Animal Lovers need to act now
Politics in the Lansing Senate are about to kill legislation that would stop Michigan animal shelters from giving your dogs and cats to Class B Research Brokers who then sell them for big bucks, a practice known as “pound seizure.” Another set of bills would end the use of the gas chamber as a way to euthanize shelter animals.
Legislation that already passed the House and went through one hearing in the Senate Committee on Regulatory Reform with overwhelming should have been sent to the Senate floor for a vote two months ago. . .before they decided it really belonged in the Senate Agricultural Committee and sent it on its way to a certain death in a political shell game designed to make sure it could not get passed before it runs out of time on December 15th.
Your quick action and loud voice for those who can only suffer in silence is the only thing that will save this legislation from certain death by politics. Act Now !
Its true. House Bill 4663 to end pound seizure passed the Michigan House of Representatives almost unanimously this past July with 353 Yeas and only 20 Nays. Then HB 6042/6043 to end gas chamber euthanasia followed suit in September, again, with overwhelming support, 400 Yeas and 14 Nays.
From there the bill to ban the Class B Brokers from our shelters went into the Senate Committee on Regulatory Reform. The committee eventually held a hearing on it September 15 and heard overwhelmingly supportive testimony. They should have voted then to send the bill on to the whole Senate for a vote.
The day before everyone in Lansing went home to campaign until after the November elections, the Senate Committee on Regulatory reform suddenly “did not feel it understood the implications of Class B Dealer Pound Seizure and that the Agriculture Committee was better equipped to take on the issue.” and promptly kicked it over to the Senate Agricultural Committee to begin the committee process all over again, hearing and all.
Meanwhile the bills to end gassing arrived in the Senate Agricultural Committee on September 23, 2010. And there it sits. — now joined by the bill to ban the brokers.
Staff for Senator Gerald VanWoerkom, Chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee, confirmed that Senator VanWoerkom would not hold any more hearings on any legislation this year.
The Senate Agricultural Committee needs to hear from you and all your friends. Now. Write, call, email or FAX your voice to them in care of Chairman Senator VanWoerkom.
P.O. Box 30036 Lansing, MI 48909-7536
Phone: 517-373-1635
Fax 517-373-3300
SenGVanWoerkom@senate.michigan.gov
Don’t worry about a flowery message. All you have to say is the voters of Michigan want an end to the inhumane practice of gassing shelter animals to death, and we do not want Class B Brokers enriching themselves at the expense of homeless pets who should find safety in Michigan shelters, help to find their owners or new homes, not a lifetime sentence of pain and suffering or a slow, agonizing death in some research facility.
Tell them to get HB4663 and HB 6042/6043 a hearing and get them to the full Senate for a vote before December 9th.
For more information, answers to the opposition, real life stories of Michigan owners who lost their pets only to find too late that they’d been sold into research, visit the website of Voiceless – MI
http://www.voiceless-mi.org/pound-seizure-2/ and learn how to speak for those who can not speak for themselves.