Overpopulation and Animal Abuse

As I mentioned, we are in a pet overpopulation crisis. Millions of animals each year are killed simply because there are no homes for them. Spay/neuter and breeder permitting (as an initial step at least) would help reduce this problem dramatically. In addition:

1. Animal control/state-sponsored animal shelters should be required to make adoption a central goal. This sounds absurd and obvious, but many of these agencies were enacted for public health and nuisance reasons when rabies was a problem in urban areas. Rabies is essentially gone, but many of these institutions still consider themselves basically disposal arms for stray and abandoned animals. These shelters should put more of their resources toward adopting out animals - training, socializing, advertising, adoption events, obtaining volunteers - and perhaps most importantly - becoming visible rather than tucked away neatly in some industrial corner of the city - rather than toward killing animals. Once adoption rates, spay/neuter, and accountability for abandoning animals increases, those resources could be freed up to go toward marketing these animals to the general public. Currently, only 20% of 'owned' animals come from shelters. That is a marketing problem. Shelter animals are no different from "breeder" animals and of much better quality than pet store/puppy mill animals. In fact, 1/4 - 1/3 of shelter animals are purebreds. The focus needs to be on adoption rather than hiding away and killing animals. Public outreach and education should be a part of that as well, to get people more interested in adopting an animal rather than buying one.

2. Animal cruelty laws should have a private right of action. Essentially, since these are criminal cruelty laws, prosecutors are the only ones who can enforce them in most states. In some states animal control officers have psuedo-police powers, but these are limited. If a private individual or organization has evidence of animal cruelty, they should be able to enforce the law, or at least to bring the evidence directly before a grand jury or judge. In addition/alternatively, civil laws should be enacted for animal cruelty. Currently North Carolina is the only state with such a law. This would help private individuals find some monetary and/or injunctive relief against abusers of animals.

I'd also like to note here that BSL is NOT the answer for another reason: without the types of laws I've suggested, if pit bulls are banned, fighting will go deeper underground and/or fighters will switch to different breeds/mixes. Rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shephards, Chows, and Akitas are all popular "protection" breeds in inner cities and are often abused and neglected the way pits are. Laws should be targeting the abuse and the behaviors toward animals that are likely to make them more mean and create too many of them. Demonizing the dogs through BSL and media hysteria does nothing to solve the problem - it's more likely to shift the problem to other breeds or make the abuse more hidden. Instead, we should be bringing this abuse and the merits of pit bulls out into the open, increasing adoption rates, and enacting and enforcing laws that are actually effective against animal abuse and preventing dog bites.