The Monday jump-start: Food for thought
By Gina Spadafori
March 23, 2009
The chicks are doing well, although one of the smallest got a little water from an eye dropper a few times because I wasn’t sure she was going to make it. Today, she looks better. And I swear they all look so much bigger after just 48 hours that I’m bringing in a second crate and dividing them up so they have more room to grow.
Things I’ve run across and meant to mention:
Paul Greenberg opines in the New York Times about how the death of his cat was a sad event but a good one for the environment. Why? Because cats eat 10 percent of the world’s fish. Who eats the other 90, percent you ask? Mr. Greenberg and the rest of us.
When cats start driving SUVs, tossing tons and tons of unnecessary packaging into landfills, build coal-fired power plants to keep the AC at 68, engage in environmentally unsustainable agriculture and buy energy-sucking flat-screen TVs for every room in the house well, then we’ll talk.
Until then, Mr. Greenberg, if you want to see what’s killing the planet, look in the mirror. It wasn’t Coco. It’s you, me and all of us.
This reminds me of all how people go on about cats killing songbirds. This, while living in gated communities carved out of sensitive habitat and “reclaimed” wetlands and built from wood that came from clear-cutting in South America. Yes, we need to keep cats from killing endangered species (not just the ones we “like”). But if you think cats are the biggest threat to eco-system … again, here’s a mirror.
Can you have a more eco-friendly pet? Sure you can! But honestly, we’d do better by the planet by having fewer children than by fussing about cats. (But if you say that, as Mother Earth News did recently, you’d better better put on your flame suit and be prepared for a wave of righteous anger and cancellations!)
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BADRAP gets a chance next month to question PETA mouthpiece Daphna Nachminovitch about PETA’s “we must kill them to save them” stand on pit bulls. … Yes, Biscuit has had good stuff lately, including a Georgia fight bust where the dogs were determined with a glance to be irredeemable killers. … Dead dogs are so much easier to raise money with, anyway, dryly notes Lassie Get Help. Michael Vick? Vick dogs? Never heard of ‘em. … More people are asking to join the HSUS suit against Petland. Look, I’m all for the HSUS going all out against puppy mills. This is what they should be doing. But part of me still wonders why they didn’t suit up their lawyers during the pet food recall and jump on Menu Foods. … My parrot hates me. Oh, right, it must be spring. Best in Flock reports. Parrots are as bad as toddlers … no, worse, because parrots never outgrow the Terrible Twos.
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More crap from the pushers of pet extinction. After forced spay-neuter failed statewide last year (although it has been re-introduced, as SB 250 in CA), it was duly installed as law in LaLaLand. This may actually turn out to be a good thing, because the L.A. Department of Animal Services is proving just how bad these laws can be and how many pets die because of them. The department shut down its spay-neuter clinics, which target exactly the people who need financial help to get their animal fixed. No-kill flamethrower Nathan Winograd has an understandable cow:
Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) General Manager Ed Boks made headlines in his support last year of Assembly Bill 1634, California’s mandatory spay/neuter bill when he admitted that the legislation was more about expanding the bureaucratic power of animal control than saving animals. During a legislative hearing, a Senator asked Ed Boks, the General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) and one of the bill’s chief proponents: “Mr. Boks, this bill doesn’t even pretend to be about saving animals, does it?” To which Boks responded: “No Senator, this is not about saving dogs and cats.”
Not content to wait for the state (which did not pass the measure), Boks convinced the City of Los Angeles to pass its own version. He also demanded more officers to enforce it. The end result was predictable. Almost immediately, LAAS officers threatened poor people with citations if they did not turn over the pets to be killed at LAAS, and that is exactly what occurred. For the first time in a decade, impounds and killing increased—dog deaths increased 24%, while cat deaths increased 35%. In the process, he also fed the backyard breeding market for more (unaltered) animals.
Now, Boks is adding another insult. As others have reported, he has abolished LAAS’ low-cost spay/neuter program, which allowed some poor people to comply with the new law. Despite increasing impounds, Boks has decided that subsidized spay/neuter is expendable.
There’s more, you bet, right here. And one of the L.A. pols who sided with Boks on the kill-kill policy is not happy at the latest turn of events:
Canceling the voucher program was . . . a step backward in trying to reach a no-kill policy in this city,” said Councilman Tony Cardenas.
