Capping off a protracted political battle focused around animal rights and aquatic entertainment at SeaWorld, the San Diego’s longstanding tourist attraction, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that will bring California’s iconic relationship with captive orcas to an end.

Wave of criticism

Authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, the law has banned “orca breeding and captivity programs like the one formerly run by SeaWorld theme parks,” as well as “featuring the marine mammals […] in performances for entertainment purposes,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Starting in June next year, orcas in captivity can be used for ‘educational presentations’ only.”

For the activists who spearheaded the legislation, inspired by the 2013 documentary Blackfish, victory in California has been seen as critical to codifying new nationwide norms. “Attendance has plunged, and company shares have fallen in half” at SeaWorld, the San Francisco Chronicle noted last year, after the film “made a compelling case that the confinement and exploitation of killer whales inflicted physical and psychological stress on creatures that thrive on socialization and vast expanses of the ocean.” The Animal Welfare Institute, which co-sponsored the bill, helped ensure that practices banned in California could not spread to other locales after the fact. “Besides outlawing orca breeding and theatrical performances, the so-called Orca Protection Act also bans the transportation of orcas to entertainment facilities in other states and foreign countries,” National Geographic noted. But it “does permit the transport of orcas to other facilities in North America,” as Dr. Lori Marino, president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, told NatGeo. “This will facilitate ongoing efforts to develop seaside sanctuaries for these animals as an alternative to living in tanks.”

Multiple challenges

The route taken through Sacramento by the captivity ban was an unusual one. After the passage of this year’s budget package, “the Assembly approved a natural resources budget ‘trailer bill’ that includes a provision with the new restrictions,” the Sacramento Bee recalled. “The orca provision is part of a budget-related bill that would be wrapped into the $171-billion state budget the governor signed in June,” as U-T San Diego observed as the state Senate cleared the legislation. Bloom’s bill, with similar wording, advanced simultaneously. 

Looking ahead

Given SeaWorld’s timing in shuttering its beleaguered orca programs, the bill’s completed journey into law ruffled few feathers. In a March op-ed at the Times, Joel Manby, SeaWorld president and CEO, revealed that public sentiments the company had ironically helped change in orcas’ favor had doomed its traditional offerings. “We are proud of contributing to the evolving understanding of one of the world’s largest marine mammals,” he wrote. “Now we need to respond to the attitudinal change that we helped to create — which is why SeaWorld is announcing several historic changes. This year we will end all orca breeding programs — and because SeaWorld hasn’t collected an orca from the wild in almost four decades, this will be the last generation of orcas in SeaWorld’s care. We are also phasing out our theatrical orca whale shows.”

Opposition had been closing in around SeaWorld throughout this year and last. The California Coastal Commission had approved a plan to expand SeaWorld’s orca enclosures, but only on the condition that the park stopped its breeding and transfer programs, effectively forcing the changes Manby announced in March. In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had authored a bill imposing a federal ban on the captive breeding of orcas. “SeaWorld is certainly feeling the bite of public opinion,” ecological author Carl Safina told NatGeo. “Though they could carry on elsewhere with breeding and trans-shipping, they’d be wise to emphasize other aspects of their entertainment.”

Strengthening antibiotics

Just seven lawmakers voted against a bill that cracked down on the excessive administration of antibiotics to farm animals, according to Bloomberg Business. “Overuse of antibiotics, both in medicine and in animal agriculture, contributes to the rise of drug-resistant superbugs that kill 23,000 Americans each year and sicken 2 million. Brown vetoed a weaker bill last year,” noted the website.

The overwhelming consensus against the practice provided a sort of mirror image of the recent determination to remove the personal belief exemption from California’s rules guiding the mandatory vaccination of children. There, similar concerns about a growing threat of public disease arose from the rise of a movement among parents to delay or skip vaccines. In animal agriculture, however, the controversy around vaccinating humans was out of the picture, smoothing the way for the bill’s passage and signature into law.

Following the state’s trend of passing regulations more stringent than those handed down from Washington, lawmakers raised a strict standard for treating herd animals with antibiotics. “Currently, many antibiotics are available without a prescription from a veterinarian. The new law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2018, requires a prescription based on a veterinarian’s judgment that the antibiotics are medically necessary,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “The new state law is tougher than federal law in prohibiting a regular pattern of use of antibiotics as a preventative measure to farm animal herds. There must be an elevated risk to justify using it with animals that are not sick.”

