ANIMAL WATCH

ANIMAL WATCH - While Councilman Paul Koretz posted photos this week of former City officials endorsing his campaign for Controller, his opponent Kenneth Mejia, CPA, was continuing to actively meet with community groups on issues affecting the entire city.

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS - Animal shelter volunteers have been suspended and/or terminated for speaking to the press about poor conditions at City animal shelters. 

ANIMAL WATCH - Last week, on October 26, WBTW in Abbeville, SC., announced that Kyleen Waltman, 38, was arrested and booked at the Abeville County Detention Center “pending charges, after a traffic stop where she was found in possession of methamphetamine.” 

ANIMAL WATCH - Los Animal Services’ shelter workers have recently been criticized for using the City’s COVID-related leave policy as a reason to not come to work,

ANIMAL WATCH - The unpardonable, inhumane overcrowding at Los Angeles Animal Services rivals that in third-world countries.”

ANIMAL WATCH - Pit Bull Awareness Day will be celebrated on October 22, 2022, according to the American Society for the Protection of Animals (ASPCA), as the emotional wounds of our nation and beyond are still fresh from the horrific mauling and deaths of two small children in Memphis, TN, by the family’s beloved Pit Bulls. 

ANIMAL WATCH - Anyone who has volunteered or otherwise worked with Los Angeles Animal Services is especially grateful to see the L.A. Times coverage of the overcrowding problems that have been increasing for years under GM Brenda Barnette and Councilman Paul Koretz, but have now become a “ticking time bomb,” according to a former-California shelter director. 

ANIMAL WATCH - There is undoubtedly more than one Pit Bull-attack victim who won’t applaud the recent announcement that-a new Ohio Pit Bull “Dog Friendly” license plate has been issued on September 9 and that Best Friends Animal Society sees this as “a step in the right direction.”

ANIMAL WATCH - A family pet Pit Bull brutally killed an 82-year-old retired schoolteacher who was the mother of its owner on July 12.

ANIMAL WATCH - On August 30, Judie Mancuso, CEO of Social Compassion for Animals, and sponsor of AB 1881, introduced by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, sent a news release to Cal-Animals (California Animal Welfare  Association), announcing “AB 1881, the Dog and Cat Bill of Rights, Fails to Pass the Senate.” 

ANIMAL WATCH - Best Friends Animal Society appears to be in the midst of a political campaign to revoke the rights of cities, villages, towns and states nationwide to pass or enforce Breed Specific Laws (BSL) for public safety, including prohibiting Pit Bulls or other dangerous dog breeds.

ANIMAL WATCH - The last extension of the Best Friends Animal Society’s $1-per-year lease of the Los Angeles Animal Services Mission shelter has ended with no fanfare, barely noticed by the media, and its final announcement lacked any celebration of L.A. being a “No Kill” city. 

ANIMAL WATCH - For years, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors dutifully documented extensive animal suffering at Moulton Chinchilla Ranch (MCR), a chinchilla breeding facility in Minnesota.

ANIMAL WATCH - There have been months of ignored complaints at L.A. Animal Services Commission meetings by volunteers, staff and the public about the cruel overcrowding, lack of care for the animals—

ANIMAL WATCH - A real dog-bite “accident” is offering a treat to a dog who unintentionally nips your finger. 

ANIMAL WATCH - Sources in South Korea are now saying that the Committee formed to abolish dog meat is contemplating a proposal to phase out dog meat over 8 years or over 15 years.

ANIMAL WATCH - On July 26, WBTV News reported  that a woman was savagely attacked by two Pit Bulls which came out of nowhere while she was walking in Rex Park in Atlanta, GA—

ANIMAL WATCH - A form of on-line betting on simulated and real cockfights is apparently available to current members for gambling on-line and only “temporarily” closed to players worldwide,

ANIMAL WATCH - One emergency meeting cannot solve the neglect that the shelters and animals have suffered under the tenure of Paul Koretz,

ANIMAL WATCH - There are many unforeseeable threats to human and animal safety in modern life, but in most cases we do not have the right to knowingly produce, sell or even own a life-threatening item or animal without a special permit or other restrictions.

ANIMAL WATCH - Adding to the increasing reports of worldwide tragedy of Pit Bull attacks from deaths to worrisome, repeated assaults, Rapper Flávio Cesar Costa de Castro—known as Orochi—is the latest celebrity to be accused of mishandling and mistreating his three Pit Bulls. 

ANIMAL WATCH - Cockfighting—the brutal death-sport of placing two roosters (fighting cocks) in a ring to fight for their lives or be killed during matches on which humans place bets—could make a comeback as a legal activity in the U.S. if it survives in the Oklahoma legislature. 

ANIMAL WATCH - The argument by the Nonhuman Rights Project that an elephant, named Happy, is being illegally detained at the Bronx Zoo in a case about the rights and “personhood” of highly intelligent animals, has been rejected, the New York Times reports. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - More than one million dogs are killed and eaten every year in South Korea. 

ANIMAL WATCH - National Dog Bite Awareness Week was declared by the U.S. Postal Service this year from June 5 through June 11, 2022.

ANIMAL WATCH - Pets in Los Angeles and much of the U.S. find themselves living under much different conditions in 2022 than just a few decades ago. 

ANIMAL WATCH - Los Angeles City Council is in its annual process of hearing and reviewing Departments’ requests for increased budgets for 2022-23 - 

ANIMAL WATCH - Pit Bull attacks have become one of the most common—and dreaded—news reports in the U.S.,

ANIMAL WATCH - A 22-year-old mother in Pasiq City who was terrified of the consequences of not paying off an $870 bet she lost on an “E-Sabong” online cockfight-betting site in the Philippines, sold her 9-month-old daughter in March to a human trafficker she found on Facebook.

ANIMAL WATCH - A tragic Pit Bull attack on 1-year-old Ruby Cervantes by her grandmother’s two dogs, occurred inside a home in Pico Rivera, CA, on April 24, seriously injuring the baby and three adult family members who were trying to save the child.