No, Mr. Cardenas … installing forced spay-neuter was the step backwards. No-kill is about helping people and sheltering animals, not forcing pet-lovers underground and ramping up seizures and shelter killing. (Here’s the councilman’s letter to Boks.)
Do you need more reason to contact your elected representatives in Florida, Texas, California and the City of Chicago? Forced spay-neuter is now being framed as a money-saver at a time when governments are hard-hit. Actually, it’s a war against the two groups of people the middle-class white donors to animal causes dislikemost: Breeders (or “greeders” as they call them, with no distinguishing between a puppy-millers and reputable, ethical person out to protect our heritage breeds) and the lower socio-economic classes, who don’t deserve pets at all as far as nanny-staters believe.
For the animal-rights “true believers” behind these laws, it’s a wink and a nod to the final solution: No domesticated animals at all.
I’m still not buying it: Working together to develop no-kill communities is the way forward, and the flailing and screaming of dying old-school shelter policies and the barely hidden agenda of animal-rights true believers makes that even more clear.
Greenburg’s worried about his cat’s carbon footprint? This guy seriously needs to get a life.
Comment by 2CatMom — March 23, 2009 @ 10:51 am
I’m more worried about my dog’s muddy “foot”prints on my hardwood floors. :O)
Comment by Original Lori — March 23, 2009 @ 11:06 am
Mandatory spay-neuter looks good on paper.
In reality, it creates lots of problems.
Comment by retrieverman — March 23, 2009 @ 11:16 am
Can’t wait for his next feature: Cat Ball Toxicity.
Comment by 2CatMom — March 23, 2009 @ 11:45 am
I can’t help but think of the peeps who believe global warming is a myth. What does a “cat’s carbon footprint” seem like to them? heh.
Comment by YesBiscuit! — March 23, 2009 @ 11:49 am
Yes, PAWS and HSUS have teamed up to force the issue with the Mayor of the City of Chicago, once the hearing ended with no vote. We’re doing what we can to stop it, but money as political leverage is tough to overcome. Have a call in to Steve Dale from Pet Central/Tribune and hope to get help getting word out to community organizers. If anyone has any contact names of those who organized against MSN in CA, emails, numbers, I’d love to talk! With thanks:)
Comment by Mary Haight — March 23, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
And tomorrow we’ve got our own version of statewide MSN going to committee. This, after our county Animal Services director swore it had been killed.
Thankfully, the FVMA is blowing up over it. Because Winograd’s right—this is not about what’s best for dogs and cats. It’s ultimately about expanding the reach of our local governments into areas they always prove they know nothing about.
Comment by Dr. Patty Khuly — March 23, 2009 @ 2:55 pm
Many of us here helped organize the fight against MSN in CA. Gina and Christie wrote many excellent blog posts here, which you can find by searching for AB 1634. Christie wrote an excellent article about AB 1634 in her column in the SF Chronicle — the best reporting I saw in the MSM about that hideous bill. My husband and I helped organize opposition against AB 1634 on behalf of working dogs, and we worked with groups like NAIA, CDOC, AKC, CFA, and others. At the end of the day, more than 700 organizations and over 40,000 people joined the fight against AB 1634.
I learned a lot from my crash course in the ugliness of politics. One lesson is, more important than good arguments against a bad bill is an avalanche of constituents conveying those arguments. State and national organizations that have members in the jurisdiction can and should get involved. But other than that, input from non-constituents is usually heavily discounted. It is more likely to be resented and backfire than to help.
So while I have faxed letters to Chicago Aldermen on behalf of national organizations I represent, and have attempted to rally Chicago residents on various email lists I inhabit, for the most part the opposition to the Chicago MSN ordinance needs to come from Chicagoans.
Apathy among dog and cat owners is the biggest problem we face. As best I can figure, over 95% of the owners of intact dogs who are made aware that they are being targeted by MSN still do not get involved. To help over come this, we have to make it as easy as possible for them to become engaged. For example, both NAIA and Alley Cat Allies have used the capwiz system to help Chicagoans send letters against the MSN ordinance
http://capwiz.com/alleycat/iss.....d=12886156
http://capwiz.com/naiatrust/is.....d=11684006
AKC has instructions and a sample letter about the Chicago MSN ordinance on their website
http://www.akc.org/news/index.cfm?article_id=3760
Chicago is incredibly fortunate to have the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association and the Chicago Veterinary Medical Association actively engaged in the fight against the proposed Chicago MSN ordinance. These groups are not just opposed, they have written brilliant opposition letters.
