Veterinarians support California’s HR61 and a ban on declawing cats

We, the undersigned petitioners support HR61.

The California Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) continues to block legislation that would protect animals, most recently opposing HR61, as well as prohibitions on declawing. This position needs updating in light of current evidence showing a declaw ban would be an effective way to protect cats—and the integrity of our profession. 

On August 6th, 2021, Executive Director, Dan Baxter of the CVMA, sent a letter to Assemblymember Alex Lee’s office stating that the CVMA, which represents over 7,800 veterinarians, registered veterinary technicians and veterinary students, opposes HR 61, which states “the Assembly is committed to sensible and humane therapeutic veterinary procedures for companion animals.” Why would veterinarians, who should be committed to protecting animals, oppose such a positive resolution by the House? The truth is, many CVMA members do support this resolution, citing compassion for their patients and ample evidence that medically unnecessary procedures such as declaws harm the welfare of their feline patients. Unfortunately, the CVMA does not represent our perspective. 

In the letter opposing HR61, the CVMA states that they oppose the tone of the bill, calling into question the “integrity of veterinarians.” They also include the Veterinarian’s Oath, which reads: 

Being admitted to the profession of veterinary medicine, I solemnly swear to use my scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through the protection of animal health and welfare, the prevention and relief of animal suffering, the conservation of animal resources, the promotion of public health, and the advancement of medical knowledge.

The CVMA states it does not support the bill because it would put the Assemblymembers on record regarding the issue of cat declawing. They state this conclusion was made because HR61’s sponsor is the Paw Project, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to ending the practice of declawing. The Paw Project’s team includes veterinarians who are also committed to this cause, and their website lists veterinarians who do not perform declawing. As the letter states, the Paw Project has tried to introduce declawing measures to bring California in line with other progressive governments around the world who have banned this practice, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland among others. The CVMA should be supporting the goals of the many California veterinarians who are dedicated to ending the cruel and antiquated practice of declawing.

Instead, the CVMA recites outdated arguments in order to perpetuate the practice of declawing. A recent open letter to the CVMA, signed by veterinarians as well as the general public (hosted on OurHonor.org which was co-founded by some of the writers of this letter), laid out the arguments made by the CVMA supporting declawing, and refuted each with studies as well as position statements by science-based veterinary organizations. Additionally, the Paw Project lists evidence-based literature in responding to common questions about the practice of declawing. The outmoded positions held by the CVMA are holding back the veterinary profession from being true advocates for animals. 

In response to the pleas of CVMA members asking their organization to support a ban on declawing, the CVMA distributed an unscientific and biasedly worded “poll” asking veterinarians two questions--the first: “if asked would you perform a surgical declawing procedure for non-therapeutic purposes” and the second question stated “do you want the CVMA to continue to advocate for your right to perform surgical declawing procedures for non-therapeutic purposes?” The second question clearly tries to lead the respondent to reframe the question as a protection of the veterinarian’s “right” instead of a protection of the well-being of the cat. They make no mention of the scientific evidence against declawing as a practice, or the veterinary associations and municipalities that already condemn declawing. 

Numerous veterinary associations have adopted positions against declawing. The American Association of Feline Practitioners states it “strongly opposes declawing (onychectomy) as an elective procedure. It is the obligation of veterinarians to provide cat owners with alternatives to declawing.” Additionally, the American Animal Hospital Association states it “strongly opposes the elective declawing of domestic cats and believes it is veterinarians’ obligation to provide educational tools and guidance for effective alternative training programs for owners.” The CVMA on the other hand, has failed to update their 2010 policy on declawing cat despite it conflicting with over a decade of new research.**

**After publication of this open letter, CVMA did adjust their policy, to state that they discourage declawing, stating that it should only be performed for a medical reason or when scratching poses a health risk to the “owner.”

The CVMA’s brief statement about declawing on their legislative page ends with the faulty assumption that “the unintended consequences of cat declaw bans will be cat relinquishment and euthanasia.” However, neither scientific studies nor anecdotal evidence from municipalities that have instituted declaw bans support this claim.

Declawing has been banned in New York state, as well as several California cities (Berkeley, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Culver City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Monica and West Hollywood) and Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland and Labrador). Declawing has been made illegal or deemed inhumane and only performed under extreme circumstances in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Slovenia, France, Germany, Bosnia, Malta, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, and Israel. There is no evidence that declawing bans have had a negative impact on the health and welfare of cats in the regions that have instituted these laws. 

In contrast to the CVMA’s claim that declaw bans result in increased relinquishment of cats to shelters, most shelter veterinarians support declaw bans because they decrease the number of cats relinquished to shelters due to declaw-related behavioral problems, such as urinating outside the box (due to stress and foot pain post procedure) or biting.  When the College of Veterinarians of British Columbia banned declawing in 2018, shelter veterinarian Emilia Gordon, the senior manager of animal health for the BC SPCA, analysed the data of the BC SPCA’s 26 sheltering facilities and found no increase in surrender rates overall or due to destructive scratching behavior.  She noted that the two most common reasons for surrender were house soiling and conflict/aggression, issues that tend to be caused or exacerbated by declawing.

