To be clear, it’s not this way with factory farming alone. It’s also this way with illegal immigration and its antecedent, slavery.

Finally, 10 points to the folks at http://saveourdogs.net and their very well-done letter at >> http://saveourdogs.net/documen.....ionLG2.pdf

That’s GOOD lobbying.

Patrick

***

I had never heard that one before, but I will certainly remember it now. Thanks!

Lyndon Johnson once said: You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
— based on that, 1634 is a bill that should not be passed.
Peggy Richter

I should have made it clear that I was replying to this comment by Lis — June 27, 2008 @ 11:21 am

“Oh, and last point: no one here actually supports the new version of AB 1634. Some of us just don’t hate it quite as bad as the original version.”

Thanks again for running this forum for us to discuss these things and air our concerns

Appreciatively yours

Fiona

The California Legislature is basically inactive for the next month, but we’ll update when it’s time to call, snail-mail and fax.

I do not subscribe to the “free-roaming animal-rights vigilantes with Animal Control programmed into their cell phone speed dial” either, but how about this scenario

You are going through a BAD divorce. Your ex has taken up with a Bimbo and already has stolen your cat. Cat disappeared - you believe he took it over to HER house, but can not prove it. Cat has never wandered before! You have moved out with your dogs. Hubby does not want the dogs, but wants to make your life miserable and knows how much you adore them, so is using them as a way to get to you. In court you are trying to work out the settlement He gets the house, so has to pay you money. He is a skin flint and so is trying to make that amount as SMALL as possible so he is claiming that the dogs are worth $1000 each and so you owe him money over them.
I have a friend, whose story this is - she is going through this right now.
Do you suppose that it is beyond the B@$!@&d to call in a fictitious complaint against you to get AC to come out?
By the new version of this bill, if he does that to you 3 times, AC can take your dogs and castrate them or give them a hysterectomy!
Remember your ex is trying to wound you and knows he can do that through your dogs!
In many places AC will not come out when you call as others have stated. However, what do you think they will do if they will get MONEY for doing so into their coffers?

Now rethink this bill

It makes keeping a cat or dog with its reproductive organs intact illegal, period, no exemptions for service dogs, show dogs, farm dogs, old or sick dogs!!

Most dogs who display these characteristics are the product socially-deprived environments—they grew up in cages without canine or human companionship. And many of them do learn to play and have fun, as they begin to feel safe and learn to trust the people and dogs around them in their new homes.

The mothers are called bitches or queens and the get are called puppies and kittens. A “Momma” is what you have..”babies’ are what humans have.

English is fairly unusual in having separate words for these things for each species, actually. Even German, English’s closest relative, uses the same words for these relationships regardless of species.

I love the variety of English vocabulary, but biologically, the relationships are the same—especially when we’re talking about other social mammals.

There was nothing “ruthless’ about selective breeding. It was done for survival in many cases.

Compelling reasons doesn’t mean it was any less ruthless. Dogs that loved being with people and responded well to training were favored, protected, and bred. Dogs that didn’t, weren’t, and in fact were often culled. And that’s beeng going on for 14,000 years, with dogs, maybe nine or ten thousand years with cats.

Genetics plays a large role in forming basic personality. Dogs and cats are what we have made them, and depriving them of what we have created them to require is cruel.

A “puppy mill” is what the “other guy” has.. or in your case.. what any “greedy breeder’ has. and one last thing..

No, it’s not all relative and subjective. Smears against people who provide love, medical care, and a healthy environment for animals who are carefully screened for temperament and health before being bred, are not the same as people who raise dogs or cats in cages of the minimum size required by the USDA with its livestock-based standards, and give them no love, attention or care. People who sell a kitten or puppy to anyone who has an enough room on their credit card, at a significant markup from the cost expended to produce the “merchandise,” are not the same as people who carefully screen every potentional home, trying to ensure that the kitten or puppy will be safe and happy, and who provide a safety net in the form of a return clause that means the animal always has a home to go to, if the buyers can’t or own’t keep it, and who charge a price that sort kinda almost covers their costs.

