Animal Rights Whack-A-Mole in Kitsap County, Washington

Here’s something you may not know. The animal rights movement loses a lot. You probably think that animal rights activists are out celebrating their victories every night but the truth is that they are constantly defeated at the federal, state, and local levels.

How can that be, you ask, when they are constantly in the news? 

That’s because they are loud and obnoxious. They are the epitome of the squeaky wheel. Even when they are led off in handcuffs they are happy to video the scene and post it online so they can raise money for bail.

But animal rights activists are persistent. They play the long game.

If they lose with bills at the federal level – and they do lose with bills, year after year after year – they try to get changes made through regulatory agencies. If that doesn’t work to their satisfaction, they move down to the state government level and try to get what they want, one state at a time.

When they are thwarted by state governments, they go local. Activists can turn up in your city or town and start whispering in the ears of your local council members.

When a bill that would have banned the sale of puppies and kittens from breeders was defeated with the help of The Cavalry Group in Washington’s state capitol, animal rights activists began singling out individual pet stores in the state. That’s how Jack Munro found himself at the center of a fight in Kitsap County Washington. Jack, who used to show and breed Collies and Shelties, is the owner of Farmland Feed and Pets in Kitsap County where he’s been in business for 43 years.

In December 2018, just after Christmas, Jack says he got a call from a county council member telling him that in five days they intended to vote on a measure that would put him out of business. He was told that he could see the proposed ordinance online. He had no input in writing the ordinance. The ordinance would ban his store from selling pets unless they came from the local shelter or rescue group.

It took seven months, but the ordinance was finally passed on July 22, 2019. The Cavalry Group mounted several large e-mail campaigns on behalf of Farmland to fight the ordinance. The county council received thousands of e-mails asking them to reject the proposed ordinance. The council told Jack, “No more emails!” According to Jack, many people turned out on behalf of Farmland at each reading of the ordinance. When it came to the date of the final vote the council moved the vote several times. No public comments were allowed for the final vote.

Jack would originally have been required to stop selling his animals immediately but that has been amended. He now has a year to stop selling his puppies and kittens.

Jack says that he will never sell shelter animals in his store. He has had a decades-long positive relationship with a professional licensed and inspected dog breeder in Kansas who has supplied him with puppies for the store. Through Farmland he has sold puppies with a 5-generation pedigree that were DNA-tested. They came with pictures of the parents, a complete medical record, a health guarantee, a free visit to the vet, and they were microchipped. The kittens in his store come from local people who drop them off. He gets them for free or never pays more than $10 for the really cute ones. They don’t come from breeders. Yet critics claim that Jack is only selling puppies and kittens for the money.

Per the local humane society, some 6,000 dogs were rehomed in Kitsap County in 2018. Three-thousand of them came from out of state. Thousands of dogs are brought into Washington from out of state by “rescue” groups every year, not all of them legally. Jack sells about 400 dogs per year at Farmland and only 3 percent of them ever have a problem. That’s 12 dogs. And Farmland’s dogs have a health guarantee and a contract.

Puppies at the local humane society in Kitsap County are $350. Purebred dogs are $250-$500. Kittens are $175. Before you can get any pet at the humane society you have to fill out an application and you have to be “approved.”

Jack is well-liked and some local people in the community, even people who do not particularly like commercial dog breeders, have said that they felt bad about this ordinance and putting Farmland out of business. According to Jack, even the local council members told him that they didn’t like forcing a local business to close.

Local ordinances banning pet stores from selling puppies from breeders, like the one that is forcing Farmland to close, are being passed all over the United States. Local governments are often pressured by animal activists to pick winners and losers in business because the activists are pushy and outspoken. Sometimes proposed ordinances are hidden so the public doesn’t know about them until after they are passed; votes are moved at the last minute; people who oppose an ordinance are not notified of changes; people affected by ordinances and their supporters are not given timely access to proposed drafts. This is the worst kind of dirty politics and it’s being played in our hometowns, affecting our animals and our businesses.

These ordinances can be passed anywhere and affect any of us. Today it’s pet stores but tomorrow it could be an ordinance to ban dog breeding or whether you can own pets at all. Good people are being driven out of business because of the animal rights agenda. This is not fair or honest government. Local government should not be agenda-driven and it shouldn’t pick winners and losers in business based on animal rights ideology. We all need to stand up to these bad ordinances and bills when they appear. We need to fight together and protect our rights.

