April 8, 2024 –
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has signed a bill, HB 1354, that will allow veternarians to declaw any cat provided they obtain a note from a licensed physician stating that scratching poses a potential medical risk to a human. The scientific literature indicates that declawing cats is not an effective means of protecting human health and that declawed cats are more likely to bite than non-declawed cats. Declawing has the unintended consequence of putting humans at a greater risk of harm. The contention that declawing can protect immunocompromised or hemophilic humans has been rejected by the NIH, CDC, Infectious Diseases Society of America, US Public Health Service, National Hemophilia Foundation, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, and American Cancer Society. The veterinary authorities, the American Association of Feline Practitioners and American Animal Hospital Association, note that declawing is not advised to protect medically vulnerable people.
The Paw Project opposed this version of the bill, arguing that the “human health” exception was contrary to scientific evidence and would serve as an exploitable loophole that would not adequately protect cats. “We are disappointed,” said Paw Project Founder and Director Dr. Jennifer Conrad. “The original version of the bill was good and would have made Virginia the third US state to ban declawing. Unfortunately, the Virginia Veterinary Medical Association was able to introduce an amendment that ignores current scientific evidence and guts the original intent of the bill. We hope that this law can be fixed to really protect cats and that lawmakers in other cities and states do not fall for bad science.”