GERMANY HAS VOTED to tighten its law against bestiality, stipulating a heavy fine for anyone who violates the new law, in a bid to protect animal welfare.

The new legislation, passed by the Bundestag in a late-night vote, forbids sex acts with animals or supplying animals to others for sex.

Bestiality had been removed from Germany’s penal code in 1969 and since then had only been against the law if “significant harm” is inflicted on the animal.

The new law will make the practice punishable by a fine of up to €25,000.

But the president of a group claiming to represent 100,000 people in Germany who engage in the act of bestiality or feel a sexual attraction to animals, ZETA, threatened to challenge the law before the Federal Constitutional Court.

Michael Kiok, who lives with his eight-and-a-half-year-old dog Cessie, said in a statement that he intended to stop “the discrimination against and persecution of zoophiles in Germany”.

The anti-bestiality legislation is part of a package of measures aimed at bolstering animal protection in Germany and to bring the country in line with a European Union directive.

It continues to allow certain practices common in livestock breeding such as the castration of pigs and the branding of horses.