In my conversation with Carol Monroe a week before the meeting, I was promised that I could speak for 5 or 6 minutes about what I believed to be the solution to the pet over population problem. I prepared a 6-minute presentation. Unfortunately Carol must not have told you of her promise to me and you cut my presentation time and I was unable to make my conclusion.

Proving yet again, Dr. Stultzberg's (of PETsMART) contention in her half page rebuke of Carol in the Arizona Republic.

The answer to the problem is: Put birth control additives in pet food.

It is very difficult to argue a point that is absolutely correct. An example: "Put fluoride in the drinking water to prevent cavities." I believe that you will have a difficult time finding many people today that are against this solution to tooth decay. Yet, when this solution was presented, it was fought vigorously by many large groups of people. Why? I have no idea. But many people had either fears or vested interests to contend with.

Let's look at the fears and vested interests in the birth control pet food issue. Fears: Giving my pet an additive might hurt it. This is "Big Brother" getting further into my life. This is stepping on my "Rights."

Vested interests: MCRAC: Started to protect citizens from the threat of rabies, expanded to protect citizens from roaming dogs, expanded to prevent animal abuse, expanded again to help with pet adoptions. Funded by the county and pet licensing. One avenue to more funding is proving to the county that there are more problems with dogs and cats that can be solved by this agency. Another is proving to the community a valid reason for licensing their pets.

Arizona Humane Society: If MCRAC did its job, there would be no need for this agency. In many areas the Humane Society and the County Animal control agencies are combined. Funded by donations and fees. Strong tie to the community with continuing distress calls and public viewing of animal cruelty reports. Sixty cats rescued, fifty-five euthanized the next day. High profile, big budget, "cash" business, with over 1 million dollars in cash assets.

Pet food manufactures: Fewer pets' means lower pet food sales. Investors want more profit, not less profit. How can they approach their Board of Directors with, "Hey I've got a great idea, we can introduce birth control additives and reduce the sales of our pet food by 10% a year for the next 10 years?"

1. Many people will resist birth control additives simply because it is a change.

2. 84% of people adopt puppies or kittens and let older dogs and cats die. Caused by the availability of puppies and kittens. Think about it. Bring a child to a Shelter where there are 8 darling little puppies, and 3 older dogs. The child will be attracted to the small helpless puppy, with that "smell" and nuzzling. The child falls in love with the puppy and the older dogs get left. Remove the never-ending supply of puppies and more "older" dogs will get adopted. PETsMART has proven this.

3. Nobody wants to pay more taxes! Tax non-birth control pet food 25%. This tax will give the manufactures the incentive to produce this product. Manufactures will see that if they introduce a birth control pet food that does not have this 25% tax, they will sell more pet food now and have an advantage over their competition that is not producing birth control pet food. Even though the long-term effect will be lower food sales, the short-term gains will drive them to produce this product. Net effect, little or no tax and over all cost of prevention set at pennies per day.

4. Birth control has proven to be safe in the human species. The major concern with birth control has been the possible side effects from long term usage. The human species has shown no long-term effect and the human outlives the dog and cat by a factor of seven.

5. Feral cats. It has been reported that the size of the feral cat population is approximately 40% of the domestic cat population and 25% of feral cats get their food from humans providing them with pet food. If the less expensive, birth control pet food was made available, people buying food for feral cats would help control the feral cat population. Agencies wanting to reduce the feral cat population could just simply feed them.

6. Breeders. Those who wish to breed pets can go to the MCRAC and buy a breeder's license, this license allows breeders to buy non-birth control pet food. The breeder still has to pay the additional tax as an incentive to go back to birth control pet food.

7. Veterinary services. Billions of dollars are spent each year preventing unwanted births and these efforts should continue, but the even this amount of effort is not solving the problem. Everyone agrees that there are too many unwanted births. Birth control pet food is an even more cost-effective method of solving the unwanted birth problem.

8. Identifying the problem. Tons of time and effort is spent on quantifying the exact problem, how many dogs, how many cats, how many feral cats, how many unwanted pregnancies and so on.

The reality is one unwanted birth is too many.

We don't want to kill dogs and cats, so we remove the reproductive system of many of them, let the rest breed and wait a few years and then kill them, excuse me, "euthanize" them and we call ourselves "Humane."

Birth control pet food is a humane way of lowering pet overpopulation. It should be our first line of defense. We inject a vaccine into dogs to prevent rabies. We do invasive surgery to sterilize animals to prevent births. If we could find a vaccine to inject to prevent births we would use it. We have an oral vaccine to prevent births it's called birth control pet food.

Who can make this happen? Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Why? He's the only one with the power to get past the fears and vested interests of "status quo."

Thank you for your time,

Harold Clements