This is a cross post to help publicise it. America’s foremost animal rescue advocate, Nathan Winograd, is campaigning to enact a piece of legislation passing through California’s legislature at the moment which would save the lives of rescue animals in California. It’s very important. It’s a piece of legislation which makes common sense. It’s a bill currently at the Assembly Committee stage. The bill is called AB 2265. It is believed it will save thousands of sheltered animals.
AB 2265 if enacted and it became law in California, would make it obligatory for animal shelters to notify others that they are planning to euthanise a shelter animal. And as I understand it, that notification can be in any appropriate form including posting to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. There are others.
The idea is to ensure that other people including foster carers and shelters are notified of an impending euthanasia and to provide recipients of the notification the opportunity to step in and take care of the animal to save their life.
Nathan Winograd provides a very good example. He starts his email to me by saying that this legislation, pending in California would “require shelters to notify the public and rescuers before killing an animal”.
The example he provides is of Gabriel, a rescue dog. He says this about Gabriel:
Gabriel arrived at a Los Angeles County “shelter” with a probable broken jaw. Rather than provide medical care or contact rescuers for assistance, the staff found it easier to kill him — and that is what they did. The little puppy who should have had his whole life ahead of him would be alive today if AB 2265, which requires pre-killing notification to rescuers, was the law.
Winograd
And further, in Nathan Winograd’s words:
Legislation pending in California would require “shelters” to notify the public before killing an animal. AB 2265 gives rescuers notice of animals facing death at multiple shelters without traveling to each one, giving them time to arrange foster care and accept custody of animals before they are killed. If passed, AB 2265 will be a significant advance for the humane treatment of animals in California and a model for the nation. It is such a simple, commonsense law that it is astonishing that anyone would oppose it.
He tells us that it is opposed by California Animal Welfare Association. This is a lobbying organisation which supports the killing of shelter animals according to Winograd. He describes it as a regressive organisation i.e. one that does not want to think out of the box and minimise the killing of shelter animals. He also claims that this organisation is “lying to legislators to kill the bill and with it thousands of animals like Gabriel every year. Because of that opposition, we need your help in getting it passed”.
Any Californian – and I would hope the citizens of other American states – can email the below-mentioned assembly committee members to encourage them i.e. to lobby them, to pass this bill.
Nathan Winograd provides a sample body of the email which you can top and tail. He also provides us with a list of email addresses which you can use. See below.
Subject:
YES on AB 2265
Sample Body:
AB 2265 would require California shelters to notify adopters and rescuers before killing an animal. Given that such notifications are possible through existing websites, social media, and shelter software already used by these facilities or available for free, complying would require nothing more than a stroke on a keyboard: one click to notify rescuers that a life needs saving. Can the animals and the people who love them count on you to vote YES?
The email is sent to the following:
- assemblymember.berman@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.flora@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.alanis@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.bains@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.juancarrillo@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.chen@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.dixon@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.grayson@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.irwin@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.jackson@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.low@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.lowenthal@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.mckinnor@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.stephanienguyen@assembly.ca.gov,
- assemblymember.pellerin@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.sanchez@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.soria@assembly.ca.gov
- assemblymember.zbur@assembly.ca.gov
Good luck and thank you if you did this. It is important. It is an opportunity for an individual to do something tangible to save lives. It shouldn’t take much longer than 20 minutes.
RELATED: You can help save the lives of rescue animals in Colorado (1st Feb 2024)
