Fed Gov't kills millions of animals
News and headlines for March 30 - April 5, 2024
In other news: The No Kill Companion, the definitive guide to animal shelter issues, is now available for purchase. A court has ruled that the repeal of a pit bull ban by the Aurora, CO, city council was illegal and reinstated the prohibition. Another Colorado Court ruled that public entities cannot ask about service dogs even when they harbor suspicions. Communities are looking for people to run their animal shelters. “Is Oscar Mayer’s vegan hot dog delicious enough to include in your next backyard barbecue?” A new study finds that dogs “understand words in a similar way to humans.” Former ASPCA director Ed Sayres, without a hint of irony, “is encouraging animal lovers to donate locally as he calls out what he views as large animal welfare organizations’ failures to support shelters.” As head of the ASPCA, he took its indifference to animal life and misleading donors to new heights.
These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:
The No Kill Companion, the definitive guide to animal shelter issues, is now available for purchase.
The No Kill Companion is a reference manual for legislators, policymakers, shelter managers, media, advocates, and other stakeholders. With short encyclopedia-like entries, it covers the definition of No Kill, its history, opposition, challenges, controversies, and threats to No Kill success, the state of the movement, costs and benefits of No Kill animal services, model legislation, shelter assessment tools, a glossary, and a primer on various sheltering issues.
Topics include:
The definition of No Kill;
Costs and benefits of No Kill animal control;
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Primer on various shelter issues, including temperament testing, community cats, dog behavior, and more.
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A Colorado court has ruled that the repeal of a pit bull ban by the Aurora City Council was illegal and reinstated the prohibition.
Under the law, a “proposed ordinance adopted or rejected by electoral vote under either the initiative or referendum cannot be revived, repealed, amended or passed except by electoral vote.” Since Aurora voters overwhelmingly passed a 2014 ballot initiative to keep the ban in place, repeal by City Council vote rather than a vote of the people was deemed without authority.
Banning dogs based on appearance is immoral. It is also ineffective. That’s not just opinion; it’s science:
The breed of a dog tells how they look, not how they behave;
50% of dogs labeled as pit bulls lack the DNA of breeds commonly classified as pit bulls;
Dogs targeted for breed discriminatory laws are not more likely to bite, do not bite harder, and such bans do not result in fewer dog bites or bite-related hospitalization rates; and,
Enforcement is expensive, with no measurable impact on public safety.
Bans also negatively impact surrounding communities and rescue groups, which have to take on the burden of such regressive and selfish policies to save the lives of these dogs.
However, the plaintiff who sued the city issued a statement that,
“I like dogs, but it wasn’t about dogs. This could have been about car battery recycling, and I still would have done the same thing. … The decision of the voters is, to me, holy ground. You just don’t mess with that, because that is what keeps our democracy going.”
While the rule that a vote of the people can only be undone by a subsequent vote of the people protects animals in most cases (when, for example, voters approve prohibitions on intensive confinement of farmed animals or vote to ban hunting), that is not true in this case. Barring an appeal and reversal or the issue is put before voters and they vote to repeal the ban, dogs will die.
According to a city spokesperson, “Aurora has not yet determined what enforcement of the ban might look like, what the ruling means for pit bull owners and whether the city will appeal.”
