BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2269
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB
2269 (Waldron)
As Amended April 21, 2016
Majority vote
-------------------------------------------------------------------
|Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------------+-----+----------------------+---------------------|
|Judiciary |10-0 |Mark Stone, Wagner, | |
| | |Alejo, Chau, Chiu, | |
| | |Gallagher, | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | |Cristina Garcia, | |
| | |Holden, Maienschein, | |
| | |Ting | |
| | | | |
|----------------+-----+----------------------+---------------------|
|Appropriations |20-0 |Gonzalez, Bigelow, | |
| | |Bloom, Bonilla, | |
| | |Bonta, Calderon, | |
| | |Chang, Daly, Eggman, | |
| | |Gallagher, Eduardo | |
| | |Garcia, Roger | |
| | |Hernández, Holden, | |
| | |Jones, Obernolte, | |
| | |Quirk, Santiago, | |
| | |Wagner, Weber, Wood | |
AB 2269
Page 2
| | | | |
| | | | |
-------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: Prohibits the sale or transfer of live animals from
pounds and animal shelters to any animal dealer or research
facility for purposes of research or experimentation.
Specifically, this bill:
1)Defines "animal dealer" to mean any person who, in commerce,
for compensation or profit, delivers for transportation, or
transports, except as a carrier, or who buys, sells, or
negotiates the purchase or sale of any animal, whether alive
or dead, for research, teaching, exhibition, or biological
supply.
2)Prohibits a person or animal shelter entity, as defined, that
accepts animals from the public or takes in stray or unwanted
animals from selling, giving, or otherwise transferring a
living animal to a research facility or to an animal dealer.
3)Prohibits a research facility or animal dealer from procuring,
purchasing, receiving, accepting, or using a living animal for
the purpose of medical or biological teaching, research, or
study, or any other kind of experimentation, if that animal is
transferred from, or received from, an animal shelter entity.
4)Prohibits a person or animal shelter from euthanizing any
animal for the purpose, in whole or in part, of transferring
the carcass to a research facility or animal dealer.
5)Requires any animal shelter entity where dead animals are
turned over to a biological supply or research facility to
AB 2269
Page 3
post a specified sign, in a clearly visible location, stating:
"Animals Euthanized at This Shelter May Be Used For Research
Purposes or to Supply Blood, Tissue, or Other Biological
Products." Further requires this statement to be included in
owner surrender forms used by the animal shelter.
6)Clarifies that these provisions do not prohibit a procedure by
a licensed veterinarian to correct the animal's preexisting
medical condition, and under certain circumstances, do not
prohibit a procedure to spay or neuter the animal if the
procedure is performed by, or under the direct supervision of,
a licensed veterinarian.
7)Provides for a $1000 civil penalty for any violation of these
provisions, in an action brought by the local district
attorney or city attorney.
FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations
committee:
1)Any costs to county animal facilities, while
state-reimbursable, should be minor and absorbable.
2)Potential minor non-reimbursable costs to cities and counties
for enforcement, offset to some extent by fine revenue.
COMMENTS: This non-controversial bill expressly prohibits, for
the first time in California statute, the acquisition of live
animals from public or private animal shelters for use in
scientific or other experimentation- a practice commonly known
as "pound seizure." This bill also prohibits the euthanasia of
otherwise adoptable animals for the purpose of transferring the
animal carcasses to a research facility or animal dealer.
AB 2269
Page 4
According to the State Humane Association of California (SHAC),
this bill's sponsor, by prohibiting pound seizure, this bill
"will harmonize state law with local ordinances across
California and... 18 other states that now prohibit pound
seizure, and will reflect the growing scientific consensus that
the use of random source dogs and cats, which includes those
acquired from animal shelters, is unnecessary and may be
harmful." Recent amendments to this bill are technical and add
co-authors.
Background on pound seizures and current regulation of the
practice. According to Cruelty Free International (CFI), an
animal protection and advocacy group opposed to animal
experimentation, pound seizure became common in the United
States in the 1940s, with the biomedical industry actually
spearheading legislation in several states to legally require
animal shelters to provide dogs and cats to research
laboratories either directly, or through animal dealers who
collect animals from shelters and other sources and sell them
into experimentation. Congress passed the Animal Welfare Act in
1966 to try to regulate pound seizures and the theft and resale
of animals into experimentation. According to CFI, however, the
Animal Welfare Act "fell short of its intended goals and public
expectation" and unfortunately produced some unintended
consequences. First, by making it slower and more cumbersome to
obtain animals from pounds, unscrupulous individuals began
stealing more pets in order to sell them to research and
biomedical institutes. Second, it created a perverse financial
incentive for some animal shelters to sell animals to research
institutes instead of making them available for adoption.
Without effective federal protections, several states, beginning
with Massachusetts in 1983, began to enact laws to prohibit
pound seizure. Although 18 states currently have laws banning
pound seizure, California is not one of them. Although state
law does not prohibit pound seizure, many cities and counties in
California have enacted local ordinances to prohibit the
AB 2269
Page 5
practice. Among the localities that have passed such ordinances
are the cities of West Hollywood, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara,
Scotts Valley, Laguna Woods, Nevada City, and Paradise, as well
as the counties of Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Some cities,
like the state, have laws expressly allowing pound seizure,
including Big Bear Lake and Grand Terrace, while others do not
address pound seizure at all. Animal advocates contend that the
lack of uniformity between the state and municipalities (and
even among neighboring cities) fosters unnecessary confusion for
the public and animal shelter personnel.
