Bill seeks to bar selling cats, dogs for research

[Guest guest]

From the front page of today's Chron:

 

BILL SEEKS TO BAR SELLING CATS, DOGS FOR RESEARCH

 

Proposed state Assembly measure would apply to animal shelters across

California

 

Julian Guthrie, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, February 25, 2003

 

----Animal

shelters would be prohibited from selling cats and dogs for medical research

or testing under a bill introduced in the state Assembly.

 

If passed, California would join 14 other states that bar the giving or

selling of live shelter animals to researchers.

 

The bill to prohibit " pound seizure " in California was introduced by

Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood. It is the first legislative

effort in 20 years to stop the statewide sale of adoptable dogs, cats and

other animals to research facilities.

 

" I think the time is right for this to pass, " Koretz said Monday. " Most

lawmakers, over time, have recognized the drawbacks of pound seizure. We've

reached a point where we know that students don't need to do practice

surgery on live animals to be good vets. You don't need to operate on

animals, kill them and throw them away. "

 

Sacramento County operates the only publicly funded animal shelter known to

sell adoptable dogs and cats for research, according to the California

Animal Control Directors' Association. More than 400 dogs and cats are sent

each year to UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. A dozen dogs are sent

to the medical research wing of Sutter Hospital in Sacramento.

 

UC Davis officials defend the limited use of live animals in teaching.

Sutter declines to say how the animals are used.

 

The Sacramento shelter, which takes in some 21,000 animals a year and

euthanizes more than half, was the subject of a story in The Chronicle on

Jan. 26.

 

Koretz, a West Hollywood city councilman for 13 years and author of numerous

animal welfare bills, said The Chronicle story " sharpened the focus " of the

bill, which he had been working on for several months.

 

The article spotlighted conditions at the Sacramento site and inspired him

to begin putting together an animal welfare task force, he said. He hopes to

work with a diverse array of animal welfare organizations to draft a plan to

improve shelters.

 

" This wasn't done to target Sacramento, " he said of the bill. " It was done

out of fear that with the budget situation as it is, other counties that had

banned the practice would fall back into it, thinking wrongly that this

would produce additional revenue. "

 

He called the turning over of live animals for research a " deplorable

practice that should be eradicated " in our society.

 

" When the public learns that a family dog or cat may end up as research

fodder, the animals will be abandoned in public instead, creating more work

and increasing the cost of taxpayer-funded animal control, " he said.

 

The bill will probably be heard in policy committee in late March or early

April.

 

Assembly colleague Mark Leno, who championed animal rights while a member of

the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, supports Koretz's bill.

 

Leno, D-San Francisco, visited the Sacramento animal shelter in early

February and said he would use his office in any way possible to reduce the

high euthanasia rate and challenge the contract with UC Davis and Sutter. At

the same time, he introduced a resolution that established today as " Spay

Day USA. "

 

E-mail Julian Guthrie at jguthrie.