Deep Roots: Animal Rights Blog

from HSUS:

Measures to protect pets from being sold for experimentation, and also from the horrors of dogfighting, are being considered right now for inclusion in the final Farm Bill. A small committee will decide the fate of these provisions, and you live in a district that has more influence than others in the country. Please take action right away to protect pets.

Both the House and Senate Farm Bills include provisions to stop the abuses of Class B Dealers, who acquire dogs and cats through methods such as pet theft and fraudulent response to “free to good home” ads. The Senate Bill also includes a provision to strengthen the federal law to combat the barbaric activity of dogfighting. These provisions are in jeopardy and we need your help right away to ensure that they are retained in the final Farm Bill.

The Pet Safety and Protection Act is in danger! This act prohibits experimentation facilities from buying dogs and cats from Class B dealers. It was passed as an amendment to the Farm Bill by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. However, as the Senate and the House work out differences between their bills, animal experimenters are pressuring Congress to drop the pet-safety provisions altogether.

Class B animal dealers, also known as “random source dealers,” often acquire animals through theft and deception and are known to sell lost and stolen cats and dogs to laboratories.

Please contact your senator today and ask him/her to keep the Pet Safety and Protection Act in the Farm Bill.

from PETA

This holiday season, thousands of puppies will be purchased as holiday gifts for loved ones. Many unsuspecting shoppers, however, will be giving their loved ones the gift of animal cruelty.

Yesterday marked the beginning of Puppy Mill Action Week (it also marked the beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence), so expect to see a lot about puppy mills and what you can do to stop them in the coming days.

Here is a video from a recent undercover investigation that the Humane Society of the United States conducted in Virginia.

What you can do to shut down puppy mills:

• Adopt from local animal shelters and rescue organizations, never buy from pet stores, websites or newspaper ads
• Boycott pet stores that sell dogs; tell the store owners why you are boycotting them and have your friends do the same

A state that no longer has to euthanize healthy animals has been a goal of Deep Roots since the founding members first came together nearly four years ago. We have far greater plans than merely hoping for such a day. We have begun to work on a plan, a time-line for realizing that goal and we are now starting to talk to other organizations and shelters throughout the state to figure out how best to go about such an lofty goal. So this will undoubtedly be the first in many such posts.

First, let me thank Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, for stepping in to what has become a very heated debate in the animal rights movement. As Pacelle said, if you aren’t familiar with the debate, you are probably better off. But we can’t just ignore the debate and expect things to fix themselves. Both sides have valuable points and we need all actors to make this play a success.

This video from current_, entitled Good Night Tex, is a heartbreaking look at the euthanization of shelter animals through the eyes of the one doing the euthanization. The video does an excellent job at showing just how important it is to stop breeding and start spaying and neutering your companion animals (and start adopting shelter animals). Watching the empathy that this woman feels for the dogs she euthanizes, I can’t possibly look her in the eye and say that she is my enemy in the struggle to stop the killing of 3-4 million shelter animals each year. Instead, we must focus on why it is that so many animals end up in shelters in the first place.

hat tip to The PETA Files