Category Archives: Laws

Sometimes I have to admit our City government does very interesting, perhaps silly things. We also do things that critics call silly but in fact are groundbreaking, such as our leadership in banning smoking in restaurants and bars — which, if you’ve been to any bars and restaurants in SF lately, does not seem to have hurt business at all. But banning pet stores from selling anything but fish — that’s silly.

Apparently, our Animal and Welfare Commission {the one that calls pets “companion animals,” which begs the question of whether a skink is a companion, and does that make the rats in your basement “tenement squatters” rather than pests?} is contemplating recommending the ban to the Board of Supervisors. This is the same Commission which once tried to give legal rights to pets when I was on the Board. I believe in humane care and compassion, but giving my ttwo cats the right to sue me because I changed their food from Fancy Feast {or “cat crack” as my vet once said} to Wellness? Please.

In any event, the author of the proposal, who disingenuously pleads that he is still in the “information-gathering phase,” said he is trying to stop people from buying pets and then turning them into the shelter because they can’t deal with them. And it’s not even all pets. It’s about hamsters, which are the number one residents of our City shelters, apparently.

I will be the first to admit that there are a lot of well-meaning and not so well-meaning folks out there buying hamsters, gerbils, and other animals who have no right doing so. They don’t understand what it takes to care for and keep an animal, even ones that seem low-maintenance compared to our typical cat and dog companions. But to ban the sales of pets in San Francisco is just ridiculous. The impulse to care for another creature is not going to be bound by whether you can buy it in the city of Richmond or the Richmond District. If little Bobby or Ashley wants a snake, and by god they are going to scream until they get one, mom and dad are going to drive somewhere to get it. And when Bobby and Ashley realize they have to feed live mice to the snake, it’s going to end up in the San Francisco shelter no matter where it originated.

This is not an anti-smoking ordinance, where health concerns eventually overrode objections by the free smoker societies. This is not an anti-gun ordinance {that is, if any exist after the Supreme Court has its way}. Pets are not a vice. Pets are not, for the most part, accidents waiting to happen. Pets are, well, pets. Part of our DNA is wound up in wanting to care for all creatures great and small. Call them pets, call them companions, the innate impulse is something that this initiative cannot and will not deny. Just ask the pro-ferret lobby in California.

By the way, why the fish exemption? Is it because, unlike a hamster or a snake, the usual disposal method — a time honored technique called the flush — is out of sight and, therefore, out of mind? And isn’t there just a little hypocrisy if a commission charged with the welfare of animals is considering an exemption for “food” animals like baby mice and crickets to feed the appetites of reptiles? And if they allow the sale of animals through Craigslist or the classifieds, are we going to see the establishment of pet store speakeasies to consummate the delivery of the live, but otherwise prohibited, goods?

The City has a huge budget deficit. And it’s spending time and money on something as ill-thought and trivial as this initiative. During a time of austerity, watching purported City officials wasting personnel and expelling carbon on a measure that has no chance of preventing the problem they seek to solve is just another nail in the coffin of public faith and trust in government.

SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco officials are considering whether to ban the sale of pets, except fish, throughout the city.

Supporters of the ban say animal shelters are overrun by people who buy hamsters, parrots, snakes and other animals from pet stores on impulse, then regret the purchase. Under the proposal, San Francisco residents would have to go outside the city to purchase pets.

San Francisco’s animal control director Rebecca Katz says hamsters are the most euthanized pet in the city.

Pet store owners say the measure would put them out of business.

The ban is being considered Thursday evening by the city’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare. It plans to hear testimony from those affected by the ban before voting.

If approved, it would still have to go before the Board of Supervisors for a vote.