Watch the HR669 Hearing LIVE from your PC!

[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*