Animal Rights Group Gives Good Grades to Most Area Lawmakers

Assemblyman Richard Katz was praised for introducing legislation to protect mountain lions. State Sen. Alan Robbins got kudos for authoring a bill to require that cosmetics tested on animals be so labeled. And Assemblyman Tom Bane was cited for steering pro-animal legislation to a friendly legislative committee.

They were among the San Fernando Valley-area legislators given A ratings recently by PAW PAC, a San Francisco-based political action committee that backs state legislators sympathetic to animal rights.

In its yearly “report card” on state lawmakers, PAW PAC gave A’s to every Democratic senator and assembly member representing part of the Valley: Sens. Gary Hart, who represents Woodland Hills; Robbins of Tarzana; David Roberti of Hollywood; Herschel Rosenthal of Los Angeles; and Assemblymen Bane of Van Nuys; Terry Friedman of Sherman Oaks; Katz of Sylmar, and Burt Margolin of Los Angeles.

The only Republican to fare well was state Sen. Ed Davis of Valencia, who got a B. Assembly members Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks and Cathie Wright of Simi Valley wound up with F’s, while Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette of Northridge received a D.

PAW PAC’s ratings were based on legislators’ votes last year on 14 animal-related bills, including ones involving elephant abuse, caging of veal calves, tougher penalties for cockfighting and a ban on so-called puppy mills.

Formed in 1980, PAW PAC has about 5,000 members statewide, said Virginia Handley, PAW PAC’s legislative director. Its board of directors features several prominent figures in the animal-rights movement, including Laurence W. Kessenick, a founder of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and Gladys Sargent, a longtime animal-rights activist and part-owner of the Los Angeles Raiders.

Compared to most PACs, which represent businesses and professional associations and contribute huge amounts of money to state legislators, PAW PAC has little financial clout, having contributed only $25,000 over the past 10 years. Nonetheless, it represents an increasing involvement in mainstream politics by the often-militant animal-rights movement.

“The whole movement is getting a lot more politically active in legislatures in all the states,” Handley said. “After you spend time in the Legislature you see how important it is to publish voting charts so people can see what legislators are doing.”

Handley said Robbins received an A and a “paw of appreciation” for introducing a bill that would have required that labels indicate whether cosmetics and household products sold in California had been tested on animals.

The bill failed during the last legislative session, but Handley said Robbins plans to introduce a version this year that would remove the labeling requirement but require manufacturers to tell consumers who inquired if the products were animal-tested.

“Robbins is exceptional in that he thinks up legislation himself,” Handley said. “It’s not that we have to go to him and ask him to do something.”

She also praised Katz for introducing an unsuccessful bill to protect mountain lions and later working on behalf of a statewide wildlife initiative that includes mountain lion protections.

Bane, the powerful chairman of the Assembly Rules Committee, got kudos for steering a bill involving veal-calf cages to the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, rather than the Agriculture Committee. The bill would prohibit chaining veal calves by the neck and require that their cages be large enough to enable them to turn around.

Handley said shifting the bill from the Agriculture Committee was helpful because “that’s dominated by interests that wouldn’t want the bill to pass. We got a fairer hearing in the Public Safety Committee.”

Handley said McClintock was rated F because he worked to defeat a bill that would have banned two types of animal tests, the Lethal Dose 50 and Draize eye-irritation tests, for cosmetics and household products.

Under Lethal Dose 50, animals are force-fed products until half of them die. The Draize test involves filling animals’ eyes with cosmetics and household products to see if they are damaged, she said.

McClintock said he was proud of his leading role in defeating the test bill, which he said was opposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Medical Assn. and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“That bill literally put the safety of lab rats ahead of the safety of toddlers,” McClintock said. “That bill literally said you may not test baby lotion or skin lotion on lab rats before you test it on the skin of a baby.”

McClintock’s low rating also was based on no-votes or abstentions on five other animal bills, but he said most of them were “drafted with the same principle in mind, that lab rats should be protected above infants.”