If HSUS is getting to Chicago’s Mayor to try to swing things toward the ordinance, then perhaps the leaders of the Illinois and Chicago veterinary medical associations should see the Mayor as well. And the Mayor needs to hear from a lot of Chicagoans who oppose this ordinance.
Comment by LauraS — March 23, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
Christie wrote an excellent article about AB 1634 in her column in the SF Chronicle — the best reporting I saw in the MSM about that hideous bill.
Laura… THANK YOU!
Comment by Christie Keith — March 23, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
Thanks very much LauraS! You’ve given me a wealth of information, which I really appreciate. We(Lake Shore Animal Shelter, Anti-Cruelty, Tree House, Harmony House, Red Door—all members of the Chicago Animal Shelter Alliance) have been working with Dr Rubin and Dr Greeley, respective presidents of the ISVMA and CVMA, and it appears that experts are being dismissed and political expediency is the name of the game.
HSUS is not as strong an influence as Paula Fasseus of PAWS. She’s relatively new to the industry but with money and the contacts it brings she gets to disdain/dismiss the rest of the sheltering and animal care community in lieu of how she sees things. As you were pointing out, outsiders become irrelevant and worse and HSUS would be in that category without PAWS. I know the AKC is against this as well as BSL, which I imagine is next on the City’s agenda. I’d rail against idiots, but need to save the energy for further organizing.
Thanks again for the playbook pointers. Good luck to Dr Khuly too in your MSN fight. The major problem with all this is that they lie—they say the bill is dead and all the opposition has to do is get it back in front of another legislator and off we go again.
Wears down the public interest.
Comment by Mary Haight — March 23, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
You say, “For the animal-rights ‘true believers’ behind these laws, it’s a wink and a nod to the final solution: No domesticated animals at all.”
Although I’m with you all the way on mandatory spay/neuter, I really don’t believe that the goal of most people who advocate it is an end to pets. I know a lot people who believe strongly in MSN, and none of them wants to see a day with no companion animals.
Comment by Tina Clark — March 23, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
Tina, I think she’s referring to the leaders… and I do believe that’s their goal. But I agree, most of the followers don’t share it.
Comment by Christie Keith — March 23, 2009 @ 8:27 pm
Tina,
the issue is the goals of the people who both formulate and advocate most fiercely for these sorts of laws. The people who will use them, not to improve the welfare of animals and build a more humane framework for human interaction and husbandry of domestic animals, but to further the goal of the abolition of domestic animals.
Most of the people who support these laws do actually care about the human animal bond and animal welfare. BUT they have bought into several lies.
One, they are willing to believe, in the face of all evidence, that these laws can/will work as promised. That they have not in the past is blamed on a variety of factors. Poor support from local officials, they were not strict enough the fines not severe enough or special circumstances were at play or blame the next town over or yada yada yada.
MSN does not work, it allows a stagnant fossilized sheltering “collect and kill most save a few” mentality to survive without bringing any real change except that those who in power now have the reason and mandate to seize and kill more. Same as BSL.
Two, it further promotes the belief that MOST people are uncaring/irresponsible and need to be led by the nose and forced to conform to a narrow spectrum of pet care parameters or they should not have pets. They are not educated enough or too busy or have a “cultural bias” that makes them poor pet owners or too poor or have the wrong sort of house or eat the wrong diet or or or….
Education and outreach, combined with reasonable but non-coercive pet ordinances along with a concentrated effort to get financially affordable veterinary services where most needed is far more effective. Especially when combined with shelter reform to put a focus on everyone doing better with the goal of saving lives and keeping them out of harms way in the first place.
That however will not satisfy the leadership and core believers of those groups who believe that total liberation is the only way that humans can have a “humane” relationship with animals.
No one here doubts the sincerity of most animal welfare workers and advocates. But to deny that there are those who will wield these sorts of laws as a weapon in their well funded war on all animal “exploitation” is a grave mistake.