Pound seizure is an increasingly outdated practice and is not
crucial for biomedical research. According to a 2009 report
commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences, "random
source" cats and dogs (a category that includes animals obtained
from animal shelters) are not critical for biomedical research.
(National Research Council, "Scientific and Humane Issues in the
Use of Random Source Dogs and Cats in Research" (2009) Available
at: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/
Random_Source_Dog_and_Cat_Report.pdf .) The authors of the
report state, "Because random source animals come from various
sources, they are more likely to be associated with undesirable
aspects such as infectious disease, occupational health hazards,
and inconsistent health and welfare standards. These
undesirable aspects may limit their value for research purposes
and place an additional burden on institutions." The study also
notes that the demand for random source animals has fallen
significantly over the last 30 years, along with the number of
Americans who support the use of animals in biomedical research.
According to proponents of the bill, the National Institutes of
Health recently stopped funding research using random source
dogs and cats because of the conclusions in the National Academy
of Sciences report. For all of these reasons, it is difficult
to justify pound seizure when evidence shows that it does not
make any crucial contribution to biomedical research.
This bill brings needed consistency to state law that bans some
AB 2269
Page 6
but not all abandoned animals from being sold into
experimentation. Currently, California law prohibits the sale
of animals that are abandoned at veterinarian hospitals,
kennels, pet grooming parlors, and animal hospitals into any
type of research. (Civil Code Section 1834.5.) Inexplicably,
however, this ban does not apply to animals left in animal
shelters or pounds because Civil Code Section 1834.7
specifically condones pound seizure, as a long as appropriate
signs at shelters inform the public of the practice. This
discrepancy in the state law means that an abandoned animal
could be acquired and sold into experimentation if it was left
at a local shelter, but the same animal would not be subject to
such a fate if it were left at a kennel or grooming parlor.
In order to facilitate a consistent public policy that protects
all animals from being sold into experimentation, regardless of
where they were abandoned, this bill prohibits any person or
animal shelter entity that accepts animals from the public or
takes in stray or unwanted animals from selling, giving, or
otherwise transferring a living animal to a research facility or
an animal dealer. In addition, the bill also prohibits a
research facility or animal dealer from procuring, purchasing,
receiving, accepting, or using a living animal for the purpose
of medical or biological teaching, research, or study, or any
other kind of experimentation, if that animal is transferred
from, or received from, an animal shelter entity. An "animal
shelter entity" covered by this bill includes, but is not
limited to, an animal regulation agency, humane society, SPCA,
rescue group, or other private or public animal shelter.
This bill prohibits euthanasia of shelter animals for the
purpose of selling or transferring their carcasses to research
or biological supply companies. By prohibiting pound seizure,
this bill seeks to eliminate any possibility that an animal
pound or shelter would choose to sell abandoned animals in their
care to research institutions rather than making them available
for adoption. However, existing law does not address the
AB 2269
Page 7
possibility that an animal pound or shelter might choose to sell
dead animals to research labs or animal dealers who might profit
from their resale to a biological supply company. In fact, this
very real possibility was highlighted by a recent animal cruelty
prosecution in central California. In 2007, several employees
at an animal shelter in Bakersfield were charged with animal
cruelty after it was discovered that they were euthanizing
otherwise adoptable animals and participating in an
off-the-books arrangement to sell the cadavers to a biological
supply dealer for compensation. (See, e.g. "Ex-Shelter Manager
Found Guilty", Visalia Times Delta, Sept. 25, 2008.)
Recognizing that euthanasia of non-adoptable and un-adopted
animals is an unavoidable fact of life for many pounds or
shelters, and recognizing that animal cadavers may have utility
to researchers or biological supply companies for legitimate
purposes, this bill does not contain a blanket prohibition
against the acquisition of animal cadavers from pounds or
shelters by animal dealers or research institutions. Instead,
the bill prohibits a person or animal shelter from euthanizing
any animals for the purpose, in whole or in part, of
transferring their carcasses to research facilities or animal
dealers. In other words, if animals are being euthanized for a
legitimate reason (i.e. for reasons other than to sell their
carcass to an animal dealer), then the pound or shelter may sell
or donate the cadavers of those animals to an animal dealer
without violating the provisions of this bill. These provisions
are necessary, of course, because the bill's prohibition on
pound seizure only prevents the acquisition of live animals for
experimentation or research, not the acquisition or sale of dead
animal cadavers for research or other purposes (i.e. biological
supply.) Recent amendments seek to ensure that a shelter may
not euthanize animals for the purpose of selling or transferring
their carcasses to an animal dealer-animals that presumably may
be otherwise adoptable, as they were in the Bakersfield
case-while still allowing the sale or transfer of cadavers of
animals that were euthanized under more legitimate circumstances
in the ordinary operation of the shelter.
AB 2269
Page 8
Finally, it is important to note that this bill retains the
existing sign and notice requirements, in a slightly modified
format, to ensure that even when animals are euthanized at a
shelter under legitimate circumstances, members of the public
are informed through posted notice and the owner surrender forms
that the cadavers of those animals so euthanized may ultimately
be used for research or biological supply purposes
Analysis Prepared by:
Anthony Lew / JUD. / (916) 319-2334 FN: 0002757