Wisconsin Animal Legislation Mail Campaign

We are a grassroots coalition of concerned pet owners and tax payers who have come together for the twofold purposes of defeating Assembly Bill 536 (the Pet Facilities Act) as written and working with legislators to find a way to insure the health, temperment and quality of pets in the State of Wisconsin without incurring additional taxpayer expense and redundant legislation.

We are not an "animal rights" organization, but instead are a coalition of those interested in animal welfare as well as reasonable, rational legislation.

This site contains easy to use sample letters that will be automatically printed out and hand delivered to the Governor, Representatives and Senators to oppose the Pet Facilities Act.

• Pet owners: This bill is funded by raising license tag fees. This means when you go to license your cat or dog, it will cost you more. What this bill doesn't tell you is that the authors of this bill are also considering adding a TAX on to your pet food, which is similar to the liquor or tobacco tax.

  While we are all very concerned for the welfare of animals in Wisconsin, this bill will not achieve significant improvement in conditions in those facilities of most concern and will make the most reliable source of healthy, socialized pets unavailable to you.

  • Do you really want to pay more for your license tag?
  • Do you really want to pay more taxes on your pet food?
  • Do you want your choices limited to buying from a breeding facility that produces huge numbers of animals with no exposure to a home environment or the pet stores that they sell to?

  If the answer is no, then PLEASE scroll down to the opposition letters and fill in your information!

  (Get the facts! Go to our 32 Facts About the Pet Facilities Act. And remember to let your legislators know how you feel by clicking here )

• Rescues and Breeders: This bill's supporters are patterning it on a Colorado law which began with a threshold number of 25 puppies or kittens per year to require licensing. Once the law in Colorado was passed, supporters and legislators started actively seeking to lower the initial threshold to include more potential licensees and thereby increase income to support the law. As a result, many home fosterers/rescuers and small hobby breeders - who, according to the Wisconsin Department of Trade, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, are the public's best source for healthy, socialized purebred pets - in Colorado are opting out and quitting rather than submit to intrusive inspections and bureaucratic red tape. There is no reason to believe that the same sequence of events won't unfold here in Wisconsin.

  This bill seeks to limit the number of cats and dogs sold, given away or adopted to a maximum of 25 before requiring inspection and licensure. Rescuers who routinely house the animals in a part of their home, cat fanciers with catteries in their home, and dog breeders who raise puppies in their home would have to choose between limiting their outflow of animals to 25 per year or becoming state licensed and inspected.

  The numerical limit of "25" is arbitrary and would be very easily modified downward at a later time. The precedent for such downward modifications have been the case in other states where similar limits were introduced. There is plenty of precedent for that to happen here and nothing preventing it.

  Furthermore, certain people behind this bill have been heard to say that they have collected the names of every pet breeder in Wisconsin that has a Website or has placed an ad in the paper in the last five years and will submit this list to the inspectors employed by this new piece of legislation. This list is understood to include those who have advertised animals for sale, resale, adoption and even free to a good home.

  • Do you want your puppies and kittens raised in a sterile, antiseptic, impersonal environment? Facility guidelines often require all surfaces be nonporous...and the initial guidelines (which could well be more stringent in future rewrites) proposed in the last version of this law were no exception. Would you be willing to raise your kittens and puppies with no exposure to normal household surfaces, including such things as scratching trees, rope pulls, and stuffed beds and toys?
  • Do you want to give permission for inspectors to enter your home any time of the day or night?
  • Would you welcome being prohibited from having your bed next to (or even in the same room) as a pregnant animal's housing - so you could not be close by and able to help if delivery occurs during the night?
  • Do you know that it is possible, and very likely, that these laws will be tightened? Separate facilities or even a drain in the floor of a room in your home could be required if this bill passes into law? Is that what you want?
  • Do you want to pay a "sin tax" on pet food? That's one option that's been proposed for to fund this law since state license fee income will apparently leave a significant shortfall.
  • Do you want "mills" legitimized by licensure so that consumers view them on par with hobby breeders?
  • Do you want dog license fees (which are taxes, of course) raised? This is especially onerous in view of the fact this additional tax is not meant to help animals and that funds which now go to shelters will be diverted away from shelters and sent to support inspection related services instead.

  If you are opposed to all these things, then please scroll down to the opposition letters and fill in your information.

  (Get the facts to convince your friends and legislators; go to our 32 Facts About the Pet Facilities Act. Tell your legislators how you feel by clicking here )

• Taxpayers: The state of Wisconsin is in fiscal crisis. The Govenor pledged not to raise taxes. And yet this bill, by the admission of the State Department of Agriculture, even by its most optimistic estimates, begins with a $10,000 per year loss.
  • Why should you pay more taxes for a bill that can not achieve it's acknowledged goals and which will limit access to healthy, socialized pets and, in doing that, likely increase the cost to taxpayers related to sheltering abandoned animals?
  • Why would you want to pay taxes to fund a bill that actually deprives shelters of their share of the income from license tags?
  • Why fund a big new bureacracy when for less money the anti-cruelty laws can be well enforced without any new bureacracy?
  • Why should the taxpayers pay for yet another law that is underfunded and unnecessary? can be well enforced without any new bureacracy?

  If you're fed up with programs being "rammed through" that are set up, from their inception, to fail, then please scroll down to the opposition letters and fill in your information.

  (Want the facts to convince your friends and legislators? Go to our 32 Facts About the Pet Facilities Act. And let your legislators know how you feel by clicking here.)

• Boarding Kennels and Groomers: Boarding and grooming are service industries that must collect state sales tax. This perhaps well-intentioned legislation is nevertheless oppressive and will cause a number of legitimate, caring and humane Boarding Kennels and Groomers to go out of business due to the increased costs of compliance.

  Your sales tax will be paying to shut you down. You lose. Pet owners lose, and the state loses tax income. It loses income taxes, sales taxes, and other business tax revenues. This will only serve to increase the burden of this legislation on general taxpayers (see above).

  If you're sick and tired of the anti-small business sentiment in Wisconsin, then please scroll down to the opposition letters and fill in your information.

And also, remember to support the other organizations which support us in this effort.