After considering the issue earlier this summer, the Henderson County, North Carolina, Board of Commissioners voted last night to continue its ban on pet sales at flea markets. The vote was four to one against lifting the ban. According to a news report on BlueRidgeNow.com, a key factor was “ strong opposition from residents and animal welfare organization leaders.” The ban has been in place since 2009 and will continue.
One holdout on the Board, Commissioner Bill O’Connor, favored lifting the ban. O’Connor, who worked for NASA as a computer programmer during the Apollo moon program, offered a compromise in which pets sold would be required to have a health certificate that included contact info for the seller.
Even that compromise was not enough for advocates of the ban, such as Mary Cervini, co-founder of the Flat Rock-based Community Partnership for Pets, who was quoted in the BlueRidgeNow.com article, saying, “If you’ve never been to a flea market and never seen puppies sold out of the trunk of a car, you really just can’t envision it. You just don’t know how terrible it is until you’ve actually seen it.”
Commissioners also said that the proposed compromise would be expensive to enforce.
Photo credit, with thanks: Henderson County Board of Commissioners.