Registered: Jun 2003
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 4502

News & Legislation Briefs October 12, 2011

Dear SAOVA Friends,

Last week I attended our local HSUS grassroots meeting which proved to be eventful as well as enlightening. As requested on the web event calendar, I submitted an RSVP for the meeting and received a confirmation. However, the day before the scheduled meeting I received an email from our HSUS State Director informing me this was a private meeting for animal advocates interested in helping animals and our shelters, and she felt that my agenda would not be the same. Politely, she then suggested that it would be better if I did not attend. The meeting was being held in our public library and after assurances from officials that my attendance could not be blocked, friends and I sat in on the meeting and proceeded to take notes on her presentation.


ADVOCATING FOR ANIMALS – CREATING CHANGE was the presentation title. Subtitle and focus was “working to support our shelters” because our shelters are in crisis. Speaking from the role of animal control’s new best friend, it was stated that understanding the issues faced by animal control personnel is critical. They are all dealing with budget cuts, animal overpopulation, and insufficient ordinances. Instead of being angry with animal control, advocates should work to pass local ordinances that contain housing, shelter, tethering, and animal care regulations and not wait for regulation at the state level.



The presentation included a segment on community outreach with suggestions to use HSUS literature for responsible care and puppy mill education; distribute anti-tether information from Unchain Your Dog; and engage your local pastor in helping animals, i.e., religious outreach.



The bulk of the presentation focused on shelter needs, networking, and ways to volunteer which was a drastic shift from the presentation in 2010 (See HSUS Lobbying in Your State http://saova.org/download.html). However, there was a quick review of the bullet list of desired legislation: increased penalties for animal cruelty; commercial breeder regulation; strengthen animal fighting law; stop wildlife abuse (penning); and statewide regulation for animal housing and shelter. More of the meeting will be covered on the SAOVA blog.



If you have not attended an HSUS grassroots meeting, you should. The animal rights agenda may be crystal clear to you, but it is not understood by the general public who cannot distinguish it from animal welfare. Listening to the smooth manner in which HSUS feeds their agenda to an audience is an education in itself. Learning what activists have planned for your community can only be to your advantage when speaking to your elected officials.



The world not only belongs to those who show up, it's controlled by the best informed and most motivated.

Thanks for reading. Cross posting is encouraged.

Susan Wolf
Sportsmen's and Animal Owners' Voting Alliance - http://saova.org
Issue lobbying and working to identify and elect supportive legislators

A LOT PLAYERS, NOW TIME FOR A TEAM

Inside D.C. September 30, 2011 By Steve Kopperud



Reprinted with permission from Brownfield Ag News

http://brownfieldagnews.com/2011/09...ime-for-a-team/

The fledgling Farmers & Ranchers Alliance held a series of town hall-type meetings this month – DC, New York, Davis, CA, and Fair Oaks, IN – all part of its “Food Dialogue” effort to reinflate U.S. consumer appreciation for the people and the system that feeds them and a big chunk of the planet. As part of the debut, the Alliance released some very interesting survey results. First, 2,000 or so consumers generally admit they don’t much about food production, but that ignorance informs their buying decisions. Second, farmers and ranchers surveyed guessed as much about their consumer customers, and figure what consumers think they know is wrong.

I’m glad someone’s finally got the consumer on record admitting he/she doesn’t know what it takes to produce food, whether fruit, veg, grain or animal. But this simply confirms what most of us knew. The underlying value of the Alliance — and trust me, I think the Alliance is a superior operation — effort is that it unites all of ag in a broad-based effort to enhance consumer appreciation of farmers, ranchers and the absolutely irreplaceable survival component they represent for the rest of us.

The New York Times, as might be expected, wrote a typically snarky and generally naïve article about the Alliance, and an animal rights blogger reacted to the Alliance: “Until now, the animal advocacy movement’s opposition was largely a bunch of poorly organized and relatively underfunded misfits…” Now, save for the “misfit” description, she’s correct. Why? Because all of our efforts in agriculture to promote our industry are uncoordinated and generally, uncooperative.

