Misguided Animal Aid Law

Southern California has the lion’s share of the nation’s animal rights activists, and its affection for animals is perhaps best reflected in Hollywood. In any movie, legions of humans can die but not, heaven forbid, Babe or Benji. Even off camera, animal actors are granted, by law, a special representative to look after their safety and welfare.

This animal rights culture bears no relation to some of the region’s animal shelters, which euthanize many of the thousands of animals they take in each year. In an attempt to bring that rate down, animal rights activists helped pass a bill by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) that becomes law in January, requiring better medical care and longer housing of strays.

The bill is full of good intentions, but its goals will be difficult to implement. Orange County’s animal shelter says it hasn’t yet figured out how it will cope with Hayden’s bill. It serves 21 of the county’s cities and its unincorporated areas, and spends only about $2 per capita on strays and abandoned animals.

Orange County officials say an especially disturbing provision is that even when owners bring in animals to be euthanized, which now can be done in minutes, the animals will have to be held for days before being put to death unless they are very ill. About 34,000 dogs and cats are brought into the shelter each year. Half are euthanized, about 8,500 of them at the owners’ request.

The problem is particularly acute to the north in Los Angeles. Years of underfunding have left that city’s shelters unable to comply with existing public health and humane treatment laws and far more crowded than they should be under state law, with seven dogs, for example, being housed in cages intended for one or two.

Cities such as Pasadena and Santa Monica, with per capita spending on stray and abandoned animals of $7.60 and $6.18, may be able to meet the standards in the Hayden bill, but it will be difficult for others. In some places, the animal services department has not been able to round up packs of vicious strays on the current budget.

Champions of the Hayden bill contend that its provision expanding animal shelter hours to weekends and one weeknight will generate enough demand for adoptions. There is, however, simply no evidence that enough demand exists to provide homes. One adoption organization told The Times that “every rescue group is on daily overload now” because “there are not enough homes for the dogs and cats that are already here.”

In the short term, private donations can help. The same people who championed the Hayden bill should donate their time and money to help meet higher standards. Most pet owners already know they should spay or neuter their animals and stop abandoning them to the streets. Acting on that knowledge would eliminate most of the problem.