Bid to Save Strays From Lab Fails in Baldwin Park

For the past month, the flyer has been dropped off on doorsteps and handed out around town. Three photos show animals in laboratories--muzzled, with prongs in their heads, bloated and strapped down.

“Pets do not belong in lab experiments like the above,” the flyer says. “If you lose or have ever lost your pet in Baldwin Park this is what frequently happens to them!”

The flyer was distributed by Citizens for Pet Protection, a group of Los Angeles animal activists that last week urged the Baldwin Park City Council to direct its shelter to stop selling unclaimed animals for medical research.

The city of Los Angeles, which has the largest shelter in the area with more than 100,000 animals passing through each year, stopped selling animals for research a decade ago. Humane Societies in Pasadena and Pomona have provisions against the practice in their bylaws. And 23 of the 39 cities that contract with Los Angeles County for animal shelter services have also requested that their animals not be sold to laboratories. The county honors all such requests.

“A pet is an animal conditioned to love and to trust people,” said Robyne Harrington, president of the group. “We have an obligation to that animal that it not die in a laboratory.”

But Baldwin Park, one of the cities that contracts with the county, is continuing to allow the practice. And at a City Council meeting Dec. 20, three of the four council members resisted pressure to make any changes.

Mayor Pro Tem Bette Lowes, abstained from voting, after making a very personal speech about how her 1-year-old son died of a congenital heart defect in 1958 that medical research since has been able to battle.

“I am too emotionally involved,” Lowes said.

Councilwoman Julia McNeill, who has worked as a cardiovascular technician at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, also abstained, saying she had witnessed first-hand the medical contributions made by animal research.

Councilman Herschel Keyser abstained because he wanted to first visit the county Animal Care and Control shelter in Baldwin Park.

Only Councilman Bobbie Izell, whose motion to support the activists failed for lack of a second vote, favored the idea.

“I don’t want anybody using my old dog to experiment on,” Izell said. “I’d rather kill her myself than do that.”

County animal officials say that only a small percentage of the 90,000 animals that pass through their six regional shelters end up in medical laboratories. All animals are kept for at least seven days, providing a chance for the owner to claim the pet or for someone else to adopt it, said Bruce Richards, deputy director of county Animal Care and Control.

If unclaimed by the eighth day, the animals are destroyed or sold for about $45 each to laboratories, he said. No animal, however, is sold for research if it bears any sign of having been a pet, such as a collar, grooming, responsiveness to commands or surgical scars, he said.

“We go to extreme measures to make sure we protect people’s pets,” Richards said.

But Citizens for Pet Protection, which has indicated it will campaign against any City Council members who don’t favor its stance, said those measures offer little comfort.

“Even one animal is too many as far as we’re concerned,” said Bill DeWitt, a member of the group. “We’re going to continue our fight here.”