People For Ethical Treatment of Animals Tells LB Council: Don't Pass Ordinance Relaxing Dog Breeding Ban

December 12, 2005

The Honorable Beverly O'Neill
Mayor of Long Beach
333 West. Ocean Blvd., 14th Floor
Long Beach, California 90802

Dear Mayor O’Neill:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an international nonprofit organization with more than 850,000 members and supporters dedicated to the protection of animals. Our headquarters is being flooded with e-mails and telephone calls from area residents who are deeply distressed by news that Long Beach officials are considering relaxing the City’s lifesaving ban on dog breeding, municipal code sections 6.16.080 and 6.16.190. We share their concerns and urge you to work diligently to keep the current code intact to protect animals from suffering and death.

The city’s current code is the only sensible one when one considers the facts:

• Approximately 20,000 animals are admitted to the Long Beach Bureau of Animal Control every year.

• Reportedly half of them must be euthanized for lack of good homes.

• National statistics document that 25%-30% of all animals who end up in animal shelters are purebreds, animals purposefully bred and brought into this world by those who make money selling them.

While 20,000 animals annually end up at the City’s animal shelter every year, countless others die on the streets -- they are hit by cars; attacked by other animals; succumb to the elements, disease, and infections; and wither away unnoticed from neglect in apartments, houses, and private backyards. Mayor O’Neill, I have worked at municipal and private animal shelters for nearly two decades. I have scraped animals near-death off the road after they were hit and left for dead. I have been handed by their owners animals with injuries that had been neglected for weeks or months -- maggot-infested wounds, open draining tumors, and infected broken bones. I have received animals over the counters of animal shelters by people who didn’t want them any longer because the animals were -- too old, too young, too small, too big, too dumb, too smart -- and the list of excuses goes on and on. I have watched in disbelief as these same people headed for the adoption areas before even completing the paperwork signing their old friends over, eager to find a "better" animal. I have had to euthanize thousands of animals solely because no one wanted them. In the midst of the heartbreaking crisis facing dogs and cats, domestic animals who depend on us for nearly every need, it would be nothing short of shameful for a progressive city like Long Beach to begin allowing people to breed more animals.

We urge you to consider the immense costs of each and every unwanted animal brought into the community. Please consider that for every good home found for a dog or cat purposefully bred for someone’s profit, a dog or cat at the local shelter must be killed. A relaxation on the City’s breeding ban will cause suffering and death to more animals while making a few breeders a few bucks. The trade off is grossly unfair.

On behalf of our tens of thousands of members in California, thank you very much for your serious consideration in this urgent issue and for all your hard work for the citizens of Long Beach.

Very truly yours,

Teresa Lynn Chagrin, Animal Sheltering Advisor
Domestic Animal and Wildlife Rescue & Information Department