[ SHOWGSD-L ] PAWS Alert -- ACTION NEEDED! -- Please Forward
- From: "Ginger Cleary" <cleary1414@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Showgsd-L@Freelists. Org" <showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 16:02:58 -0500
Ginger Cleary,Rome, GA ww.rihadin.com
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human
hands, will ever be liable to abuse. ? James Madison
Member GSDCA
Member Sawnee Mtn Kennel Club
GA Director Responsible Dog Owners of the Eastern States.
-----Original Message-----
Walt Hutchens
waltah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:
PAWS is back, and if we don't fight it now, it is very likely to
become law. This post has everything you need to start.
H.R. 2419 (House of Representatives bill 2419) is the 2007 farm bill;
it would provide almost 300 BILLION dollars in government money for
thousands of different purposes considered farm-related over a five
year period but it also makes many other changes to federal law.
This bill has passed the House of Representatives and is now in the
Senate where it has already been through the Senate Agriculture
Committee. It is now being debated (a bit now and a bit then) on the
Senate floor.
With that much money in play, the Senate naturally has its own ideas.
Those ideas are in SA (Senate Amendment) 3500, "An amendment in the
nature of a substitute" which translates as "This is what WE think the
farm bill should look like." Nobody on earth has read the whole
thing, but we can guess that while it looks a lot like HR 2419, there
are hundreds of tweaks up, down, and sideways, a few of them big
deals.
SA 3500 has itself been amended a few hundred times and one of those
amendments is SA 3723 -- our old friend 'PAWS,' but with some new
problems.
With this many changes in play, it is most likely that the Senate WILL
pass SA 3500, BUT PROBABLY ONLY AFTER MORE CHANGES. The Senate version
of H.R. 2419 will then go to a House-Senate Conference Committee to
work out the differences. The CC can be guaranteed to make yet more
changes.
The conference version of H.R. 2419 will then go to both the House and
Senate to be passed: Both houses must pass a bill in EXACTLY the same
form. Once H.R. 2419 has passed both houses it goes to the president
for signature -- that's usually a routine matter, although President
Bush has been threatening a veto over one of the provisions of the
current bill.
So, while SA 3500 is technically not part of the farm bill yet, we
believe it does contain SA 3723 at this time and that SA 3500 in some
form WILL become H.R. 2419. Thus, we need to start worrying AND
ACTING, now.
The first and best place to kill PAWS is to get SA 3723 removed on the
Senate floor, where it is now. To do that, write to your own (U.S.)
Senators asking that they remove SA 3723 from SA 3500.
You can use all of last year's talking points. The new PAWS would
apply USDA regulations written for commercial farm breeders to
everyone who breeds and sells more than 25 puppies/kittens and also
goes over six litters in a year, as well as to anyone selling over 25
bred elsewhere. Like last year's version, PAWS would essentially end
the home breeding of pedigreed cats in the U.S. and would seriously
damage the home breeding of dogs. This would mean that more pets would
be bred by large commercial breeders. Overall, the result will be
lower quality cats and dogs at higher prices, meaning more incentive
for illegal breeding and importing of pets, already a problem in some
parts of the U.S.
You can find many more talking points for PAWS in Cindy Cooke's
excellent letter posted on December 4th, #69157 on the pet-law list.
Another PAWS article by Cindy is at:
http://www.pet-law.com/paws/why.html
The text of the bill itself is at:
http://www.cfa.org/exhibitors/HR2419.pdf
You can see what the law (the Animal Welfare Act) would look like with
the new PAWS merged in, here; the new stuff is about 2/3 down the
page:
http://www.cfa.org/exhibitors/SA3723.pdf
To contact your Senators:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/
You can enter your zip code or just click on your state. Then click
'senators' and the name of each Senator to get the Washington D.C.
office fax number. FAX is important because the time is short; email
is not even close to equally effective.
OR just go to the CFA Alerts page and click on the list of Senators
and phone numbers -- it's alphabetical by state abbreviation.
http://www.cfa.org/exhibitors/alerts.html
This is IMPORTANT. Think of it as breeder licensing for all 50 states
at a single whack; while it won't get the smallest breeders of dogs
right away, it will be easily amended in future years to take out more
of us. And home breeding of pedigreed cats will be gone from the
beginning.
-- Be polite!
-- Your first sentence should say what you want: "I am writing to ask
that you have SA 3723 removed from SA 3500, the Senate version of the
2007 farm bill."
-- Say something about yourself that relates to why this matters to
you: "My wife and I breed one or two litters of whippets per year in
our home in southern Virginia."
-- Explain what you think are the worst things about PAWS. This
should be just two or three sentences. Whatever scares you most from
the discussions on pet-law or various other resources.
-- Again say what you want: "Please work to have SA 3723 removed from
the Senate version of the farm bill."
-- USE YOUR OWN WORDS. Form letters are ignored.
-- Sign, and include your name and address; it's a good idea to
include a phone number, too, in case the Senator wants clarification
of your views.
Can you get friends, other club members, maybe your vet to send
letters?
For even more impact, CALL the senator's office and ask to speak to
the person who handles farm bill matters for him. Explain your views
to that person, be sure to get his or her name, and follow up with a
letter as above, adding a sentence near the beginning, saying
something like "This is in follow up to my conversation with Ms. Jones
of your staff, on Thursday."
GO FOR IT, FOLKS. WE DO NOT WANT PAWS TO PASS!
Walt Hutchens
Timbreblue Whippets
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