The Alliance is the biggest and broadest producer effort out there, but it isn’t by any means the only effort trying to reach into the consumer psyche to instill and reinforce consumer trust in farmers and ranchers and the industries and disciplines which support and rely upon them. There is the Animal Agriculture Alliance; the Farm Animal Welfare Coalition; American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology; our animal science and veterinary medicine allies – Council for Agriculture Science & Technology, American Society for Animal Science, Federation of Animal Science Societies, American Veterinary Medical Assn., species practitioner groups – and then there are individual national association programs, state programs, and individual species advocacy programs, such as the United Horsemen. Oh, and let us not forget the private, for-profit endeavors to which some corporations naively turn for “insight” into how to deal with anti-agriculture forces.

Most of these are top-of-the-line efforts, and while some are more focused on animal production and others are broad agriculture in their concentration, all share a goal of enhancing production ag, and regaining the trust and confidence of consumers who are barraged daily by the “big lie” of bad production, fertilized by political propaganda, misinformation and downright lies about where food in this country comes from.

However, what are lacking from this industry-wide effort are a lack of ego — both personal and organizational — and a healthy dose of coordination and cooperation. There are folks who sit on the boards and committees of more than one of these efforts, but they are few and far between. It would be significant mistake for such efforts to spend tight money to duplicate efforts, re-do research and surveys which have been done to death and always say the same thing, and from a policy standpoint, we’d be fools not to try and solidify as much of a producer/input industry/processor base as possible.

Key to this coordinated effort must be a willingness to acknowledge eroding consumer confidence due to attacks by the “good food movement,” or animal rights, or enviro groups or others who don’t or refuse to understand production ag, is a universal assault. It’s not specific to a crop or a species; it’s an attack on all of us in conventional and organic agriculture. So, the less-than-subtle message is as follows: Let’s get our act together, check our egos at the door, and start a serious coordinated effort – preserving our individual identities – but let’s make sure we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck by ensuring we’re echoing, not talking over, each other.



TEXAS DOG AND CAT BREEDER REGULATION UPDATE

On October 10, 2011 The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) issued a Request for Proposal for Development Of Course Material and Delivery of Inspection Training Services for the Licensed Dog and Cat Breeders Program. The RFP states all proposals submitted must assume that standards set forth in 9 C.F.R. Part 3, Subpart A (federal regulations) form the basis for the development of course material, protocols, implementation of training, the creation of inspection checklists, and reporting requirements. In developing course material and delivering training services, proposers must describe the methodology for and be prepared to manage all aspects of the statewide training program. In addition selected vendors must have the experience and ability to design, develop, implement and provide curricula that meet current and future training needs of inspectors and investigators assigned to the breeder program. The 9-page RFP can be viewed at this link http://tinyurl.com/3jcatth



The chosen third party vendors will contract with TDLR to design every aspect of the newly created bureaucracy created by HB 1451. This includes protocols for reporting animal cruelty; all course and study materials; provide training services and staff; guides for facility inspections; identify training locations with access to actual breeder operations for hands on training; design testing and inspector certification process.



This comprehensive program development could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where will the funding for these contracts come from? The RFP ends the ridiculous assertion of the HB1451 Fiscal Note which read HB1451 would have “an impact of $0 through the biennium ending August 31, 2013."

The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Bill Analysis “House Bill 1451: Breeding Big Government” warned that the bill would be costly to licensees and taxpayers. The report further noted that Texas already exceeds the national average of licensed occupations.



Additional information is posted on the SAOVA website as we continue to follow the course of this new regulation.

__________________
2012 National Grand Show Champion, World Show Bluetick Female CCH GRCH 'PR' Southern Flame Blame it on the Rain (Rain)
2012 Purina Show Bluetick Breed Winner GRCH 'PR' Southern Flame Grt Balls o' Fire (Jerry Lee)
2013 World Champion Bluetick, 2013 AO Overall Bred By winner GRCH 'PR' Sexy and I know It (breeder)
2015 AO Overall Dual Champion NTCH GRCH 'PR' Sexy and I know It (breeder/owner/handler)
2016 Grand American Overall Dual Ch, Overall Show CHampion NTCH GRCH 'PR' Sexy and I know It

AKC CSG, UKC CCH GRCH 'PR' Southern Flame Bad News Bandit (Bandit)
2010 National Grand Champion Bluetick
2013 AO Bluetick Stud Dog winner

CCH GCH 'PR' Southern Flame Elvira - the one that started it all

southernflamekennel@earthlink.net

RIP Southern Flame Elvira (the cornerstone of the kennel) 5/16/02-1/17/14

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