The agency determined that the Hemingway Home was subject to USDA regulation because it both exhibited the cats for an admission fee and used the cats in promotional advertising.
Even though the museum retains a veterinarian to care for the cats, the USDA demanded that the museum ”… obtain an exhibitor’s license; contain and cage the cats in individual shelters at night, or alternatively, construct a higher fence or an electric wire atop the existing brick wall, or alternatively, hire a night watchman to monitor the cats; tag each cat for identification purposes; construct additional elevated resting surfaces for the cats within their existing enclosures; and pay fines for the Museum’s non-compliance with the AWA.”
Why is there a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and why does it consider itself responsible for cats? Did the constitution contemplate federal dog catchers? Those Yanks need to reform the union with firm division of responsibilities. So do Canadians.
Great! This will create more Union jobs..for the ‘cat-house’ workers of America!
Funny that they didn’t insist on a cat herder as well.
They did insist on a cat herder, that is what the guy does at night. Get rid of the cats and you’ll get rid of the problem. I don’t have anything against cats just over regulation.
Museum needs a big sign at the entrance: “Free: cat viewing”
Holy Mackerel! Another animal welfare bureaucracy?
It’s somewhat comforting to know that Ontario is not the only place where dickheads rake in taxpayer dollars doing pretend work in make-believe jobs.
KATZ — Better protected than KIDZ
The big thing is the fines.They will get larger and larger until no one can afford them.This is the way that Vietnam forced the French companies out of the country and all other countries where the aim is to eliminate the private business community.Regulate and fine.
,” it is nevertheless “not the court’s role to evaluate the wisdom of federal regulations implemented according to the powers constitutionally vested in Congress.”
Complete bunkum! Since when is the welfare of cats the business of congress? This is a prim example of 2 things which have literally left the US republic in ashes – unfettered Federal jurisdictional creep and courts with fed boot-lick judges who rubber stamp every Fed incursion into new jurisdictional territory.
That judge should face the wrath of the voter but being a product of congressional patronage we know he will do whatever his masters want. Our kangaroos are no better.
It seems to me that Police Dogs and military dogs would come under USDA control as well. After all, they are ‘working dogs’.
I have two cats in my apartment if I lived in the U.S. would my apartment be regulated by USDA.
Do I have to provide higher places for the cats to sleep? Is atop of the TV not good enough? Should I put an electric fence around the balcony and put them in the cat carrier at night and hire a watchman to make sure they don’t peak their head out the door when I come home from work or bring in a basket of laundry?
What ever happened to, “De minimis non curat lex”?
Oh yeah, I forgot — socialists.
And aren’t those cats just going to LOVE being caged at night, having to wear collars, and all the other conditions the idiots at the USDA have decreed for them.
It seems to me that we had better start gaurding and protecting our rightts and freedoms what few we have if this is what is going on in the land of the free and the home of the brave i think we are the ones that are free.All this well wellcrack babys are being born and 42 million people are on food stamps
Government regulations, giving art-history majors a career path and security for life. Oh, and let us not forget the regulator’s regulator. Red tape is our fiend, err