Pet Politics

Richard A. Brisbin, Susan Hunter

Description

Although scholars in the disciplines of law, psychology, philosophy, and sociology have published a considerable number of prescriptive, normative, and theoretical studies of animals in society, Pet Politics presents the first study of the development of companion animal or pet law and policy in Canada and the United States by political scientists. The authors examine how people and governments classify three species of pets or companion animals-cats, dogs, and horses-for various degrees of legal protection. They then detail how interest groups shape the agenda for companion animal legislation and regulation, and the legislative and administrative formulation of anticruelty, kennel licensing, horse slaughter, feral and roaming cat, and breed ban policies. Finally, they examine the enforcement of these laws and policies by agencies and the courts. Using an eclectic mix of original empirical data, original case studies, and interviews-and relying on general theories and research about the policy process and the sociopolitical function of legality-the authors illustrate that pet policy is a unique field of political struggle, a conflict that originates from differing perspectives about whether pets are property or autonomous beings, and clashing norms about the care of animals. The result of the political struggle, the authors argue, is difficulty in the enactment of policies and especially in the implementation and enforcement of laws that might improve the welfare of companion animals.
1 Why Study Pet Politics?

2 The Evolution of Pet Policy

3 What Is a Pet? Popular Conceptions of Animals and the Pet Policy Agenda

4 The Formation of a Pet Policy Agenda: Activists and Organized Interests

5 Making Pet Policy: Anti-cruelty Laws

6 Making Pet Policy: Kennel Licensing Legislation

7 Making Pet Policy: The Disposition of Unwanted Horses

8 Making Pet Policy: Roaming and Feral Cats

9 Making Pet Policy: Breed-Specific Laws

10 The Enforcement of Pet Legislation

11 Conclusion: The Meaning of Pet Politics Policy

Index

Sujets

• Pets

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612494357
• Langue: English

Extrait

PET POLITICS
NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMAN-ANIMAL BOND Series editors Alan M. Beck and Marguerite E. O’Haire
PET POLITICS
The Political and Legal Lives of Cats, Dogs, and Horses in Canada and the United States
Susan Hunter and Richard A. Brisbin, Jr.
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright 2016 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hunter, Susan, 1947 April 13- author. | Brisbin, Richard A., author.
Title: Pet politics: the political and legal lives of cats, dogs, and horses in Canada and the United States / Susan Hunter and Richard A. Brisbin Jr.
Description: West Lafayette, Indiana : Purdue University Press, 2016. | Series: New directions in the human-animal bond | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015045013 (print) | LCCN 2015051468 (ebook) | ISBN 9781557537324 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781612494357 (ePub) | ISBN 9781612494340 (ePDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Pets—Law and legislation. | Pets—Social aspects. | Pets—Law and legislation—United States. | Pets—Social aspects—United States. | Pets—Law and legislation—Canada. | Pets—Social aspects—Canada.
Classification: LCC K564.A55 H86 2016 (print) | LCC K564.A55 (ebook) | DDC 343.7307/660887—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045013
Contents
P REFACE
1 Why Study Pet Politics?
2 The Evolution of Pet Policy
3 What Is a Pet? Popular Conceptions of Animals and the Pet Policy Agenda
4 The Formation of a Pet Policy Agenda: Activists and Organized Interests
5 Making Pet Policy: Anti-cruelty Laws
6 Making Pet Policy: Kennel Licensing Legislation
7 Making Pet Policy: The Disposition of Unwanted Horses
8 Making Pet Policy: Roaming and Feral Cats
9 Making Pet Policy: Breed-Specific Laws
10 The Enforcement of Pet Legislation
11 Conclusion: The Meaning of Pet Politics Policy
I NDEX
Preface
T his book has grown out of the authors’ mutual concern about the plight of animals. Despite our concern, we have not engaged in a prescriptive or normative endeavor. Our aim is to disclose how politics affects the lives of animals through the analysis of the everyday political origins, advocacy, formulation, and implementation of law and policy. Additionally, we have decided to concentrate this study of the companion animals and politics or, in the vernacular, the pet laws, policies, and policymaking that affect the lives of cats, dogs, and horses in Canada and the United States. The range of policies affecting animals is vast, but cats, dogs, and horses have perhaps the closest association with humans and have far and away generated the most attention from public policymakers. Other animals considered as pets, including birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, rabbits, mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters, ferrets, monkeys, and chimpanzees have generated far fewer political controversies and far less attention from policymakers. We will only note in passing how public policies affect these species.
North American policymakers have tended to regard companion animals as humans’ possessions. However, by coupling emotional concerns about pets with an ethics of respect for life, during the past forty years political activists have mobilized to seek the enactment of more stringent laws to require people to engage in legal accountability for the welfare of pets. Consequently, we might expect that policymakers would act to protect their constituents’ interest in their animal companions, but is this the case? Has the identity of pets evolved from property toward legalized protective rules or rights and personhood for companion animals?
