In a significant win for animals and those who care about them, San Francisco’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare will remain intact following a strong community response to a proposal that would have eliminated it.

As part of a review of city commissions and public bodies, the city’s Commission Streamlining Task Force issued an interim decision to dissolve the Animal Commission — a move that alarmed many residents and animal protection organizations at both the local and national levels. Eliminating the Commission would have removed San Francisco’s only public forum dedicated to transparency and community input on animal-related issues.

In Defense of Animals joined concerned residents in opposing the proposal and urged the community to speak out. San Franciscans responded in force. The Task Force received a steady stream of written comments and public testimony highlighting the Commission’s vital role in safeguarding animals, elevating community concerns, and holding city departments accountable. The volume of comments supporting the Commission far exceeded those submitted for any other public body under review.

Supporters emphasized the Commission’s importance in addressing issues such as compassionate sheltering, wildlife coexistence, animal companion protection, and other animal welfare and rights concerns. Without this forum, critical conversations about the well-being of animals in the city would be pushed further from public view.

As a result of this strong and sustained advocacy, the Task Force reversed its position and voted to recommend keeping the Commission. This outcome demonstrates the power of public engagement and the impact of collective action.

For more than 50 years, the Commission has served as a bridge between residents and the government entities responsible for protecting animals. Its continued existence ensures that animals in San Francisco will retain a voice in city governance.

To continue to be involved in advocating for animals in San Francisco and beyond, please check out our Take Action page.

A copy of the letter we submitted is available below:

Dear Commission Streamlining Task Force,

I am writing to strongly recommend that San Francisco keep the Commission of Animal Control and Welfare.

This Commission is the only city body whose sole purpose is to defend the well-being of animals. It fills a role that no department can fill. City departments are bound to carry out existing policy. The Commission is where those policies are challenged, improved and humanized. It is where compassion is allowed to speak.

For decades, San Franciscans have turned to the Commission when animals were suffering. Members of the Board of Supervisors and city departments refer people here for a reason — because the Commission listens. So many of its agenda items, and ultimately its recommendations, have come directly from residents who saw harm and refused to look away.

In Defense of Animals has worked directly with the Commission again and again to raise urgent issues, provide expert testimony, and move humane solutions forward. When our organization investigates cruelty, neglect, or systemic failures in San Francisco, the Commission is often the first and only city forum that will hear those concerns in public, put them on the record, and act on them. Without that partnership, our ability — and the public’s ability — to protect animals is severely weakened.

The result of this collaboration has been a profound, lifesaving change.

Without the Commission, the deaths of elephants at the San Francisco Zoo might have passed as quiet tragedies. Instead, through public testimony and relentless pressure — including In Defense of Animals’ long campaign to free the Zoo’s elephants — the Commission insisted that these emotionally complex beings deserved more than confinement and decline. It elevated the call for compassionate release to sanctuary and held the Zoo to account. That pressure cracked open a door that had been nailed shut for too long. It gave those elephants dignity in death and gave future elephants a chance at life.

Without the Commission, San Francisco might never have embraced the language of “guardian.” Guardian language is not cosmetic. It reflects who we are as a city. It recognizes that animals are family members in our care — not property to be bought, traded, or discarded. The Commission advanced this language, which In Defense of Animals has championed for decades, and it now lives in San Francisco law. This is culture change made visible.

Without the Commission, San Francisco might not have had the courage to become the first major U.S. city to ban the sale of new fur. In Defense of Animals stood with the Commission in calling out the violence behind fur and demanding that cruelty not be sold on our streets. That local stand helped build the foundation for California’s statewide fur sales ban. What began in a Commission meeting room now protects foxes, minks, rabbits, and so many others across the entire state.

These are not symbolic victories. They are real protections with real consequences for real lives.

The Commission has also pushed, in alignment with In Defense of Animals, to end mutilating declaw procedures on cats, to stop the commercial sale of dogs and cats from breeding mills, and to force accountability when an animal — any animal — is neglected, exploited, or killed in this city. The commissioners do this work without pay. They do it with patience, urgency, and moral clarity.

Here is what happens without this Commission: residents make heartbreaking reports about suffering, and those reports vanish into a maze. People are bounced between departments. No one will take ownership. There is no transparent forum, no public record, no follow-up. Animals keep suffering without end. The people trying to defend them are left furious and helpless.

Right now, the link between animal well-being, public health, and environmental responsibility is undeniable. When animals are treated as disposable, public trust erodes. When cruelty is normalized, violence spreads. When we ignore the suffering of beings in our custody, we fail ourselves.

San Francisco calls itself a compassionate city. The Commission of Animal Control and Welfare is proof of that compassion in action — and In Defense of Animals can say from direct experience that this Commission is not theoretical. It is vital. We work with it. The public needs it. Animals depend on it.

Silencing that voice now would not be efficient. It would be abandonment.

On behalf of In Defense of Animals, I urge you: please recommend that San Francisco keep the Commission of Animal Control and Welfare.

Sincerely,

Dr. Marilyn Kroplick
President and CEO
In Defense of Animals

In Defense of Animals is an international animal protection organization with over 250,000 supporters and a 42-year history of defending animals, people and the environment through education and campaigns, as well as hands-on rescue facilities in California, India, South Korea and rural Mississippi. www.idausa.org