By JOSE HERRERA
LOS ANGELES — In a move to address overcrowding at the six city-run animal shelters, a Los Angeles City Council committee approved a motion Wednesday calling for a moratorium on breeding permits.
The three-member Neighborhood and Community Enrichment Committee voted unanimously to move forward with the plan, which would instruct the city attorney to amend city law and place an immediate moratorium on new breeding permits. The motion will be considered by the full council at a later date.
“The point of a moratorium isn’t necessarily to stop breeding — that has to happen through enforcement,” Staycee Dains, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services, said prior to Wednesday’s vote.
“The importance of a moratorium is to signal to the community clearly that our shelters are not in any position to take in one more animal.”
The committee agreed that the moratorium would be lifted once shelters were at or below 75% capacity for three consecutive months, and could be automatically reinstated if shelter capacity rises above 75%.
Dains said at a September LAAS Commission meeting that the city had issued about 1,200 breeding permits so far this year, and is on pace to finish the year with about 1,800.
She said that while the moratorium puts the city in a “precarious position,” it nonetheless reflects the reality of the ongoing shelter crisis.
While a moratorium may not necessarily stop unwanted litters, the entire community will understand that breeding is not an activity supported by the city, according to Dains.
“Organizations that are pro-breeding are not organizations that do anything to help animals in animal shelters,” she said. “They’re simply creating animals for us to kill later on, and that is not appropriate.”
Daines said LAAS does everything it can not to euthanize animals because it’s inhumane and causes emotional and mental distress for staff.
Councilman John Lee, who sits on the…
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