And another point: dogs or cats who actually did do well with life in a cage, without human contact, or canine or feline companionship except for breeding, would not, given the huge role that genetics plays in personality, be the best candidates to produce well-adjusted family pets.

you cannot force a bithc to go back inot season by taking the puppies at six weeks..

Take away the babies, and she stops lactating. Stop the lactating, and the biological process that sends her back into heat resumes. Granted, this is a bigger deal with cats, who in the right conditions can be pregnant, nursing, or in heat almost continuously. But it will shave a week or so off the process for dogs, too.

in fact many experts in dog behavior recommend that pups are removed at this age to minimise the “fear factor’ that sometimes occurs at the 8-10 week stage.

Give me three cites to genuine experts not paid by the puppy/kitten mill industry who say that this is a good idea. (Bet you can’t find one.) With toy breed dogs, the recommendation is to keep the pups with momma until at least ten weeks.

Oh, and last point: no one here actually supports the new version of AB 1634. Some of us just don’t hate it quite as bad as the original version.

As Marjorie pointed out above, ‘pet overpopulation’ is a myth. Actually, it’s a relatively new theme from the militant animal rights camp because it opens the door to laws like AB1634 and other mandatory sterilization legislation. It also provides an easy excuse for shelter workers who kill all the animals every year.

I never accepted this lie, partly due to my familiarity with shelters and rescues over the decades.

You are absolutely right, Gina, that by allowing the animal-killers to do the framing, we have fallen down on the job. Their longstanding stealth campaign is starting to pay off.

It’s never too late to fight for our pets’ lives though. Today would be a good time to start.

That’s your bottom line. Mine is that I do not support the idea of dogs as livestock or the abuse of livestock to produce food.

As for the cost factor … Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income for food than any other country in the world. That “cheap” food has a high price, since we also lead the world in the health problems related to obesity. In many if not most countries, the poorest people starve. In America, they lose their limbs to diabetes.

Would it not be better to work towards safer, more nutritious, more humane food for all and subsidize the cost for people who can least afford it than to have us ALL support a non-sustainable system based on cruelty?

You’re going to subsidize cheap food either way … with farm subsidies at one end and the cost of healthcare for the uninsured at the other. Why not just help people who need help and overhaul the system?

Then we could ALL have better, safer food, a food system that’s not based on cheap imports, animal cruelty and fossil fuel we can no longer afford. And one that doesn’t have the massive environmental impact of factory farming.

Yeah, it’s a complicated issue. But one we’re having to address more and more as time goes on.

We provided food for ourselves for many, many generations without intensive animal farming, by the way. “Modern” farming methods pretty much date from the end of World War II, when we had a lot of cheap oil and a lot of cheap fertilizer that was being made into bombs to get rid of. Because synthetic fertilizers took the place of organic ones, farms were able to become larger and specialize in monoculture — growing one thing, like corn or soy. Since you didn’t need livestock in the system anymore, it made “sense” to concentrate them as well.

In the long term — aside from the cruelty issues — the system we have is not sustainable.

If we can change it AND have a more humane life for the animals who serve us in this manner, why not do so?

As for my “livestock,” I don’t live on a farm. I live in a normal, suburban house with a normal, suburban lot. With a few chickens and a vegetable garden, as was pretty normal for most people before we handed all food “production” over to agri-business and “experts.”

Even people without a lot of money can have a garden and probably some chickens, by the way. Community gardens thrive in even the most urban of areas, and even my local community urban farm (a couple miles away, and I get a box of nice veggie from them every Friday) has chickens that provide lovely eggs.

A degree of self-sufficiency used to be “The American Way,” and we need to reclaim our heritage.

We are more vulnerable through our concentrated, transportation-dependent food system then we are to a terrorist bombing, because our food system can be sabotaged intentionally, accidentally (through the breakout of disease) or just with a decision made by some greed-head to up the protein content of food ingredients by adding plastic to the mix.

Scary? Damn right.

And for those who keep bringing up my supposed “affluence,” well, you have an extremely interesting view of the money a person who writes about pets can make. I wish I had the money you all seem to imagine I do. I personally eat very little meat, in part because of the cost of it.

Finally, and yet again, I do not support AB 1634 in its new version. And we still have three chances (once in the Senate, once in the conference committe and once on the Governor’s desk) to drive stakes in it.