Los Angeles County’s Department of Animal Care & Control (LACDACC) is a “death camp.”
News and headlines for December 2-8, 2023
These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:
Los Angeles County’s Department of Animal Care & Control (LACDACC) is a “death camp.” That’s according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times that showed LACDACC is killing more dogs despite declining intakes, “promises to save them,” and building new “state-of-the-art” facilities they claimed would reduce it. While the investigation showed that staff members violate their own policies when killing dogs, fail to reach out to rescue groups before killing them, and lack sufficient public access hours when working people can visit and adopt animals, the authors missed a crucial reason that explains the alarming increase in killing: staff also choose to kill dogs by preventing non-profit organizations and No Kill shelters from saving them even when they request to do so.
To prevent these killings, rescuers sued Los Angeles County under the Hayden Law, which makes that illegal. In a significant victory for rescuers, the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that under that law, California shelters cannot kill dogs rescuers are willing to save unless those dogs are irremediably suffering or have a documented history of vicious and dangerous behavior. After asking the Court of Appeal to reconsider, which the Court declined to do, L.A. County has now petitioned the California Supreme Court to give it the power to kill dogs who have an immediate place to go, spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to do so, even as they claim they do not have the money to restore the adoption hours they cut back.
L.A. County may have new state-of-the-art shelters, but they are run with staff mired in an old mindset, and for dogs, the result is decidedly deadly.
Mexico’s Supreme Court “overturned a 2022 ban on bullfighting in Mexico City, opening the way for events to resume.”
The justices did not explain their arguments for overturning the ban, but bullfight organizers claimed it violated their right to continue the tradition. The capital had a history of almost 500 years of bullfighting, but there had been no fights since the 2022 injunction.
A crowd of people gathered outside the Supreme Court building Wednesday, holding up signs reading “Bulls Yes, Bullfighters No!” and “Mexico says no to bullfights.”
Critics say the fights inherently represent cruelty to animals.
Supporters claim it is part of their culture.
According to historians, Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés watched some of the first bullfights in the city in the 1520s, soon after his 1521 Conquest of the Aztec capital.
The argument is absurd. A history of oppression of animals does not justify it going forward. Indeed, the last two centuries of human history have witnessed the widespread rejection of many abusive practices in terms of our relationships with each other, including racism, sexism, and other discrimination. Regarding animals, neither people nor animals need to be prisoners of an unjust and misguided past. One commentator noted, “All our societies evolve as a matter of necessity, and this means cruel and unacceptable customs may be among those to go.”
The Los Angeles City Council approved the drafting of “an ordinance that would ban rodeos in city limits over concerns the events are inherently cruel to animals,” but it creates an exception “for cultural and traditional equestrian events such as charrería, predominantly practiced by Latinos.”
While the larger ban is welcome, the exception is nothing more than racism of low expectations that creates a privileged class of animal abusers.
The city attorney will draft the amended language before final approval by the City Council.
