Banning pets in San Francisco

This is another article form the local paper, the Bend Bulletin. Original story is from the Los Angeles Times. Banning pets? Yep, and several cities have already done so. I can understand wanting more people to rescue critters from animal shelters and rescue operation but this is just going way too far. Too much Political correctness and sensitivity. Our last two dogs have come from animal shelters and I will never get a dog any other way. It is just the common sense and right way to do this. I and most people do not need a law outlawing most pet animals to force me to do this. I am pretty sure you don't need one either. But hey, it is San Francisco, that gay city of Golden Gate fame.

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Fur and feathers fly as San Francisco weighs ban on pet sales
By Maria L. La Ganga / Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Here in the land of animal companions and their faithful guardians — do not call them pets and owners — a battle is raging over just what it means to be creature-friendly.

In true San Francisco fashion, city officials are considering a ban on sales of almost all pets. If the prohibition passes, it would mean no cats for sale here, no dogs, no hamsters, no rats, no guinea pigs, no macaws, no parakeets, no cockatiels, no finches. If Junior wanted a snake, Mom could probably still buy him one within the city's precious 47 square miles. But forget about those mice for Drago's dinner.

The proposal started out small: Prohibit commerce in cats and dogs as a way to discourage puppy mills and kitten factories. South Lake Tahoe, Calif., and West Hollywood, Calif., passed such laws within the last 18 months; in Texas, Austin and El Paso are considering similar ones.

But this being San Francisco, the discussion didn't stop there.

After multiple meetings of the Animal Control & Welfare Commission and hours of impassioned testimony — peppered with the word “symbolic” — the narrow proposition blossomed to include most creatures great and small. The commission is set to vote on a ban in August. If it passes, the Board of Supervisors will weigh in.

Rebecca Katz, head of San Francisco's animal control department, says the prohibition could help solve one of her shelter's biggest little problems: Hamsters, she said, are euthanized at a greater rate than any other animal. Banning their sale could curtail such deaths.

Nationally, pets are a $40 billion to $45 billion-a-year business, and trade groups have gotten involved in the fight. The Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council has a plea on its website urging “those who support the right to have pets” to contact San Francisco officials “in opposition to this blatant anti-pet proposal.”

This tempest in a water bowl began in April, when Philip Gerrie, backyard beekeeper and member of the animal commission, suggested that San Francisco go the way of West Hollywood and South Lake Tahoe.

The actual proposal has yet to be written, Gerrie said, and he's a little cagey about just how far he plans to push the prohibition.

But this is his thinking so far: Cats and dogs would be out because of puppy mills and kitten factories. Birds would be out because of “their sensitivity and inappropriateness as pets; they are wild animals.” Hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas and guinea pigs would be out because of high euthanasia rates. Sales of bunnies and chicks were axed in San Francisco more than 30 years ago.

That would pretty much leave the least cuddly creatures on pet store shelves — reptiles, amphibians and fish.

The bottom line: Go to a shelter or rescue group and adopt.

Origonal article can be found here