HUMANE ENFORCEMENT

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

Reinforcing previous verdicts, the
Kentucky Court of Appeals on May 29 ruled that
cockfighting remains illegal in Kentucky despite the
1980 state assembly ratification of a bill that exempted
birds from the definition of animals protected by the
Kentucky anti-cruelty law. Then-Kentucky governor
John Y. Brown Jr. vetoed the 1980 bill, and the prevailing
legal interpretation remained that cockfighting
was illegal, until Montgomery County cockfight promoter
Marvin Watkins and four other individuals
argued in a lawsuit that the veto was invalid because
according to a deputy state senate clerk’s affidavit it was
issued a day too late. The Kentucky Court of Appeals
previously upheld the 1980 veto in 1994. At least three
major cockfighting arrests followed the 1994 verdict.

Graphic artist Helen Mitchell, of New
Britain, Pennsylvania, has reportedly sued to challenge
the right of the Bucks County SPCA to enforce neutering
as a condition of adoption. Mitchell adopted a
mixed-breed dog named Grizzy Bear from the Bucks
County SPCA in June 1997. On April 22, 1998, a
Bucks County SPCA officer responding to a citizen’s
complaint confiscated Grizzy Bear after allegedly finding
him so tangled in a restraint cable that his front feet
were caught in the air. He had neither been fixed nor
licensed, matters which Mitchell told Mark Binker of
the Philadelphia Inquirer were “an oversight.”
Class B animal dealer Cathy Lamke, o f
Chisholm, Minnesota, “originally charged with operating
without a license,” according to the USDA Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service, has “agreed to a
25-year license disqualification and a $5,000 civil penalty.”
The fine is suspended if “Lamke does not violate
the Animal Welfare Act for a period of 25 years.”