A Changing Public
Animal rights extremist groups influence public opinion in
ways that threaten responsible dog fanciers
By Diane Vasey
The following article first appeared in the October 1999 edition of the
AKCGazette published by the American Kennel Club,
and is reproduced with permission.
By Diane Vasey
Dog fanciers today are living during a time of many changes in public policy
regarding animals. As society moves further and further from its agricultural
roots, so do people's perspectives of animals. Although there are many factors
that contribute to changes in public attitudes, this article focuses on one,
the animal rights movement, which has steadily progressed and has effectively
influenced laws that restrict some of the practices to which dog fanciers have
been accustomed.
The American Kennel Club(AKC) is tracking
the progress of laws that affect purebred dog owners and fanciers, and offers
helpful information to those seeking protection of their rights and to legislators
who are looking for ways to protect their communities with fair and enforceable
laws.
"Preserving the rights and privileges of those who participate in the sport
of purebred dogs is an important part of our mission," says Noreen Baxter, vice
president of the Public Education and Legislation division at the AKC. "The
AKC has profound respect for education as a means of ensuring the continuation
of the sport."
Defining the Issues
There are critical differences between animal rights organizations and animal
welfare organizations. Animal welfare groups seek to improve treatment of animals.
Animal rights organizations, on the other hand, according to their leaders and
literature, seek to end the use and ownership of animals. In the words of the
best-known animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
or PETA, "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."
According to a briefing sheet published by the Washington, D.C.-based Capital
Research Center, animal rights groups profess to work for improved animal
treatment while their ultimate goal is to abolish the following: 1) the breeding
and owning of pets; 2) the use of animals in biomedical research; 3) the raising
of farm animals for food, clothing, and by-products such as insulin; 4) the
use of animals in education and entertainment, including zoos, aquariums, circuses
and rodeos; and 5) all forms of hunting (including field trial competition),
trapping and fishing.
The Strategy of Illusion and Confusion
Their plan is to purposely and gradually chip away at the use of animals on
different fronts, hoping that apathy, disbelief and lack of unified opposition
will result in their ultimate success.
"By camouflaging their true agenda and encouraging the public to confuse animals
rights philosophy with the public's own belief in principles of animal welfare,
they have organized a powerful, highly sophisticated, media-savvy international
movement designed to cash in on the fear, concern and ignorance people have
regarding animals and animal issues," says Patti Strand, AKC Board Member and
executive director of the National Animal Interest
Alliance (NAIA), an animal welfare organization that supports responsible
use of animals and works to protect our rights to own and breed dogs.
Strand says one of the strategies of animal rights organizations is to create
a "crisis" atmosphere to garner media attention and raise funding. They create
a villain to blame for the crisis. Then they call on the public to help them
put the villain out of business (send money and vote or call your senator).
As a result, regardless of whether they win the battle, their media campaigns
change public opinion. During the process, the public is fed a constant stream
of negative misinformation and half-truths on the subject.
Animal rights organizations work aggressively to influence public opinion and
public policy. From coast to coast, they back a constant stream of unreasonable
proposals that affect dog breeders and owners: unfair lemon laws; overly restrictive
limit laws, federal, state and local breeder licensing; laws that ban hunting
with dogs, breed-specific laws, and more.
Direct Hits to Dog Fanciers and Pet Owners
Animal control laws have become increasingly more intrusive and restrictive.
Many cities now tell people how many pets they may have and what breeds they
cannot have. Many seek to control breeding by discriminatory license differentials.
Some also seek to enforce the various ordinances by forcing veterinarians to
violate privileged information, through the spurious rationale of combating
rabies.
Texas cities have tied ordinances to registration which have gone far beyond
the original intent of rabies control, and include social and community issues
that have little to do with that original intent, such as substantial fee differentials
for sterilized animals versus intact animals. Veterinarians are being forced
to provide pet-health records to city governments. Although the Responsible
Pet Owners Alliance, Inc., and other dog fanciers had worked hard to oppose
these ordinances, they were unable to prevent their passage.
Another way that animal rights organizations plan to dissuade the breeding
of dogs is to make it so expensive and legally cumbersome as to exclude nearly
everyone from doing so. In California, hearings on a spay/neuter ordinance were
held in August. The proposal contains several provisions that will greatly impact
fanciers. These include a mandatory spay/neuter requirement, unless an owner
has obtained an unaltered-animal permit. The cost for the permit will be $100
per animal per year. Breeders will be required to obtain an annual $200 permit
for each animal and will be restricted to one litter per animal per year, unless
they apply for a special, one-time-only two-litter permit. Breeders must also
report a buyer's contact information to the Department of Animal Control Regulation.
