AB1634

AB1634 was introduced last year by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys). The actual author of the bill is Judie Mancuso, an animal rights activist.

Mancuso has spent the last two years working on this, traveling around California, meeting with shelter workers and politicians to gather support. Additional authors and supports are Ed Boks, Director of Los Angeles Animal Services and Allan Drysus of Yucaipa.

This group has hosted fund raisers for Assemblyman Levine for this as well as previous bills.

The key provisions of AB1634, in its most recent iteration would require the mandatory spay and neutering of all dogs and cats by the time they are six months of age. Although it provided difficult and expensive exemptions for some animals, the author declined to make any provision for working and hunting dogs.

There are many reasons to oppose AB1634. The key issues are that this type of legislation is proven to have negative effects, the fact that the negative health issues that result from across-the-board early spay/neuter far outweigh the benefits, and the fact that this bill would render many breeds of dogs extinct. There are also a variety of property rights issues.

Initially, the proponents talked only about Santa Cruz and how successful this bill was there. Once the actual numbers were gathered, it was clear that Santa Cruz County numbers were not any better than California taken as a whole and not as good as the surrounding counties. And theit costs to operate increased dramatically.

Click on the image below to see the real Santa Cruz numbers.