Although legal and historical scholars and sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, and anthrozoologists have published a considerable number of prescriptive, normative, and theoretical studies of companion animal welfare laws and rights, political scientists have ignored comprehensive empirical examination of pet politics and policymaking in Canada and the United States. In many respects the study of public policies about animals reflects the state of political scientists’ study of environmental, education, and morality politics during the 1960s. Also, political scientists have centered their study less holistically on stages of or phases of policy development, such as lobbying, elections, legislative committees, presidential staff, or decision making by Supreme Courts. However, as we enter an ignored policy arena such as pet politics, we try to present a comprehensive overview of the complexities of political actions and inaction that shape the lives of cats, dogs, and horses.
Because we recognize distinctive differences between pet politics and policies that affect other animals, this study will not address policies related to controversial commercial animal husbandry practices, such as factory farming, the processing of animals for food, the use of animals in commercial and scientific research, and the employment of animals for entertainment by circuses and zoos. We will not discuss the handling or killing of animals in religious rites. We also will not address policies about animals as wildlife, such as endangered species laws, marine mammal laws, hunting regulations, animal habitat laws and regulations, and legislation requiring the control or elimination of nonnative, invasive, or “exotic” species. 1 Public policies and political action on these topics also deserve much more descriptive and empirical study, but a single book about animals and politics cannot address all of them. Finally, because pet politics is an arena of constantly changing laws and policies, readers should know that we recount events to August 2015.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a jointly authored work, and the order of the authors’ names does not imply the preeminence of the efforts or ideas of one of the authors. We especially thank the many animal policy activists, pet rescue coordinators, public officials, and the staff of publicly and privately supported animal control and shelter agencies interviewed for this book. To list them separately would consume many pages; however, Cathy Prothro-Short greatly assisted our research trip to Nova Scotia. The authors also thank the Embassy of Canada in the United States, the Office of the Dean, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Political Science, and the Institute for Public Affairs of West Virginia University for their financial support of this study. Early in this study Kyle Christensen and Bret Wilson provided valuable research assistance. Portions of this book were presented as papers at annual meetings of the Law and Society Association in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012 and the Western Political Science Association in 2006, 2007, and 2009. We thank the discussants at those meetings for their comments. Finally, we thank Kelley Kimm of Purdue University Press for her expert copy editing.
NOTE
1. For an overview of policies affecting these animals, see Susan Hunter, “Animal Policy,” in Governing America: Major Policies and Decisions of Federal, State, and Local Government from 1789 to the Present , ed. Paul Quirk and William E. Cunion (New York: Facts on File, 2011), 1:184–90. Older but more detailed discussion of some of the policies appears in Jordan Curnutt, Animals and the Law: A Sourcebook (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLI0, 2001).
1
Why Study Pet Politics?
W hether referred to as pets or companion animals, cats and dogs reside in a majority of homes in North America. 1 Recent survey data indicate that in the United States, dogs live in 56 percent of households, cats live in 30.4 percent of households, and 1.5 percent of residents possess horses—a total of 70.1 million cats, 69.9 million dogs, and 4.9 million horses. In addition, birds, fish, reptiles, and mammals of other species live in approximately 13.7 million U.S. households. 2 And more than 6.4 million dogs and 8.5 million cats live in Canada. 3 These animals often provide people with recreation and affection as well as assistance as guards, herders, aides to the disabled, and vermin killers. Yet, every year governments in these nations spend untold millions of dollars managing, controlling, and disposing of millions of abandoned or unwanted pets. Although survey data find that 84.7 percent of American households would likely obtain a new dog from a shelter or rescue group (see the appendix to this chapter for definitions), 4 estimates are that most publicly supported shelters in the United States deliberately put to death 40 to 65 percent of the dogs and 60 to 90 percent of the cats that come under their control—from three to four million animals a year. 5 However, the political effect of pets extends far beyond the cost of operating a pound to house or destroy unwanted cats and dogs and the revelation of a message of moral disengagement and casual human disregard for living beings that the abandonment and mass killing implicitly conveys. As the following five vignettes relate, with so many people in contact with so many animals, pets cannot escape a broad range of politics, law, public policies, and actions of political institutions that influence their lives.
The Katrina Pets
Before Hurricane Katrina swamped the city of New Orleans in August 2005, the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals evacuated about 250 animals from its shelter. Two days later the hurricane destroyed the shelter. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) estimated that, because they were not evacuated from th