Ordinance violators will face 100-percent penalty fees. At the time this issue
goes to press, there is a final hearing scheduled for Oct. 6 in South Central
Los Angeles.
The outcome of such battles is not always bleak for dog fanciers. One example
of success - however temporary - is the recent decision regarding the Doris
Day Animal League's (DDAL's) petition to require federal licensing and inspection
of all dog breeders, hobby and commercial. The United
States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
has been considering this petition for two years, and announced in July that
currently it is not going to change the definition of breeder to include hobby
breeders. The petition failed only after lawsuits, letter-writing campaigns,
and a lot of work from concerned fanciers. "For right now, Uncle Sam can't come
into hobby breeders' homes," says Stephanie Ortel, legislation manager with
the AKC's Canine Legislation department. "The USDA decision is a great example
of fanciers responding to an issue, taking action and achieving the desired
result of preventing negative legislation from impacting the sport." Now that
the USDA has rejected the petition, it appears almost a certainty that the Doris
Day Animal League will reopen its lawsuit and attempt to win in court.
American society today is faced with well-funded and finely tuned campaigns
to change animal cruelty laws in local and state legislatures. The effort is
spearheaded by humane societies and other groups with an increasingly narrow
view of appropriate animal care.
"The effort to rewrite animal cruelty laws is clearly part of a nationwide
campaign to limit animal use," says Norma Bennett Woolf, who is editor and feature
writer of the NAIA News and Dog Owner's Guide, a bimonthly publication
for pet and show dog owners in print and on the Internet. She is active in dog
issues in Ohio as president of Clermont County Kennel Club, vice president of
a regional Akita breed club, and corresponding secretary of Ohio Valley Dog
Owners, Inc. The Ohio Legislature faced a bill in its 1998 session that 1) applied
only to "companion animals," defined as "animals kept as pets or mascots" by
individuals and ironically, at the time, exempted breeders; 2) included language
that could have banned ear cropping, tail docking and the confining of dogs
and cats in crates; 3) allowed humane agents to impound animals based only on
reasonable cause (an educated guess) and required probable cause (evidence)
only at the pretrial hearing; 4) allowed the court to order the accused to pay
costs for care of impounded animals before the trial; 5) allowed court-ordered
forfeiture of the animals before trial if the accused could not pay the animal
care fees; 6) allocated fines for conviction to the humane society that brought
the charges; and 7) raised subsequent offenses to a felony equal to domestic
abuse.
Speaking of raising penalties for cruelty convictions, an August article in
The New York Times reported that animal lawyers' strategy includes a
nationwide campaign to increase the criminal penalties for animal cruelty. In
1994, all but six states regarded such violations as misdemeanors, punishable
by small fines and short jail terms. Now 27 states make violations felonies,
with fines of up to $100,000 and prison terms of up to 10 years.
For updated information about the Ohio bill, Woolf can be reached by e-mail
at editor@naiaonline.org.
The majority of dog fanciers busily go about enjoying our sport oblivious of
the progress of animal rights organizations. Inch-by-inch, mile-by-mile, the
extremist groups gain momentum - now with combined annual incomes (of just two
of them) that exceed $50 million, and now with 15 years' experience in the legislative
process.
Common Sense May Not Be So Common
Lest you believe that common sense as you know it will prevail in matters of
legislation, remember this: What seems like common sense to you may not be as
common as you think. Animals rights extremists are working hard in schools and
courts to convince everyone that it is unethical to use animals at all, for
anything - and that all forms of confinement are unacceptable. In the past few
years, evidence of their progress has become more apparent in the legal system.
Lawyers are creating a new field of animal law with far more ambitious goals
than traditional anticruelty laws. "They are filing novel lawsuits and producing
a new legal scholarship to try to chip away at a fundamental principle of American
law that animals are property and have no rights," says William Glaberson in
the Aug. 19 New York Times article "Legal Pioneers Seek to Raise Lowly
Status of Animals."
"The animal lawyers say the idea that animals are mere property evolved centuries
before modern notions of some animals as sentient beings with perceptions and
even emotions," wrote Glaberson. "The lawyers have been moving on many different
fronts to establish precedents that they say could provide a foundation for
direct attacks on the property status of animals."
One of a "handful" of victories for them last year included a federal appeals
court decision that gave a random zoo visitor the right to sue the government
on behalf of a chimpanzee that the visitor believed looked "lonely." The suit
was filed under amendments to the Federal Animal Welfare Act, which said conditions
of confinement must assure the animal's "psychological well-being."
"The decision has been widely viewed as giving people new powers to challenge
the living conditions of animals that are publicly displayed," wrote Glaberson.
