City Panel Opposes Ban of Animal Sales to Labs

A San Diego City Council committee, voting to support a county program under which some seized stray animals are sold to UC San Diego for research, Wednesday rejected a request by an animal-rights group that the city ban the use of its animals for scientific experiments.

The animal rights group, Stop Taking Our Pets, lost a bid last November to end the contract between the county and UC San Diego. In seeking a city ban, it hoped to cut into the supply of strays available for sale to UCSD.

But, in a 5-0 vote that came after only brief debate, the council’s Public Services and Safety Committee rebuffed the organization and other animal-rights activists who joined in the request.

‘Made Our Position Clear’

“I think we have dealt with this issue” when the activists testified before the city 10 months ago, said District 7 Councilwoman Judy McCarty. “We have made our position clear--to go along with the county’s policy on this.”

The county Animal Control Department is one of four such agencies in California that still sell captured strays for research, said Margo Tannenbaum, president of Action for Animals, a statewide animal rights group based in San Bernardino. The others are Sacramento, Los Angeles and Mendocino counties, she said.

Animal-control departments run by the cities of Los Angeles and Sacramento have halted the selling of animals for research, Tannenbaum said. In addition, cities in both San Diego and Los Angeles counties refuse to allow the county animal-control departments to sell animals that are captured within city limits.

In the face of fierce debate over the practice, UCSD has been buying a dwindling number of dogs and cats from San Diego county’s Bonita animal shelter, the only one of three county shelters that provides animals for research, said Hector Cazares, assistant director of the Animal Control Department.

In the first six months of fiscal 1988, UCSD bought 218 animals. During all of fiscal 1985, 1,330 animals were purchased by the university, and 820 were bought in fiscal 1987, Cazares said.

In contrast, the county kills more than 25,000 unclaimed animals each year, Cazares said.

Under the county contract, UCSD buys dogs for $55 each and cats for $25 for use in various scientific experiments. The price is far less than the $200 to $600 that scientists pay for animals bred for research use.

No animal bearing identification or an indication--such as a flea collar--that it is a pet is sold for research, Cazares said. But, at Wednesday’s hearing, one woman told the committee that her dog, which had slipped its collar, was sold to UCSD before she had a chance to reclaim it.

Others said that stopping the sales would have no effect on scientific research and asked the committee to halt the suffering of animals kept in cages.

Zema Jacobson, reading a letter from U.S. Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego), said the program “turns animal shelters into warehouses, where no consideration is given to pet owners or the animals.”