While declawing remains legal, veterinarians are forced to debate declawing with their clients instead of spending that time discussing normal species specific behavior. With this procedure off the table, more resources can be applied to providing needed medical care and client education. At the January 11, 2021 AVMA House of Delegates meeting, during which, the AVMA revised its declawing policy, Dr. Enid Stiles, president elect of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, stated that most of their members are happy that declawing is banned in most provinces “There’s no competition with their neighbor declawing,” she said, “They don’t need to worry about that anymore. They can just do what they’ve been told to do, which is provide excellent medical care for their patients and not worry about medically unnecessary procedures.” The Canadian VMA’s policy has helped advance regulations to end the procedure, and the California Veterinary Medical Association should follow suit. 

Perhaps the most astonishing part about the letter is just how blatantly the CVMA misrepresents the language in the resolution in order to make its point and then has to resort to inventing potential problems in order to legitimize its position. The letter states:

...the broadly-drawn language of HR 61 would also reflect Assemblymembers’ ”'commitment” against not just declawing, but numerous critical medical procedures that provide great relief to animals, but are preventive—rather than strictly “therapeutic”—in nature.

Examples include:

1. Elective gastropexy, which is performed in large breed/deep chested dogs to prevent stomach torsion.

2. Exploratory surgery or laparoscopy that does not provide “treatment” for a physical medical condition, but rather helps the veterinarian to make diagnoses and prognoses on cases.

3. Certain breed-specific procedures, such as canine eyelid reconstruction that facilitates better vision, or ear “lifts” to prevent ear infections in predisposed breeds.

4. Elective surgery on livestock animals in 4H events, such as ear notching to prevent theft and dehorning to protect the handler.

However, the HR61 specifically refers to “companion animals” and not livestock species, though . The language of the bill as it stands, stating “Companion animals must not be subjected to surgical procedures except where they provide treatment for physical medical conditions and anatomical pathology” and stating procedures must be  “sensible and therapeutic,” would protect gastropexy procedures, exploratory surgeries, eyelid procedures, such as entropion repair, which allow better vision and prevent corneal abrasion and pain. Regarding therapeutic “ear lifts” to prevent infection--no such preventative exists in the literature, and “ear lift” is not used as a means of preventing ear infection. “Anatomical pathology” as stated in the bill, would likely protect the practice if the scientific literature deemed it warranted. The most common cause of ear infections (otitis) is allergies–and even those patients with upright ears or cropped ears may continue to be prone to otitis. The fact that the CVMA used these examples was disingenuous and relying on the fact that the assemblymember does not have in-depth knowledge of the practices of veterinary medicine and is willing to accept their word on these false arguments to support their opposition.

The final reason listed for opposing the bill, cited by the CVMA, was it’s concern “that the resolution utilizes the term “guardian,”’ and states that this is “a reference that the CVMA has opposed in prior years due to its potential legal impacts on animal owners and the veterinary profession.” In fact, the bill uses the phrase “owners and guardians” and this is symbolic language not intended to have a legal impact. 

Many veterinary practices have already shifted over to using the term “guardian” instead of “owner” in their medical records. As early as 2000, Boulder, Colorado became the first city to replace “pet owner” with “guardian,” then Berkeley and Hollywood followed suit. In 2001, Rhode Island became the first state to change the terminology of “pet owner” to “guardian.” This language reflects a paradigm shift in how we communicate about our relationship with other species, and despite this change, veterinary clinical decision making has not suffered. A 2009 article in Stanford Journal of Animal Law and Policy, discusses the implications of this shift and the importance of recognizing how our relationships with other species are fundamentally different from that of inanimate property ownership. 

The CVMA urgently needs to update its position on these issues and work with policymakers to enact forward-thinking legislation. We need to abandon this defensive posture, and reliance on outdated talking points in light of new evidence supporting compassionate legislation. We urge the CVMA to revise its historic positions, support HR61, as well as declaw bans and help our profession truly advocate for our patients.

• On August 19, 2021, minor amendments were made to the language of HR61.

For these reasons, we, the undersigned petitioners support HR61,

Crystal Heath, DVM (CVMA Member) 

Daniela Castillo, DVM (CVMA Member)

Sherstin Rosenberg, DVM (CVMA Member)

Kelly M Wright, DVM (CVMA Member)

Lisa A. Pope, DVM (CVMA Member)

Joanne Lefebvre Connolly, DVM

Ernie Ward, DVM

Andrew Knight, MANZCVS, DipECAWBM (AWSEL), DipACAW, PhD, FRCVS, PFHEA

Jennifer Conrad, DVM

Kristen Weber, DVM

David Herman, DVM

Alejandra Arbe-Montoya, BVSc

Ingrid Taylor, DVM

Emilia Gordon, DVM, DABVP

Laura Cochrane, DVM

Eva Örtenberg, DVM

Louise Harvey BVSc Cert VA MRCVS

Holly Cheever, DVM

Lisa Franck, DVM

Gwendolen Reyes-Illg, DVM