The decision reaffirms that we are living in a changing society. Steven Wise,
a Boston lawyer who teaches animal law at Harvard Law School, has argued that
"right to bodily integrity and liberty should be given first to chimpanzees
and bonobos because they are so similar to people." He is one of a group of
about 30 lawyers who spend most of their time on animal issues. Wise said the
legal work now being done on behalf of animals was paving the way for change:
"It's a long-term strategy to show that animals are not just things for our
use."
"Their goal is make it intellectually uncomfortable for the legal system to
continue to declare that animals lack legal rights because they are property,"
writes Glaberson. "That simple legal proposition is the foundation for many
common human activities, including the ownership of pets, all forms of animal
exhibition, the eating of meat, hunting and the use of animals in medical research."
"There is a huge fundamental difference between tending to the welfare of animals
because you intrinsically care about their well-being, versus tending to their
welfare because the animals have rights," says Bill Horn, Washington, D.C.,
counsel for the Wildlife Legislative Fund of
America, who was assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks at the
Department of Interior during the Reagan administration. "The animal lawyers'
presumption is that an animal that has emotional response and feels pain is
the moral equivalent to a human being. Once you step over into that realm, where
do you stop?"
What You Can Do
1) Become more aware. Learn how the animals rights agenda impacts dog fanciers.
Watch the progress of animal rights organizations both in national media and
in your local community. Investigate the materials that are provided to children
in your schools. (One study stated that the primary occupation of members of
animal rights organizations was "teacher.")
Read newsletters provided by animal welfare organizations such as the NAIA
News, and request a subscription to Taking Command, the legislative
newsletter provided by the AKC. If you know your club has not officially designated
a member as legislative liaison, consider filling this important post. Does
your state have a federation? Why not form one to share information and coordinate
efforts among clubs? The AKC Legislation department has information that will
lead you through the process, and will work with you to get the federation up
and running. Contact them by e-mail at doglaw@akc.org,
or speak to an AKC legislative coordinator by calling (919) 233-3720.
2) Actively support organizations that protect animal welfare and protect your
right to responsibly own, breed, train and exhibit your dog. Consider the National
Animal Interest Alliance (NAIA), which works for animals using reason, common
sense and truth. The NAIA is the only national animal welfare group composed
of nationally respected experts from diverse animal interest groups that work
together to support animal welfare and oppose animal rights extremism. The NAIA
hosts an award-winning web site at www.naiaonline.org
and publishes an acclaimed newspaper serving media, lawmakers and people who
need factual information about animals and animal issues. For more information,
call their membership director at (760) 788-9108 or their headquarters at (503)
761-1139, e-mail Strand at execdirector@naiaonline.org,
or write to the NAIA at P.O. Box 66579, Portland, OR 97290-6579.
As you learn more about the animal rights agenda and movement, you'll discover
smaller, singularly focused animal welfare organizations you also may wish to
support.
"Animal rights organizations depend heavily on small contributions from thousands
of individuals. If the millions of dollars that animal lovers give each year
can be redirected to animal welfare organizations, animals will be much better
served," wrote Daniel Oliver, in a briefing sheet from the Washington, D.C.-based
Capital Research Center. Oliver is editor of Alternatives in Philanthropy
and author of Animal Rights: The Inhumane Crusade. He is writing a second
book on the subject.
3) Educate people in your community. Work with your dog clubs to develop fliers
for distribution that teach donors how to learn more about the animal rights
organizations. Many good-hearted donors are deceived into believing that an
organization is using their money for the humane treatment of animals. Annual
reports will reveal where the organization's money was spent, and donors might
be surprised to learn that less than $5,000 of a $13.4 million budget was allocated
to shelter or spay-and-neuter programs in the United States. Some donors, misled
by fund-raising literature, are not aware of the illegal acts that their organization
is committing, and will insist that the animal rights organization of which
they are a member "would never do that," even though its leaders publicly claim
that they do.
4) Help donors understand the issues behind the issues, and help them get the
facts. Anyone who intends to donate to animal welfare groups can look into the
ideology of the group by writing and requesting a written reply (not a brochure)
to the following queries: a) Ask if the group is involved in activism or lobbying
to eliminate ownership and use of animals by humans; b) Ask for their position
on eating beef, poultry, fish, etc.; on use of animals in medical research,
sports, fishing and hunting, aquariums, zoos, use of leather, fur, wool, etc.;
c) Ask them whether their board of directors are people who use animals, and
ask about the ideology of their board members; d) Request copies of the 990
IRS forms for the past two years and a copy of the contract with their fund-raising
agency; and e) Ask if they use their funds exclusively for shelter and rescue
of animals or if they use funds for other purposes. If the donor does not get
satisfactory answers in writing, they should be advised to seek a different
animal welfare group for their donations.
In short, dog fanciers must take notice and do something. Timing is important.
The rights you save may be your own.
|
