Abuses By The Department of Fish and Game and Department of Food and Agriculture
Bureaucratic silence in the face of citizen complaints is a sign of tyranny

California’s ferret ban is based on large part by a study done for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.  In 1992 the CDFA commissioned a study “a rating system for potential exotic bird and mammal pests.”  This study uses a table to plug in variables to determine if an animal has the potential to become an introduced threat to the state’s agricultural interests.  The domestic ferret is rated highly likely to go feral – and once feral, difficult to eradicate.

The problem with the study is that the variables they plugged in were completely subjective.  They used what they needed to get the desired results.  And after 15 years there still has never been a feral colony of domestic ferrets anywhere in the world – that is pretty conclusive proof that their study is flawed.

We sent the head of the CDFA, the Honorable AG Kawamura an open letter asking that his agency reevaluate the study.  When he didn’t respond our members wrote him.  Hundreds of letters went out – and no one ever received a response.

The California Department of Fish and Game posted on their website a study:

Bird and Mammal Conservation Program Report, 97-3
An Annotated Bibliography on
the Ferret (Mustela putorius furo)

And included on the website:

Partially Supported by the Public Resources Account, Cigarette and Tobacco Products Surtax Fund, FY96/97

We wanted to know how much anti-tobacco money DFG used for this bogus study (which was about the danger of legalizing ferrets in California.) so we filed a legally binding Public Records Request Act.

Two months later they responeded “The Department has extensively searched its records but found no documents, other than the Report that was posted online, that are related to your request.”

By law state agencies must keep their documents for ten years.  It would appear the DFG would rather violate that law then allow people to see how much money from the California anti-smoking campaign they have wasted.

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