This week’s decision about the odd and unusual animal sale at the Ontario Livestock Exchange is likely to be up for review at next week’s council meeting. The decision will come down to one pragmatic point:
How much is the twice-a-year auction of exotic animals worth to Woolwich Township?
The organizer of the sale, Tiger Paw Exotics, is not a local company, but OLEX is. Councillors will have to decide whether supporting that business trumps all the other concerns.
Opponents of the sale, including animal welfare groups such as the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and Zoocheck Canada, have been lobbying hard for Woolwich to prohibit the event. The organizations launched a very successful letter-writing campaign after the issue first arose at council last month.
This week, based on input from the Kitchener-Waterloo Humane Society, council approved a very watered-down list of animals it would allow to be sold at the auction. The changes are so restrictive, they would likely threaten the future of the event in Woolwich, where it’s been held since 2001, unless the restrictions are eased.
Tiger Paw Exotics owner Tim Height has some reason to feel aggrieved following Tuesday’s meeting. Last month he was assured the auction could go on as scheduled, with perhaps a few tweaks. The small list of animals to be exempted from the township’s exotic pets bylaw hardly makes for business as usual.
The township finds itself in something of a conundrum given that its bylaw pertains to public safety, not to animal welfare. But opponents are fighting this largely on the basis of how the animals are treated and their abhorrence to the keeping of such animals.
While the humane society and other organizations have trotted out public health and safety concerns, those are red herrings. Yes, there’s the potential risk, but there has never been an incident in the sale’s history. And none of the animals is wild: all are captive-born. This doesn’t make them domesticated, but it does help ensure that diseases such as rabies are much less likely than would be the case with the wildlife – raccoons, skunks and the like – that we come across almost daily.
If the sale can’t go forward at OLEX, Height has indicated the show will go on … elsewhere. While that would remove Woolwich from the fray, councillors would simply be passing the buck. It’s precisely that reason that groups such as WSPA are looking for provincial or national standards, but in the absence of such rules, the township has a more difficult decision to make.
If pragmatism rules the day, the township can determine the odd and unusual animal sales’ economic contribution. If it’s sufficient to warrant continuing the auction, then Woolwich would be advised to push for practices that address the concerns of animal welfare organization. This would entail both enforceable rules and friendly persuasion.
Should the sale continue, it would be in everyone’s interest to reduce the number of protests leveled at the auction and, by extension, the venue and the municipality.