  

Carlotta Cooper is vice president of Sportsmens’ & Animal Owners’ Voting Alliance and a regular contributing writer for The Cavalry Group, a member-based company working to defend the private property rights of animal owners and animal enterprise nationwide. Follow The Cavalry Group on Facebook, MeWe, Instagram, and Twitter.

Equine are Livestock, Not Companion Animals

In today's animal rights driven legislative reform working through at the local, state, and federal levels, it is important to understand why the legal definition for all domesticated equines to remain as livestock and oppose the current social trend of referring to them as pets or companion animals. 

The horse has long been considered livestock in the United States and throughout the world and changing the legal definition of horses to companion or other non-livestock animal would adversely affect not only the owners, but the animals themselves.

On the federal level, the care and regulation of horses and horse related activities come under the purview of the United States Department of Agriculture. It is the responsibility of the USDA to improve and maintain farm income and to carry out agricultural research. The USDA provides technical expertise and monetary support for research into the prevention of many equine diseases. The USDA is also responsible for the development and enforcement of the Horse Protection Act and the Safe Commercial Transportation of Equine to Slaughter Act. 

On the state level, each state department of agriculture is charged with the regulation of horse related activities and assists the horse industry through research and regulatory programs. Changing the livestock status of horses could result in losing financial support for research, regulation and disaster relief on both the federal and the state levels.

Livestock anti-cruelty laws are usually written to ensure humane treatment and care while still providing for the use of the animal. If horses were to be legally considered non-livestock, these laws would no longer apply. This status change would also have a major impact on limited liability laws and would no longer provide the much needed protection for stable owners, equine owners, event organizers and service providers.

Currently, under federal tax law, commercial horse owners and breeders are treated as farmers. Certain tax ramifications could be changed and have a negative impact if horses were not considered as livestock. In addition, horse owners and breeders are treated differently by state excise and sales taxes because horses are now considered livestock. These advantages could be lost. 

If horses were no longer livestock, horse breeding would no longer be an agricultural endeavor and federal and state taxes for horse operations could increase.

The terms livestock and companion animal are becoming interchangeable by the media and even in veterinary literature. Words are power and as we become accustomed to the flip-flopping of the terms and the hijacking of words by the animal rights movement.  First the public takes hold of the new term, then the legal community will come to accept the status change and the legal classification might follow.  We must understand why equine must remain classified as livestock in order to protect this classification. It all boils down to ownership of private property.

It is for these reasons that The Cavalry Group opposes any efforts to change the status of horses from agricultural livestock to companion animals.

Please be alert of any legislative efforts in your area at the local and state level to change this classification and notify us immediately. 

Mindy Patterson
President
The Cavalry Group

The Cavalry Group's Statement Regarding USDA's Policy Change to Remove Licensee Information from Its Website

In recent months, The Cavalry Group has been responding on behalf of our members, to letters from USDA/APHIS indicating that the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and other animal rights extremist organizations had requested private, confidential information about their business via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted to USDA. 

In response to the onslaught of FOIA requests affecting our members, I wrote an article challenging USDA's policy of releasing private, confidential information to these radical animal rights groups, highlighting that USDA knows full well that this unjudicated information would be taken out of context and used to hurt the businesses of the affected licensees.  

Read article here  

Listen to Mindy Patterson's interview with Trent Loos about this issue here

Statement:

The Cavalry Group and our Members all over the United States applaud the change in USDA policy that was implemented on Friday, February 3, 2017 regarding private, confidential and un-adjudicated USDA licensee information.

For the last eight years, USDA has been releasing confidential and un-adjudicated information to animal rights extremists and activist organizations, such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) knowing that the information would be used wrongfully against USDA licensees with the intent to run them out of business.

Empirical data exists evidencing that animal rights groups have used licensees’ information to make fraudulent claims and anonymous tips to authorities, and terrorize law abiding American families whose livelihood happens to involve exhibiting, breeding, transporting, or selling animals.

Evidence also exists that during the past eight years, USDA has been infiltrated by animal rights extremists who, with some success, attempted to change the culture within USDA-APHIS from one that is supportive of animal enterprise to one that aggressively bullies and harasses law abiding animal businesses with the ultimate goal of running them out of business.

Mindy Patterson

President

The Cavalry Group

The Cavalry Group Calls Out USDA For Misconduct

In July of this year, the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)  conducted an "educational symposium" for USDA licensees who own lions, tigers, and bears.  The Cavalry Group members who were in attendance of this symposium witnessed proof that the animal liberation movement's strategy is to infiltrate and influence government bureaucracies like the United States Department of Agriculture.  

