Hello, friends. I must confess that I’ve had a pretty rough travel week and as such, I don’t have my intended conclusion to the Henry Bergh Humane Society saga as promised.

Instead, here are a few pieces from the 1950s to take a look at revolving around advocacy against pound procurement or pound seizure legislation. This specific legislation was named the Carlson Dog and Cat Procurement Law and allowed for medical research labs, which were incredibly unregulated at this time (and still are, honestly) to procure animals from pounds for vivisection and dissection.

Advocates across California under the umbrella of Dog Defenders League and Pet Legal Defense Fund took paid advertisements in papers across the state in order to inform readers and encourage them to oppose the legislation.

There is very little actually written in the papers about this aside from the advertisements about the pending legislation – To me, this is telling of the time. This was the only article I could find that covered it in California, written in 1953 in the Times-Herald.

Unfortunately, these types of laws did often pass and did in fact pass in California despite the efforts of the advocates. They would not be repealed in the state of California until 2016.

Still, today, many states have active pound seizure legislation that allows animal shelters to sell pets or their dead bodies for research.

You can see a list of the actual laws in play now, state by state, here: https://aavs.org/animals-science/laws/pound-seizure-laws/

And you can see the actual, original Carlson law enacted in California here: https://www.theanimalcouncil.com/files/CA_AB_2269_Waldron_pound_seizure_ab_2269_bill_20160218_introduced.pdf

Here’s the actual repealed language.

I’d love to know your thoughts. Do you feel as though the fact that the papers didn’t more thoroughly cover this legislation is a reflection of the way people viewed pets in shelters at this time? Let me know.

-Audrey