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SALT LAKE CITY — “The animals need a voice. They need us to speak up for them against cruelty."
Those were Salt Lake City resident Karina Ramirez’s words Tuesday as she asked state lawmakers to support two bills that would create what Humane Society officials call better animal welfare laws.
Ramirez said she fosters animals in need, and as a passionate animal lover, she’s not proud to live in a state that is “so lenient on animal abusers.”
“If we could actually boast that we’re not one of the worst states for humane laws, I would definitely be proud to say I live in Utah,” she said.
Utah ranks 44th in nation for humane laws, said Sundays Hunt, the state director of the Humane Society.
“That’s why we need animal advocates to ask legislators to start putting laws in place to actually provide our animals with protections,” Hunt said.
Roughly 50 Utahns traveled from all over the state Tuesday to lobby alongside Humane Society officials — and Tex, the K-9 mayor of Salt Lake County — in support of two bills: SB197, which would ban gas chambers as a method of euthanasia in Utah; and SB134, which would toughen penalties for cockfighting in the state.
Gas chambers
Carlene Wall, director of operations at the Humane Society of Utah, said she’s euthanized more animals than she can count in her 23 years with the shelter.
Wall said she and her staff take comfort in knowing that by using euthanasia by injection, those animals’ lives ended in the most humane way possible in circumstances out of their control.
“By acknowledging what is happening to (those animals) in the last moments of their lives and holding them while they die is the respect that we can give them as a human that created the problem,” she said.
Gas chambers, which use carbon monoxide to euthanize animals, do not offer the animals that respect and comfort they deserve in their last moments, Wall said.
SB197, sponsored by Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, would ban gas chambers as methods of euthanasia in Utah animal shelters and establish lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital as the only acceptable method.
Hunt said Utah is one of nine states that still use gas chambers. Out of the state’s 57 shelters tracked by the Humane Society, only eight still use gas chambers: shelters in Carbon County, Draper, Sandy, South Jordan, north Utah County, south Utah County, Weber County and West Valley City.
Gene Baierschmidt, Humane Society of Utah executive director, said gas chambers do not fulfill a “moral and ethical obligation” to Utah animals to give them a humane death if they must be euthanized. He said it takes up to 25 minutes for them to lose consciousness and asphyxiate.
“When we do need to end some animals lives, we should do it with dignity and respect, and the gas chamber is not the way to do that,” Baierschmidt said.
Weiler said his constituents in Davis County strongly support the ban. However, Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy said some animal shelters oppose the bill because of euthanasia by injection has “traumatized” shelter workers who hold the animals while they die.
“We’re saying we would rather not force our people to have the trauma of holding and dealing with the animal while they’re injecting it,” Tracy said. “Instead, we put it in the chamber, and then we can walk away from that. The gas does it’s job, then we can come back, take the animal out and then dispose of it respectfully.”
Wall said while watching and holding an animal while it dies can be “emotionally draining,” whether shelter workers use gas chambers or euthanasia by injection, the outcome is still the same.
“I get when people say it’s hard to hold them and feel the life leave their body. Yes, it’s hard,” she said. “But we know that their last moments were with somebody holding them, talking to them and telling them it’s going to be OK. They’re not in a chamber with nothing. It’s about the love that we can give them in their last moments.”
Cockfighting
While briefing the animal advocates before they met with lawmakers, Hunt passed around two sharp, hook-shaped blades. They were cockfighting gaffs, or knives that cockfighters strap to rooster’s legs for sport.
While the blades traveled around the room, Hunt spoke of how Utah is the only Western state where cockfighting is a misdemeanor, not a felony. As a result, Utah is a “magnet” for cockfighting, she said.
Misdemeanor penalties aren’t enough to deter gamefowl fighting, Hunt said, because the potential gambling winnings are much greater than the fines.
After two years of failed legislation to increase the penalty for gamefowl fighting, Hunt said she’s optimistic that legislators will make the change this year.
“We’re really not in line with where we should be,” she said. “Behind Mississippi and Alabama, we are the third-weakest penalty state in cockfighting in the nation. We intend on changing that.”
Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City, is sponsoring SB134 for the third year in a row. Davis said he took into account legislative debate last year to ensure lawmaker support. This year's version of the bill would allow breeders to raise the birds without cockfighting intentions, and raise cockfighting from a class A misdemeanor to a felony on the second offense.
The bill would also prohibit possession of cockfighting gaffs, or other gamefowl fighting instruments.
“Organized crime, gambling, all kinds of bad things happen at these fights,” Davis said. “And so we know that if we can discourage them as much as we can here, then we’ll join our neighboring states and make sure we don’t become the Las Vegas of cockfighting.” Email: kmckellar@deseretnews.com