Comment by JenniferJ — March 23, 2009 @ 8:32 pm
it appears that experts [in Chicago] are being dismissed and political expediency is the name of the game
Yep. Same here in California.
I visited the California state capital in early 2007 with two police K9 officers
(one of whom was the vice president of WSPCA) and a senior official from Canine Companions for Independence who was also representing Assistance Dogs International, an umbrella organization over more than a dozen guide dog and service dog organizations in California. We visited every office of the members
of the first Assembly committee that was to vote on AB 1634. I naively thought all that would be required to kill this stupid bill was to have credible police K9 experts explain to the right people why this bill would be a disaster for police K9 programs, and have credible service/guide dog experts explain why this bill would be a disaster for blind and disabled citizens of California. I figured that those two things alone would cause this insane bill to go down in flames. These experts did a magnificent job relaying their dire messages. But boy, was I wrong. AB 1634 passed that committee by a comfortable margin.
It’s not that good arguments are ineffective. They can be effective for politicians who are truly undecided. It’s that ugly politics can outweigh them in some instances. We had a tough time getting through to California Assembly members when the (then) powerful Speaker of the Assembly was from Los Angeles, ground zero for extremists who have got many politicians there running scared and doing the extremists’ bidding.
I now spend less time trying to formulate perfect arguments against MSN for the legislators, and more time trying to figure out how convince dog owners to take the time to send a letter or make a phone call to their legislators. Our strength is our numbers, but we’ve got to get people to take action.
In California, while the opposition to AB 1634 was quite diverse, supporters of the bill were effective in falsely marginalizing the opposition as nothing but “greedy breeders.” It didn’t help that many on our side conveyed arguments that, while legitimate, came across as uncaring about the plight of shelter animals. Some of the feedback I heard when visiting legislators offices made it clear that our side had utterly failed to make the point that we oppose MSN (in part) because it will INCREASE shelter impounds and kill MORE dogs and cats. We had allowed supporters of MSN to position themselves as the spokespersons for animals who could not speak for themselves. BIG MISTAKE. So I’m really pleased to see leaders in the animal welfare / shelter community in Chicago working to stop MSN there.
Also helpful in fighting AB 1634 were visits to legislators’ offices, which can have more leverage than letters or phone calls. Often times one can get 10-30 minutes of undivided attention from the staff member who will write the recommendation for how their boss should vote on a bill. I found nearly all such staffers to be polite and attentive, and some of them seemed to truly “get it”.
I’m convinced that lobbyists also played an important role in killing AB 1634. NAIA, CDOC, AKC, PetPac, the farm bureau, and other groups had paid lobbyists working to kill this bill. Effective lobbyists build relationships with legislators and their staff over a period of years, so they specialize in a specific legislature.
The Save Our Dogs website (click on my name) that my husband and I created was originally just about AB 1634. We will be updating it for SB 250, etc. In any event, there is material on that site that is generic to other MSN laws and ordinances.
Comment by LauraS — March 23, 2009 @ 9:09 pm
Laura,
just a quick thanks for the Save Our Dogs site and all the hard work.
Appreciated more than I can say!
Comment by JenniferJ — March 23, 2009 @ 9:46 pm
Although I’m with you all the way on mandatory spay/neuter, I really don’t believe that the goal of most people who advocate it is an end to pets. I know a lot people who believe strongly in MSN, and none of them wants to see a day with no companion animals.
Comment by Tina Clark — March 23, 2009
Tina … I am indeed talking about pure animal rights ideology. You don’t have to dig very deep into it or into the public statements of its leaders to find that in their “perfect world” there would be no domesticated animals of any kind, pets included.
I believe they have an absolute right to hold and advocate for that position openly and honestly. My problem is that they are disingenuous — they talk one game to pet lovers while pushing for an outcome most of us don’t agree with or want at all.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 24, 2009 @ 6:51 am
ABC News did a follow-up on the question of whether pets (primarily cats) could be vegans.
Christie is quoted in it.
Despite the headline, there’s not much divided opinion on this among pet-owners in general. It’s debated in the animal-rights community some, but even there, it’s pretty accepted that if you want a vegan pet, you should get a rabbit.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 25, 2009 @ 4:21 pm