Watch the HR669 Hearing LIVE from your PC!

[littleindiangirl]

Watching that display was pretty rough. I missed the first half, but I saw a lot of the wrong questions being asked, and a lot of bogus and contradictory answers being given, like Connie said. And I still don't understand why a representative from Samoa cares about any of this when it's already illegal to bring any animal into Samoa.

Samoa was clearly against the bill as written, and I think it was a GOOD thing he was allowed to speak up during.

[mooingtricycle]

Another thing that was upsetting.

The woman from California was the one that asked, will they take your pets. Answer: NO.
It isn't such a cut and dry answer as such!

Later they went on to say, for those who own these potentially black listed animals, can they transport them: NO, but we are willing to review a permit.

How is that not at odds with the first answer?

Woman from cali: Will this bill target all non natives: No, just the invasive ones.

However, they did say that (dr. science dude) that any animal that is potentially at risk can be black listed. How is that answer not at odds with the first???

Grr...

Seriously!!!

They didnt ask the RIGHT questions! Just questions for people that arent concerned with the business/breeding aspect of this hobby. Can your pets be taken from you? No... but with the wording of the bill you cant travel with them. Thanks... but no thanks...

Whos going to pay for the research of this stuff? what about the implementation of a FEDERAL permit system? How much is THAT going to cost? and why do we need MORE insanely high paying federal jobs???( might be a bit of an over exaggeration there ) That.. ( was he Asian?? ) guy was being kinda lame about stuff too... Who cares if there are fifty different states regulating themselves with their OWN permit systems? why do we need ONE? how are they going to regulate ALL the people that are under one system, as opposed to the states regulating themselves? Massachusetts is FAR different than Florida!

UGH.

[RoyalGuardian]

I so totally wanted to punch dude that said that he didn't have the correct statistic for the dollar value of the pet industry and that most of it was dog and cat. Good job you simple minded moron. We are trying to learn about the money value of the non native species trade and all you can come up with is " I haven't looked.. all I can vouch for is the dog and cat food industry." THATS TOTALLY BESIDES THE POINT!!!!!! These people don't care one lick about anything about the actual issue if they won't even do a small amount of research on both sides.. I AM SO MAD!!!! I can't believe those idiots would go straight from Pythons to tigers and big cats!!!! OMG.. Yes I can see where these old people would feel that there is a problem but most of the species he mentioned was NOT a part of the pet industry at all! Zebra mussels and apple snails were NEVER pets to begin with. I want to beat these idiots over the head with a blunt object screaming MY BALL PYTHONS ARE NOT DANGEROUS!!!!!

But besides my attack on that dude I think it went well but I kept saying over and over again " your not looking at the issues of pets the way you should." As you saw in my above post I am NOT a happy camper and I do not like having my snakes in the same accusing sentence as a lion or tiger. Yes tilapia is a problem and yes we have to import fish but isn't that what our country is?! We are a jack of all trades nation and to shut that down would make us totalitarianists(sp?) and that is NOT what the Founders of our nation wanted. EVERYTHING is a biohazard. People just living together closely is a biohazard. My question was when he said that there was no regulation on the imported fish. I was like "WHAT!?!?!?!" are there no inspections?! I'm all for not having ball pythons imported from the wild but my snakes are captive bred!!! They are not "wild animals" and the only threat they pose is to make me clean their stinky cage when they poo. All in all I'm more confused than I ever was before. They are trying to cover too much. they are trying to prevent a problem but all they are doing is incurring the wrath of protective pet owners such as myself. What did they decide?! Whats going on? I would go to jail for murder before I would see my snake babies and my betta fish taken away from me, destined for an incinerator. I'm becoming more and more ashamed of this country by the day....In conclusion, I'm not happy one bit and felt that representatives of all forms of animals should have been present because as it was most of those people looked like dog or cat people. I mean come on guys! Are ball pythons really in the same category as big cats?! Rant finished.

Sorry bout that I had to get that off my chest. *sigh*

[PythonWallace]

Samoa was clearly against the bill as written, and I think it was a GOOD thing he was allowed to speak up during.

But it sounded like he was for stricter federal regulations. I could be wrong, I missed a lot.

[littleindiangirl]

But it sounded like he was for stricter federal regulations. I could be wrong, I missed a lot.

I could have been wrong who was speaking, but I was certain Samoa was FOR state by state legislation. :/

[grammie]

I got the email from USARK saying they think the sub-committee will pass it and it'll get killed in the full committee. If it does pass today do not despair, it still has many hurdles it'll have to get over and we're going to make sure they are too high.

I could have been wrong who was speaking, but I was certain Samoa was FOR state by state legislation. :/

I understood it the other way, I thought he asked why have 55 regulations when you could have one so that everyone understood the rules.

[mooingtricycle]

I could have been wrong who was speaking, but I was certain Samoa was FOR state by state legislation. :/

there was quite a bit that was said on both sides, by mostly all of the parties. It could have been both. I will have to rewatch it.

[mooingtricycle]

I understood it the other way, I thought he asked why have 55 regulations when you could have one so that everyone understood the rules.

Was that the "asian" guy that i was talking about? i didnt catch his name....

He was FOR FEDERAL regulation not individual states.

[Spaniard]

Samoa seemed to take into consideration the states ability to decided on regulatory functions based on their regional enviornment as part of or working in conjunction with some sort of base federal regulation guildelines. He wasn't really clear, I got the impression he wanted State and Fed to working together in deciding what should be invasive.

[FatBoy]

any1 know if any of the big breeders are there?

Adam Wysocki and Pete Kahl were there, don't know about anymore.