Protecting Your Way of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness

For centuries, those who raise, breed, and work with animals have been revered and lauded for what they do. Today, across America our rights to own and raise animals are under attack by animal rights activists and their increased influence on government and non-government agencies overseeing issues pertaining to animal welfare.  This onslaught regularly violates protection from illegal search and seizure, and a citizen’s right to due process of the law; all of which are outlined specifically in the U.S. Constitution.

The rule of law provides that Americans are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law based upon facts and evidence, not emotion and conjecture. Unfortunately for animal owners today, the opposite is prevalent.  Animal rights activists use false claims of animal abuse and anonymous tip lines to convince over zealous prosecutors and sympathetic judges to issue warrants when, in most cases, no facts or actual witnessed evidence is provided to obtain the warrant.

As a result, animal owners and animal related businesses live with the daily terror that fraudulent claims, anonymous tips, or an animal rights activists’ internet-campaign could result in law enforcement arriving at their door and their animals seized without due process. Coupled with this real fear, animal owners are then exposed to extravagant animal care bonds and charges for temporary animal care, possible sterilization of high value breeding stock, or euthanization of their animals.

  

These instances become a big payday for animal rights activists and their organizations as they raise big money from these circumstances, and often times confiscate and sell, or in their words, “rescue and adopt out,” the private property of the accused who has not yet been adjudicated in a court of law.  These are real possibilities before the animal owner has their day in court.

In many actual instances, the rush to judgment fueled by animal rights activists results in destroyed property, bankrupt businesses, and reputations that are damaged whether they are found guilty or not.

At the end of the court proceeding, if the accused is found not guilty, the activists, prosecutors, state or local government, and the judges all get to walk away with no legal or financial ramifications.

The property owner, even if found innocent, is liable for the cost to house his animals for months or years in some cases, coupled with the destruction of their business and reputation.

The severity and the regular occurrence of these abuses of our Constitutional rights strikes fear in the hearts of animal owners and animal related businesses across America, who know that their livelihood and animals are threatened by the very real possibility of illegal search and seizure or false claims of animal abuse.

The animal rights based organizations have made their ideology no secret, and daily they express their desires and promote their strategies in plain view to nudge public opinion to their point of view.  It’s no stretch to figure out what they intend to accomplish with their policies when one realizes that the truth behind the veil of their exploitation of animals is the abolition of animal ownership and a vegan agenda for all.

Most Americans are unaware that this abuse is taking place.  Either that, or they are willfully blind to the impact that the animal rights extremists are currently wreaking havoc on all animal related businesses and animal owners across our nation.

To add insult to injury, many of the associations organized to promote and represent farmers, ranchers, and pet breeders are ushering in animal rights politics and policies by allowing a façade of compromise and agreeing to unnecessary, onerous, prohibitive, and costly regulations at the expense of fewer farms, fewer farmers, and higher food prices.  All of which are the intended consequences on the animal rights extremists.

Furthermore, many rural Americans are unaware of their Constitutional rights, and are often railroaded through a bureaucratic system that defies common sense and standard agricultural practice in their systematic to attempt to regulate and inspect commercial animal enterprises.

Notwithstanding the animal rightists goal of terrorizing animal owners and destroying animal related businesses, the Achilles’ heel of the animal rights movement is the historic principle that animals are property, and that private property is protected under the fundamental foundation of our U.S. Constitution -- further reinforced under the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. 

Our Founding Fathers' fundamental motivation behind the constuction of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution was the protection of private property and its direct link to Freedom and Liberty.

John Adam's words made it clear, "Property must be secured, or Liberty cannot exist."  

And more than one hundred years later in 1909, William Howard Taft's words still hold true today, “Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.”

Our sincere hope is that Americans wake up before it’s too late, and recognize that any individual or entity operating to usurp ownership of private property can and must be stopped by the recognition, comprehension, and protection of our U.S. Constitution.

Meanwhile, The Cavalry Group will continue to be on the frontlines to protect our members, their animals, and animal enterprise. Join us in the fight! 

Mindy Patterson is the president of The Cavalry Group, a member based company protecting and defending the Constitutional and private property rights of law abiding animal owners, animal-related business, hunters, and agriculture concerns legally nationwide.