Oregon has done three things which improves animal welfare in the state

Pet shop sales

The American state of Oregon has become the latest to ban the sale of commercially-bred dogs and cats in pet stores. This development follows California, New York state, Maryland, Maine and Illinois together with hundreds of cities and counties nationwide.

This sort of law is critical because it does three things to improve animal welfare namely:

1. Encourage people to adopt/rescue;
2. Educate the community about dog and cat (and rabbit) abuse in getting them puppy mills and
3. Stop the abuse.

Nathan Winograd tells us that because of these sorts of laws preventing pet stores generally getting their animals from commercial breeding enterprises, the number of commercial breeders in the US has declined by 30%.

The Nebraska Department of Agriculture records show that half of the state's commercial dog and cat breeders have left the business according to Nathan Winograd's report to me in an email.

Commercial Breeding Enterprises (CBEs) engage, according to Nathan Winograd, in "systematic neglect and abuse of animals, leaving severe emotional and physical scars on the victims. One in four former breeding dogs have significant health problems, more likely to suffer from aggression, and are psychologically and emotionally shut down, compulsively staring at nothing."

Ban on animal testing for cosmetics

The second good thing that Oregon has done very recently is that the governor of that state has signed into law legislation which "bans the sale of cosmetics that have been subjected to new animal testing". This puts Oregon in line with more than 30 countries and 10 states in America namely California, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.

Domestic abuse shelters

And finally, Oregon are going will provide $1 million to "support pet-friendly homeless and domestic violence shelters, removing obstacles to safe refuge and supplying vital resources for people in need who have pets."

It's a well-known problem that domestic violence shelters do not often provide accommodation for women with pets which prevents them taking refuge in the shelters which put them back into the family home where they may continue to be abused by a bullying partner. So, this is an advancement both to women and to their pets. Often, as I understand it, women do not leave the family home despite abuse because they won't leave their companion dog or cat.

On that topic, by the way, it is not uncommon for the abusive partner to abuse the family's companion animal as well and use the animal to threaten the partner which may lead to animals death.