Our Man in Washington

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Other approaches include: an injection given at puberty to immunize an animal's sex hormones, possible use of radiation or laser beams to de-sex pets or the marketing of pet foods laced with contraceptive chemicals. The trouble with the last alternative is that as much as 25 percent of the pet food sold in the U.S. is thought to be eaten by humans.

Legal approaches to the pet population boom are numerous and ingenious, but no bills have been passed by either state legislatures or Congress. In California, where there are more dogs than in any other state, measures have been introduced: [1] to make license fees for spayed or neutered animals half those for unsterilized pets; [2] to provide $3 million for low-cost municipal spay clinics; [3] to provide research funds for pet contraceptive projects; and [4] to set standards for animal control programs. In the U.S. Senate meanwhile, Senator Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) has introduced a bill (S. 1032) in Congress to provide federal loans for pet clinics and grants to train para-professional pet medics ... but Congress has taken no action on the measure.

So, the pet boom continues ... for the benefit of people, not animals. Leonard N. Stern, 35—president of Hartz Mountain Corporation, the nation's largest supplier of pets, pet food and accessories—has amassed a personal fortune of more than $500 million in 14 years. "However, at this point," says one expert on the subject, "we've pretty much reached the saturation point of the number of homes that can have pets." So what will become of the more than 127,000 dogs and cats that were born yesterday?

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