Save Our Pets-Stop HR 669!

H.R. 669 is a bill designed to federally mandate what pets people can and can't own, what pets can and can't be sold.  Though the intent is to help protect the US against invasion by "exotic" species, this is already being regulated at a state level.  The effect of this "one-size-fits-all" bill will be to:

• Make it illegal for people to own, breed, or transport any animal not on the "approved" list--currently, this means that people would be banned from owning all species of exotic birds (parakeets, parrots, cockatiels, etc.), virtually all reptiles, nearly all fish, whether captive bred or not (currently only fan tail goldfish are approved), even hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, and ferrets!

• Put the pet industry out of business overnight--thousands of stores, millions of jobs--in an an economy like ours, do we really need to be passing a bill that will INCREASE unemployment and put thousands of businesses into bankruptcy--not just the big chains, but the small mom-and-pop pet stores that have been in your neighborhood for years?


• Make it a long, expensive, and nearly impossible task to get an animal placed on the "approved" list, as the person or organization asking for the animal to be "evaluated" will have to pay a fee and the animal must be shown to not have any possibility of harmful effect in ANY state.


• Make it so that the only contact our kids have with these "exotic" creatures are pictures in books--not a good way to foster understanding and appreciation for the biological diversity that makes our world a wonderful place to live in.

And what do you think they are going to do with all the suddenly-illegal critters?  The law says you can have them if you can prove you owned them before the law goes into effect...so do you have a receipt for the parakeet you bought 10 years ago?  Too bad.  If you can't prove it, the animals could  be confiscated and "humanely euthanized".  And what do you do if your kid's hamsters have babies? According to HR 669, you just broke the law.  Moving to another state?  Can't take your pets across state lines--according to HR 669, you just broke the law. 

So to sum it up, HR 669 will allow your pets to be confiscated and euthanized, put the pet industry out of business, and no doubt cost taxpayers a large amount of money to administer the program.

There are better ways to ensure that we don't have a problem with pets that escape into the wild, and they are at a state level on a case by case basis, not a federal "guilty until proven innocent" policy. 

Tell everyone you can to spread the word--to save our pets, we need to stop HR 669.