Good morning, Benton County Supervisors (Gary Bierschenk, Rick Primmer, and Tracy Seeman) and Keystone City Council members (Cindy Behrens, Kathy Janss, Michael Kaiser, Tim Kruse, Richard Loy Jr., and mayor Eric Janss)
My name is Preston Moore and I am the Iowa State Director for the Humane Society of the United States. It is my privilege to work alongside Iowa's lawmakers and law enforcement as they work on legislation and work to enforce our state's animal laws, as well as highlight and recognize our state's officers when they effectively enforce our state's animal cruelty code, chapter 717B. I have also worked directly with state agencies, like the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the Iowa Department of Inspections & Appeals on administrative rules related to animals.
Most recently, I worked alongside state lawmakers in 2022 to pass Senator Dan Dawson's (R - Council Bluffs) "Beagle Freedom Bill," which requires all taxpayer funded animal research labs to establish animal adoption programs, instead of needlessly euthanizing animals when research projects are complete. I am a lifelong Iowan and I care deeply about helping Iowa's leaders enact meaningful and impactful animal laws.
I am reaching out today because I have been contacted by ten (10) families in Keystone, IA who have all apparently been given ten days' notice to remove their dog because they "resemble" dogs that could potentially be described as a "pit bull" in appearance. I have worked with communities all over the state - from Maquoketa to Sioux City and Laurel to Muscatine big cities and small towns of just a few hundred people - to pass strong dangerous animal codes that accomplish two goals: 1) Give local municipalities and counties authority to protect citizens from potentially dangerous animals and to intervene when there is a legitimate and documented risk to public safety; 2) Protect the private property rights of each community's citizens, allowing families to live in peace without fear that someone, someday, might seize their dog solely because they think it "looks" a certain way.
I am hopeful that I can add Keystone and Benton County to the ever-growing list of communities which have changed course and have adopted breed-neutral animal laws.
CC'd on this communication are several state lawmakers
- Representative Thomas Gerhold and Senator-elect Charlie McClintock from your areaalong with state-level lawmakers who have introduced legislation in recent years to require communities to adopt breed-neutral dangerous animal codes instead of implementing ineffective breed restrictions - Senator Chris Cournoyer, House Minority Leader Representative Jennifer Konfrst, Representative Molly Donahue, Representative Tracy Ehlert, and Representative Brian Meyer.
In addition to asking the city of Keystone and Benton County to revise their laws, I am hopeful that this bipartisan group of legislators can work together to prevent this sort of situation from happening.
I have worked with families all over the state to help them keep their dogs in their homes. But this situation is different. One community attempting to impound to otherwise remove ten families' beloved pets is unprecedented in Iowa. These families deserve to live without fear that their dogs - their property, their family members, their companions - will be forcibly removed from town and potentially euthanized without any cause or documented history of unwanted behavior. I cannot overstate how much trauma an event of this magnitude will cause your community, both for those directly impacted and not.
These bans have serious community morale and economic consequences - for your reference, I am attaching an economic impact study from Overland Park, Kansas. Though the community is larger than yours, you can see the detrimental impacts the community's breed restrictions had. For this reason, I am also CCing the Benton Development Group Executive Director, Kate Robertson.
Also, CC'd on this email are two representatives from the Cedar Valley Humane Society - Executive Director Lonnie Viner and Director of Operations Amanda Knefley. The Cedar Valley Humane Society is the current animal control provider for Benton County. The Cedar Valley Humane Society also opposed breed-specific legislation and supports breed-neutral dangerous animal codes, as do animal shelters and rescues which service virtually the entire state.Today, I am asking for two things:
- Please suspend the enforcement of this code to allow for more discussion between us, the impacted citizens, and your communities' leaders and citizens - more opportunities to learn about effective public policy when it comes to local animal law.
- Let's schedule a meeting where we can hopefully all discuss the issues at hand - I would be happy to set up an in-person meeting in Benton County so that all us, as well as other Benton County residents, can learn from each other about the issues your policies aim to resolve. I believe we can work together to draft and enact strong local codes that will allow your communities to retain or even strengthen your authority to protect your residents while also respecting and protecting the rights of your citizens to own the dog of their choosing.
Given the urgent timing of this situation, I can make myself available at any time this week or this coming weekend to discuss this with you. I am based out of a home office in Cedar Rapids, IA and would be happy to meet at your earliest convenience.
Thank you for your time.
Respectfully,Preston Moore
Iowa State Director for the Humane Society of the United States
(Mr. Moore can be reached at pmoore@humanesociety.org)
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Thanks to people like you, dogfighting has increased across the country, and, consequently, more cats, kittens, dogs, rabbits and other animals have been killed because people who post them on Craigslist, Facebook, Next Door and other apps assume all dogfighters look like Michael Vick.
Also thanks to you, shelters across the country are full of pitbulls and pit mixes that no one wants. They're frequently RT on Twitter with warnings like "must be the only pet in home" or "not good with cats or dogs and children must be 13+."
Everyone reading this needs to read Pitbull Insanity page at thisisadvocacy dot org and the related blog posts. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Editor's Note: Preston Moore is the Iowa State Director, State Affairs, of the Humane Society of the United States, so a neutral person who works for on all kinds of animal cases, not just pit bull cases.