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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: SEPTEMBER 2006

Jackson County stops selling pound animals to labs

JACKSON, Michigan--Two less Michigan county animal shelters are selling animals to laboratory suppliers, as result of mid-August 2006 policy change.

Gladwin County became involved in the practice only three weeks before the Jackson County commissioners voted 10-1 on June 18 to stop selling animals to longtime purchaser Fred Hodgins of Hodgins Kennels in Howell. Anticipating the Jackson vote, Hodgins approached Gladwin County Animal Shelter director Ron Taylor. Taylor reportedly favored selling dogs to Hodgins if they would otherwise be killed at the shelter.

On June 27 the Gladwin County commissioners voted 6-1 to authorize Taylor to sell dogs to Hodgins. Hodgins bought two dogs on August 1, just as local activist Cindy Krycian and Humane Education And Legislation PAC founder Eileen Liska disclosed the arrangement to the public through telephone calls and e-mails. Their efforts were amplified internationally by Marietta Nealey Sprott of Heart of Michigan Rescue.

"More than 20 concerned citizens attended the Gladwin County Commissioner's meeting" on August 8 to voice their protest, wrote Graves. Taylor then voluntarily suspended further dealings with Hodgins, pending meetings among the protesters and the county board members.

Gladwin County was one of only nine Michigan counties which had not banned selling animals to labs, county commissioner Lou Kalinowski told Michelle Graves of the Gladwin County Record--but on August 21 the commissioners voted 5-3 to do so, reported Eileen Liska, founder of the Michigan pro-animal lobbying organization HEAL-PAC.

The Gladwin and Jackson county shelters handle similar numbers of animals, with reported 2005 killing totals of 888 and 932, respectively--but Jackson County has about eight times as many human residents.

The Gladwin County episode somewhat upstaged the work of Jackson County Volunteers Against Pound Seizure, formed in 2004 by Judy Dynnik of Rives Junction to continue a struggle started in 1960 by Jackson Animal Protective Association founder Dorothy Reynolds. Reynolds died in 2001 at age 86. Others had picked up the struggle, including artist Nancy Hauser Camden, who collected 6,000 petition signatures against selling animals to labs in the mid-1980s.

Hodgins enjoyed considerable success in litigation against critics, winning libel verdicts against two activists who attacked his business in letters to local newspapers. He later won a reduction of a USDA penalty of $13,500 for alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act to just $325, plus reinbursement of attorneys' fees of $155,385.

Dynnik credited her predecessors for their groundwork and thanked attorney Allie Phillips and psychologist Bob Walsh for legal and scientific support.

Three of the last 15 sellers of random-source animals to U.S. labs are located in Michigan. More than 300 dealers supplied pound animals to labs before the passage of the 1966 Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, which in 1971 was expanded into the much broader Animal Welfare Act of today.

Since the Animal Welfare Act introduced mandatory record-keeping, both cat and dog use in labs has declined by more than two-thirds. Cat use peaked in 1974 at 74,259, while dog use peaked in 1979 at 211,104.