Posted on 05/11/2009
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A Tale of Lawyers and Lobbyists

Cindy Cooke, Legislative Specialist

Last week I went to two meetings. Normally, I hate meetings, but these two were fun and I thought I would share the entertainment with you. The first meeting was the annual Symposium of the Animal Law Section of the Michigan State Bar Association. A “section” is made up of lawyers with a common interest in a specific are of the law. Non-lawyers are always welcome to attend these meetings, so I invited a couple of fellow dog breeders to attend with me. I arrived in a very bad mood. The meeting was held at the Michigan State University College of Law. The buildings at MSU don’t have addresses, so my GPS was no help at all in finding the right building. Once I found the building, I discovered that I had to park in a metered parking garage. Naturally, I had almost no change in my wallet. I started to put what little money I had in the meter and it jammed. I decided that I had no more time to waste looking for another space in the crowded lot, so I headed for the meeting.

As I approached the room, a young woman at a desk smiled and gave me a name tag. She pointed to a table filled with flyers from different animal organizations. I thumbed through them and found:
• A flyer from the Animals and Society Institute, an animal rights think tank headed by former PETA director Kim Stallwood and Ken Shapiro, founder of Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
• A DVD entitled “The Animals Platform,” The ASI Action Plan to Promote New and Stricter Animal Protection Laws.
• A flyer from the American Humane Association promoting two bills that are before the Michigan state legislature, and that are opposed by the Michigan Veterinary Medical Association.

I walked into the room where the Symposium was to be held (did I mention that the meeting started at 1 p.m. and we were promised lunch?), and got my first look at lunch. Every bowl and tray was carefully labeled with a hand-lettered sign that said “Vegan”. There was one exception: a bowl identified as “Vegetarian”. Oh, they had sandwiches, but they were really just salad on a bun. No meat. No cheese. In other words, nothing to abate the increasingly dark mood of yours truly.

I cast my eyes around the room and found the young President-Elect of the Animal Law section and walked over to introduce myself. “Anna,” I said with an insincere smile. I suspect I must have looked a little predatory to young Anna, because she looked like a deer in the headlights. I told her that I felt our group was not giving equal time to all sides of the animal law issues.

“Why do you think that?” she said.

“Well, let’s start with the lunch.”

“Oh, it’s all vegan,” she assured me. When I told her that I preferred to eat meat, she looked stunned at the idea. I pointed out that three of the seven speakers were repeats from last year’s Symposium, including Professor David Favre from the MSU law school, a proponent of animal rights.

“I can’t believe that every professor in the law school agrees with Dr. Favre. Couldn’t you offer an opposing view some time?” By now, it was clear from Anna’s expression that she wished she was anywhere but standing next to me. I closed by saying that I would like to speak next year on the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. She fled.

The first speaker was Allie Phillips, a lobbyist for the American Humane Association, and she was one of the repeat speakers from last year. AHA has been lobbying for two bills in Michigan. The first bill would outlaw the use of CO or CO2 gas chambers as a method of euthanizing shelter dogs. The second would prevent shelters from selling dogs that would otherwise be euthanized for medical research. By now, my stomach is growling and I wasn’t in the mood to listen to her hyper-emotional arguments. I was in the mood for, well, fresh meat.

“Are you saying that euthanasia by means of a gas chamber is inherently cruel, or that the cruelty is a result of the chambers being operated improperly?” Before she could answer, I continued, “Because I’ve experienced hypoxia in an altitude chamber and it was really rather pleasant. First you feel a little high, and then you go to sleep.” As soon as I said that, she was forced to admit that the gas chambers are not inherently cruel but that they can be cruel if improperly operated. “Well,” I said, “any procedure can be cruel if it’s not done correctly.”

The second bill Ms. Phillips was promoting would prohibit shelters from selling dogs for animal research. Ms. Phillips’ voice broke with emotion as she described people depositing their beloved family pets at the shelter, expecting that the dogs will be re-homed. In fact, of course, people who drop off their dogs at the shelter know full well that there is a chance the dog will be euthanized, particularly if it is an intact, male, 50-pound Lab mix with no training! When I asked Ms. Phillips where researchers should get dogs, she said it was okay for breeders to supply them. In other words, the tender-hearted Ms. Phillips thinks it’s better to bring new dogs into the world to be research subjects while we continue to euthanize shelter dogs.

We had a break after Ms. Phillips’ speech and I hunted down the unhappy Anna. I told her that I found it offensive to have a lobbyist speak to us on one side of an issue without giving the MVMA lobbyist a chance to speak on the other side of the issue. Anna nodded politely, but had no answer for me.

The Symposium closed with a talk by Professor Favre, outlining his concept of animal rights. Unlike many other animal rights true believers, Prof. Favre thinks animals have the right to be, as he put it, “properly owned”. Of course he also thinks animals ought to be able to own property, enter into contracts, and file tort claims! Interestingly, even though he stated at the beginning of his talk that reproduction, along with food, water and shelter, constituted an animal “need”, he did not include the right to reproduce on his list of animal rights. I asked him about it, and he stammered, “Well, it’s complicated.”
After spending the afternoon poking holes in the arguments of Ms. Phillips and Prof. Favre, I left the meeting in a pretty good mood - hungry, but happy - at least until I got to the parking lot and found a $25 ticket on my car!

The following night, I went to a meeting of the Michigan Purebred Dog Association. The purpose of the meeting was to set up a funding plan so that we can hire a lobbyist to represent Michigan dog owners and pay the anticipated $36,000-$40,000 a year that it will cost. We appointed a committee to select a lobbying firm. We plan to ask each club to sign a three-year contract committing them to donating a specific amount of money each year of the contract. The goal is first to get enough money to pay for the first year of lobbying service, and to gradually build up a fund that will generate enough income to pay for a lobbyist each year. It will be along haul, but it is clear to those of us working in this field that it is no longer enough to have amateurs working in the state houses. We need professional help and we’re going to have to pay the going rates. I’ll keep you posted on our progress because it’s something that needs to be done in every state.