Let Puppies Have Puppies, or Your Lipstick Prices Will Go Up

I am opposed to AB 1634, the proposed California Healthy Pets Act. If passed, AB1634 would require almost all dogs and cats in California to be spayed or neutered. I think that encouraging people to spay and neuter their pets is good. Giving people benefits for spaying or neutering is good. But making it so that no amateurs can ever breed a litter of puppies or kittens is an unreasonable restraint on personal freedoms. I've never abandoned a litter of puppies to a dog shelter, but if I want to breed my dog, I should damn well be allowed to do it.

But if personal freedom is not enough to inspire people, maybe fear tactics will work better. Because, as this recent blog post from the OC Register demonstrates, if this bill passes, your lipstick will become more expensive, and fish food will be affordable only to the super-elite.

Every week, a truck pulls up to the county Animal Shelter in Orange. The carcasses of some 400 dead dogs, cats, bunnies and other unlucky creatures are loaded up. Then the truck hauls them to the West Coast Rendering plant in Vernon.

There, the remnants of Fido and Fluffy (alongside the carcasses of slaughtered cows, pigs, chickens and restaurant scraps) are essentially cooked at very high temperatures for hours. What happens then?

• Frothy fat floats to the top of the stew, eventually making its way into lipsticks, lubricants, polishes, waxes.
• The harder fats settle in the middle, eventually appearing in soaps, candles, drugs, gummy candies.
• The densest stuff falls to the bottom. It’s dried, squeezed, dried again and finely ground, to create a protein powder that becomes a key ingredient in animal feed. The meat and bone meal made from ”companion animals” isn’t supposed to make its way into feed in the U.S. But protein meal containing Fluffy and Fido sells overseas, where it’s apparently popular for fish feed on fish farms.

Wait. WTF? Did I read that right? Gummie candies? Our freaking gummy candies are made of fat from the boiled remains of animal shelter discards?

I think I'm about done eating delicious gummy candies.