Failure to comply would trigger escalating fines. “Firms are subject to civil money penalties of up to $250 for each day a violation occurs,” as Politico noted. “Subsequent violations could bring an administrative fine of $500 for each day.”

Regulating whales

Meanwhile, California regulators have moved to make it more difficult to keep whales captive. “SeaWorld has suffered another hit to its killer whale show after the California Coastal Commission banned it from breeding orcas in captivity as a condition of its approval of the struggling San Diego theme park’s $100 million expansion,” reported Vice News. “The new conditions, which were attached to an approval of the park’s Blue World expansion, set to open in 2018, prohibits all whale breeding, including the use of artificial insemination. It also bans the sale, trade, or transfer of captive orcas.”

SeaWorld came under sustained attack in the wake of a critical documentary that mobilized opposition to its famous orca shows and programs, which require the whales to be kept in conditions considerably different from those they adopt in the wild.

The decision came with a possible loophole. SeaWorld had wanted to expand its tanks, a project that would facilitate more breeding. As a condition of approval, however, the Commission blocked that possibility — giving SeaWorld an opportunity to back out, but one that could come at a price. As Humane Society lobbyist Jennifer Fearing told the Associated Press, “it risks giving the public the perception that it never intended to build bigger tanks to benefit the park’s 11 killer whales and would rather simply breed more in captivity.”

Popular poultry

Lawmakers did not intervene this year in at least one increasingly relevant aspect of animal law: the cultivation of so-called “backyard” chickens. “Chicken-mania is sweeping the Bay Area,” the Contra Costa Times reported, “with burgs big and small scrambling to regulate the popular trend of backyard birds and their coops — and keep the peace between neighbors who might not enjoy all the clucking going on next door.” Legislators in Sacramento could step in if municipalities can’t keep up. Local rules vary widely and do not always command respect. Hayward’s prohibition of poultry “in most of the city’s neighborhoods,” the Times observed, “is largely ignored by underground chicken lovers.”

Against this backdrop of human misery, what are the Democrats who control the Legislature doing? Focusing on (alleged) animal misery far more than (documented) human misery.

Why? Because animals are people, too — extra-special people.

This article is from the U-T San Diego:

“SACRAMENTO — Backed by strong emotional arguments and a passionate grassroots following, animal welfare advocates have steadily achieved milestone protections in California for cuddly household pets and shiver-inducing predators alike.

“The list of laws is as sweeping as it is long. Mountain lions cannot be hunted for sport. Dogs can be tethered in the yard for only so long. Chickens must have larger cages. And landlords cannot force renters to declaw their cats.

“Another big one may be added this year with the introduction of closely watched legislation to ban orca shows and their captive breeding at SeaWorld in San Diego — one of the state’s premier tourist attractions and a leader in marine mammal research.”

Raising minimum wage is not a job-creation policy

This is hilariously telling about the people whom California Democrats elect to state office. They care most about union members, urban professionals, trial lawyers and environmentalists, and their passions — like animal rights.

This is obvious to insiders who know how the Legislature works, but not to most people. Sure, millions of Californians buy the idea that Republicans are mostly driven by greed, based on what they’re told by the media, and at times by actual evidence. But if these folks looked past the window dressing provided by the Democratic Party — which often goes unchallenged by the media — then what would a hard look at Golden State Dems show?

An absolute lack of interest in helping create private-sector jobs or in trying to reduce the cost of living by making it easier to build housing.

In the Legislature, Dem oomph goes to the interests of union members, urban professionals, trial lawyers and environmentalists.

Yes, there is a push to raise the state minimum wage. But that won’t create middle-class jobs. Unfortunately, unlike the elected Democrats in America’s other megastates — Texas, Florida and New York — the ones in California by and large still haven’t figured out that helping free enterprise is a good thing because it leads to creation of such jobs.

Here’s another way to frame this screwy phenomenon: In California, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom stands out for pro-business views that would be absolutely banal in 98 percent of America. When Newsom argues that businesses are rattled by uncertainty about regulatory and tax changes, he is saying that in processing information, business owners act like human beings.

That this observation can seem like heresy to many in the California Democratic Party is a testament to its domination by sclerotic and slavish worshipers of the state’s screwed-up, anti-growth status quo.

Great, just great.