This quirky city that formally recognizes pets as companions and their owners as guardians put a leash on dog and cat sales on Tuesday.
The West Hollywood City Council voted unanimously to ban stores from selling cats and dogs in a move aimed at curbing puppy mills and kitty factories.
Pet shops will be permitted, however, to offer animals from shelters, once the law goes into effect in September.
West Hollywood officials acknowledged the new ordinance would have little bite — no pet stores in the city currently sell animals — but they’re hoping it will have a lot of bark and other municipalities will follow suit.
“You have to start somewhere,” said Michael Haibach, deputy to Councilman Jeffrey Prang, who sponsored the legislation. “The more people who jump on the bandwagon the better.”
A liberal enclave surrounded by Los Angeles, West Hollywood has long held a reputation as a trailblazer in animal welfare rights.
It became the first city in the US to prohibit cat declawing in 2003, a measure that has since spread to dozens of other cities, including Los Angeles. Another West Hollywood ordinance officially terms pets as “companion animals” and gives their “guardians” a local tax deduction for pet adoption fees.
Since the ordinance was introduced earlier this month, the city has received dozens of inquiries from other municipalities interested in replicating it, Haibach said.
West Hollywood moved to outlaw pet sales after the Companion Animal Protection Society last year brought evidence to the council of a local pet shop allegedly selling puppies imported from Russia, as well as from a known puppy mill in Minnesota.
The owner of Elite Animals eventually stopped selling the puppies after society members picketed the shop for more than five months, said Carole Davis, West Coast director of the group. A message left at Elite Animals on Tuesday was not immediately returned.
Davis said the city’s action would increase public pressure on lawmakers across the nation to impose pet-sale bans.
“The public wants a cruelty-free pet,” she said.
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