California now has a proposal in front of it that could fundamentally change the way animal rescues, shelters and other companion animal organisations are overseen across the state.
On 24 August, supporters of a proposed Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare formally launched their plans at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. We knew this proposal was coming and wrote about the growing calls for a dedicated companion animal regulator following the investigation into Miranda’s Rescue. What we did not have then was enough detail to begin considering what that regulator might actually look like.
Now we do.
The proposal would create a Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare within the California Department of Food and Agriculture, introducing a statewide system of registration or licensing, inspections, complaint investigation and data collection relating to animal care, transfers and outcomes.
That last word immediately caught our attention. Outcomes.
For weeks we have been asking what happens to a dog after they are transferred from one organisation to another. Who records where that dog went, who checks what subsequently happened to them and who notices when the number of dogs entering an organisation cannot be reconciled with the number leaving through adoption, transfer, death or euthanasia?
Those questions became impossible to ignore as the investigation into Miranda’s Rescue developed.
Investigators in Humboldt County have been faced with the enormous task of reconstructing the histories of dogs that entered the organisation, tracing microchips, contacting shelters and rescues and attempting to establish what happened to individual animals. Canine remains have been recovered from the property and dogs transferred there by other rescue organisations have reportedly been identified among the dead.
We have repeatedly said that this should not become an opportunity to attack the organisations that entrusted their dogs to Miranda’s Rescue believing they were sending them somewhere safe. Rescue depends upon organisations being able to work together. What it should make us examine is whether the system surrounding those relationships provides enough protection when trust fails.
The proposed Bureau appears, at least in part, to be trying to answer that question.
It is important to correct one impression that could easily arise from the timing. The organisations behind the proposal say the Bureau was not conceived because of Miranda’s Rescue. Work on the model reportedly began around three years ago. The Miranda’s investigation has, however, brought extraordinary attention to precisely the kind of gaps its supporters say the Bureau is intended to address.
This is not simply emergency regulation being invented in response to one shocking case. There has already been work underway considering whether California’s existing approach to companion animal oversight is sufficient.
The involvement of Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal is particularly interesting. His position goes to the heart of the distinction between investigation and prevention. Law enforcement can investigate suspected crimes when evidence emerges, but by that stage animals may already have suffered. A system involving routine licensing, reporting and inspections potentially creates an opportunity to recognise warning signs earlier.
That is exactly where regulation can be valuable. But we remain cautious about assuming that creating a regulator automatically creates better animal welfare.
Under the proposal, the new Bureau would not replace local animal control agencies, police departments, sheriffs, prosecutors or public health authorities. Instead, it would add a statewide layer of oversight capable of collecting information across organisations and potentially identifying patterns that individual local authorities cannot see.
There are also attempts within the proposal to address some of the concerns that immediately arise when additional regulation is discussed. Fees would reportedly be tiered and limited to the reasonable costs of regulation, organisations would generally be given notice and an opportunity to correct violations, appeal and due process mechanisms are envisaged and an advisory committee would include representatives from rescues, shelters, veterinary medicine, boarding establishments, local government, animal welfare organisations and the public.
Implementation could also be phased, with licensing potentially becoming mandatory by 1 January 2030. Supporters hope legislation could be introduced in 2027, although at this stage the proposal does not yet have a legislator committed to carrying it forward. So there is a long way to go. And that gives California an opportunity to get this right.
Regulation introduced following an animal welfare scandal can very easily become regulation designed to demonstrate that action has been taken. Rules are written, licences introduced, inspections counted and forms collected, but none of those things necessarily tells us whether animals became safer.
The proposed Bureau needs to be judged differently. If it collects outcome data, what happens when those outcomes don’t add up? If a rescue receives hundreds of dogs but records comparatively few adoptions or transfers, does the system flag that? If mortality suddenly increases, does somebody notice? If dogs move repeatedly between organisations, does their history remain attached to them? If complaints are received by different local authorities about the same organisation, can a statewide system connect them?
Those are the questions that determine whether data collection becomes animal protection rather than administration.
There also needs to be considerable thought given to the organisations being regulated. California has large shelters and substantial rescue organisations, but it also has small rescues and foster networks working with limited money and manpower. A system so administratively demanding that responsible organisations reduce capacity or close could ultimately harm the very animals it was created to protect. This is something that always worries me with regulation.
That doesn’t mean small organisations should be exempt from accountability. A dog deserves protection whether they enter an organisation caring for ten animals or ten thousand. It means requirements should be proportionate, practical and designed around information that genuinely contributes to animal welfare.
The proposed advisory structure may therefore prove extremely important. The people writing and implementing these rules need to understand what happens on the ground when a frightened dog is collected, when an emergency transfer has to be arranged, when a foster placement suddenly collapses or when a small organisation takes an animal because nobody else has space. Good regulation has to survive contact with the real world.
There is another interesting element to all of this for Dog Desk Animal Action. Earlier this month we contacted the California Department of Food and Agriculture while trying to establish who currently regulates the welfare and traceability of dogs moving through independent rescues. CDFA told us directly that it “does not regulate companion animal species, such as dogs and cats.”
The proposed Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare would now potentially sit inside that very department. That alone demonstrates the scale of the change being contemplated. California would be creating a function within CDFA that does not currently exist in the form being proposed.
We have also contacted California’s Registry of Charities and Fundraisers asking where responsibility currently sits for routinely monitoring the intake and subsequent outcomes of animals held by independent rescues. We are still interested in that answer because understanding the gaps in the existing system is essential before deciding whether the proposed system fills them.
The Miranda’s Rescue investigation remains active and the allegations surrounding what happened there will continue through the appropriate investigative and legal processes. The proposed Bureau should not be treated as a verdict on those proceedings, nor should one case alone determine how thousands of legitimate organisations across California are regulated.
But Miranda’s Rescue has forced an uncomfortable question into public view. When hundreds of dogs move through an organisation, should somebody outside that organisation be capable of seeing whether those dogs have corresponding outcomes? We believe the answer is yes.
Whether the proposed Bureau of Companion Animal Welfare is the right mechanism for achieving that remains to be seen. There is not yet legislation to examine line by line and there will inevitably be debate about cost, proportionality, enforcement, inspection powers and the burden placed upon legitimate organisations.
We will follow that process rather than automatically supporting regulation simply because it carries the words animal welfare.
If California creates a new regulator, its success should not ultimately be measured by how many organisations it licenses, how many inspections it completes or how much data it collects. Those figures tell us what the regulator did. They do not tell us what happened to the animals. The measure has to remain the dogs. Can they be accounted for? Are warning signs identified earlier? Are good organisations able to continue rescuing them? And when something begins to go badly wrong, does somebody notice before investigators are left trying to discover what happened after the dogs are gone?
If California can build a system capable of doing that, then this proposal could become something considerably more important than another regulator.