislation and standardized management so that traveling with pets has a legal basis.

For public spaces with pet-friendly areas, detailed policies, regulations and codes of conduct should be introduced to clearly define the division of rights and responsibilities and impose penalties for violations of regulations;

Clearly define the service content and standards that must be included in "pet-friendly" services;

Unified industry standards and guidelines should be established for the additional fees involved in bringing pets to hotels or other pet-friendly places to ensure that the charges are transparent and reasonable and to avoid the occurrence of random charges.

In addition, she also suggested that high-speed rail should install special carriages for carrying pets, promote insurance for pet travel, and formulate operating standards for pet-friendly businesses.

2. Municipal Council Member Jiao Zheng: Building a harmonious environment for people and pets to coexist

It is suggested to improve pet breeding regulations, strengthen urban infrastructure construction, add pet defecation facilities, dog walking areas, etc., to adapt to the changes in pet breeding needs in modern cities.

3. Municipal Council Member Chen Yongliang: Establishing a “companion-type” animal protection system

First, improve the legal and regulatory system for animal protection. Formulate special laws and regulations to clarify the legal status and rights of animals, specify the rights and obligations of animal keepers in detail, and strictly regulate the animal trading market; establish regulatory agencies and law enforcement teams, and set up special animal protection regulatory agencies to supervise the implementation of laws and regulations.

Second, we need to strengthen the construction and standardized management of animal medical resources. To optimize the layout of medical resources, planning departments should include animal medical institutions in the layout planning of urban public service facilities, and encourage the construction of more standardized and professional animal hospitals and clinics in suburban areas and animal breeding concentrated areas through policy guidance and financial support, so as to achieve a balanced distribution of animal medical resources and facilitate citizens to seek medical treatment for their pets. We need to strengthen industry supervision and standardized construction. The Municipal Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, the Health and Health Commission and other relevant departments should jointly formulate and improve animal medical industry standards and specifications, establish an animal medical industry credit evaluation system, and publicize and punish institutions that violate regulations and provide poor service quality.

The third is to deepen animal protection publicity and education and awareness raising. The Municipal Education Commission will incorporate animal protection knowledge into the school education curriculum system, gradually carry out animal protection science education from primary school, teach students the concept, methods and importance of animal protection, and cultivate students' good morals and values of respecting life and caring for animals. We must make full use of various media platforms to carry out all-round and multi-level social publicity activities for animal protection.

4. Municipal Councillor Huang Shixin: Let the pet economy become a new engine of economic growth

Further increase the rabies immunization rate of pets, improve the urban animal disease monitoring system, enhance the ability to predict and warn of zoonotic diseases, increase popular science publicity efforts, and promote scientific pet breeding throughout its life cycle.

Establish and improve the pet health standards system, provide normative guidance for the development of new business formats, give full play to the bridge and link role of industry associations, promote resource sharing and mutual complementation of advantages, encourage innovative service models, and explore the creation of immersive pet consumption experience scenarios.

5. Municipal People's Congress Representative Wu Aihua: Standardize pet hospitals and pet funeral industry standards

Regarding the construction of pet hospitals, Wu Aihua suggested that the Shanghai Municipal Market Supervision Administration be the leading department to establish a one-stop approval service platform. The approval process and requirements of various departments should be integrated so that applicants can submit all application materials on one platform to achieve information sharing. At the same time, the approval time limit of each department should be clarified to improve approval efficiency.

The government should increase its financial investment in the pet funeral industry. In the next 3-5 years, it plans to build at least 5 new public pet funeral institutions, which will be reasonably distributed in various regions to ease the contradiction between supply and demand. At the same time, the civil affairs department will work with environmental protection, price and other departments to formulate norms and standards for the pet funeral industry. It will clarify the service items, service processes, charging standards and environmental protection requirements, impose severe penalties on businesses that violate regulations, and strengthen industry supervision.

6. Municipal People's Congress Representatives' Governance: The booming pet economy requires healthy development

1. Give full play to Shanghai's advantages as an international metropolis and hold influential international pet competitions and exhibitions. It is recommended to continue to cooperate with the world's top pet events, build a pet event brand, invite well-known pet brands and experts to participate in the event, and enhance the international influence and popularity of the event.

2. Strengthen communication and cooperation with the domestic and foreign pet industries, promote development through competitions, and conduct publicity and promotion through various channels and media. This will further enhance Shanghai’s status and influence in the international pet industry, attract more domestic and foreign pet-related companies and brands to settle in, promote the development of the pet industry, and expand the scale of the pet economy.

3. Improve the public's awareness and attention to healthy pet raising, promote the dissemination and exchange of pet culture, build a pet-friendly city, and establish a friendly, harmonious, and warm image of an international metropolis.

7. Municipal People's Congress Representative Pan Shuhong: Suggestions to amend the "Shanghai Dog Management Regulations"

Clarify the definition of pet types and expand the scope of pet breeding and management; establish a grid-based pet information management system; set up an "Animal Management Center"; clarify the penalties for abandoning and abusing pets; and formulate unified pet industry standards.

8. People's Congress Representative Ding Xiangyang: Strengthen the management of pet dogs

Improve the relevant regulations on dog breeding as soon as possible.

Strengthen education and guide pet dog owners to regulate the management of pet dogs. The community should promptly stop the situation of keeping pet dogs not in accordance with regulations and should not allow it to run rampant. Any unit or individual has the right to report and complain about illegal dog keeping.

Shanghai is China's economic, financial, trade and shipping center, and occupies an extremely important position in China's economy, but its development in animal protection has been relatively backward. At the beginning of the new year of 2025, there have been so many good "suggestions" and "proposals", which have allowed "furry children" to feel the warmth of spring in advance. The harmonious coexistence of humans and animals is an important symbol of the progress of urban civilization. We look forward to the next move of Shanghai!