Animal Husbandry on Horticultural and Other Type of Land Plots of Citizens: Legal Problems and Solutions

Introduction . In recent years, studying the legitimacy of breeding the farm animals and bees on the horticultural and other type of private land plots of citizens becomes an increasingly relevant issue. On the one hand, the proprietors can freely own, use and dispose of their real estate objects, as specified in Article 209 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. On the other hand, Article 36 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, as well as other federal laws, state that the actions of a land plot proprietor must not contradict the law and violate the rights and legitimate interests of other persons. The acing federal legislation provides answers only to the part of the above questions, thus, entitling the courts and local governments to resolve the problem by determining the parameters and types of permitted use of the land plots within the boundaries of a municipality in compliance with the Rules for Land Use and Development. The article aims to study the existing legal and regulatory framework referring to keeping the farm animals on the horticultural and other type of land plots of citizens, to analyse the current judicial practices, as well as to identify gaps in the Land Law and other laws of the Russian Federation and propose the optimal juridical solutions to this problem. Materials and Methods. A number of general scientific and specific scientific methods were used within the research, in particular, the dialectical, systemic, logical, dogmatic-legal and comparative-legal methods, as well as the legal modeling method. Results. It has been ascertained that the acting federal laws of the Russian Federation do not clearly elucidate the eligibility of breeding farm animals or bees on the horticultural land plots, or the lands designated for individual housing construction (IHC). Even in the cases when such possibility is deemed acceptable, the kind and number of animals permitted for keeping on a plot, as well as the procedure for resolving the neighbour disputes remain unclear (some interesting cases from judicial practices have been provided). A number of legal measures have been proposed to solve the problem under study: implementation of animal classification norms; prohibition on keeping farm animals on horticultural and IHC land plots located within the city borders; permission on breeding animals on agricultural land plots, as well as on household plots of personal subsidiary farming in quantities determined by the Veterinary and Sanitary Normative Legislation; development of the concept of Neighbour’s Rights followed by drafting the Neighbour Law including the legal mechanisms for mitigating and resolving conflicts between the neighbours. Discussion and Conclusion. In Russia, appropriate legal regulation of relationships of the horticultural land plot proprietors is required, since almost half of the country’s population can be referred to gardeners, and this trend is still growing. Foreign experience could be quite useful for the Russian scientists to study. For example, Neighbour Law is well developed in the most European countries, where the relevant norms are directly included into the Civil and other type of legislative acts. In China, land categories are distinguished more clearly at the legislative level, environmental standards (especially in the city neighbourhood) are stricter, and small-scale animal farms are permitted only in rural areas.