Legislation is being proposed in most U.S. states that threatens the Constitutional right of Americans to own property and animals are property. The purpose of this petition is to stop special interest groups from writing laws to take away the rights of Americans to own companion animals.
We do agree that animals should be treated humanely and there are laws to protect the welfare of animals. New laws are being proposed to limit animal ownership rights. Many of these laws are based on the assessment by the HSUS that 98% of all dogs and cats are in homes and are not killed in shelters every year. They claim that the 2% of animals that are euthanized indicates that people own too many animals.
Some laws limit how many animals a person may own and authorize animal control officers to seize animals without a warrant. This type of law helps animal shelters by increasing the numbers of animals that are euthanized so that the shelters can receive more state funds. It also reduces the companion animal population by preventing people from owning animals.
Some laws oppose animal breeding under the bizarre assumption that *all* breeders treat their animals badly and that all kennels should be called "puppy mills." The laws that attempt to prevent the illusion of a puppy mill are primarily mandatory spay and neuter laws, called MSN laws. Spaying and neutering causes serious health risks such as increases in torn ligaments, increases in bone cancer, increases in other types of cancer, dementia, poor muscle development, poor brain development, increases in arthritis, and total loss of working drive. In spite of the documented health risks recognized by NIH, organizations write laws to mandate these risky sterilization procedures.
Other laws simply remove the ownership title from animal owners and treat every dog and cat owner as a "guardian" so that animals are property of the state or a designated organizations. There are also many varieties of laws that dictate how a person can own an animal and many of these laws ignore animal welfare.
Laws that take away a person's right to own animals must be stopped.
http://www.noanimalsleft.org/
