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<blockquote data-quote="Daniel Avery" data-source="post: 74799" data-attributes="member: 27">The government (specifically the Department of Agriculture) agrees with you on both counts.&nbsp; Any establishment that prepares food (and yes, supermarkets prepare food in their deli and other departments) is forbidden to have animals on the premises due to health regulations.&nbsp; The Dept. of Agriculture does frequent inspections for cleanliness, obviously, and it&#039;s common knowledge that pets are not allowed in supermarkets any more than they&#039;re allowed in restaurants.&nbsp; &nbsp; If &quot;evidence&quot; of any type of animal is found (roaches, rats, birds, OR pet-type animals) in inspections, there will be fines levied on the business and their (public) inspection score gets hurt considerably.&nbsp; If the violation is strong enough, the business could be forcibly shut down until it undergoes a major cleaning and re-inspection.&nbsp; THAT could ruin a small business like a mom-and-pop restaurant or bodega.&nbsp; I find it the height of selfishness for these people to drag their pet dog or cat into such a business and endanger the business&#039;s very existence.&nbsp; I can imagine a health inspector (typically some bureaucrat with a puffed-up sense of self-importance) taking delight in shutting a place down if he or she saw a situation occur like the one I mentioned upthread. The problem is that these days, there is a prevailing sense of &quot;the rules don&#039;t apply to me&quot;.&nbsp; As for the service animal paperwork, there ARE laws on the books requiring the animal to wear a special &quot;service animal&quot; vest, and the owner to carry a state-issued card stating the details of their service animal.&nbsp; The problem is that anybody can order one of those vests off the internet (fake, but looking official enough to pass), and the new &quot;comfort animal&quot; designation muddies the waters further because those are much harder to quantify.&nbsp; There are fewer regulations, and if someone is confronted about the veracity of their claims, they threaten lawsuits.&nbsp; A seeing-eye dog is easy to spot as they do their work, but if Granny wants to say her pot-bellied pig is a &quot;comfort animal&quot; that keeps her from having...I dunno, panic attacks, for instance...then how are you going to prove or disprove it?&nbsp; It used to be that good manners would stop people from abusing the laws in such ways, but like I said, nowadays people only care about having what they want when they want it, and to heck with everyone else.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Daniel Avery, post: 74799, member: 27"] The government (specifically the Department of Agriculture) agrees with you on both counts. Any establishment that prepares food (and yes, supermarkets prepare food in their deli and other departments) is forbidden to have animals on the premises due to health regulations. The Dept. of Agriculture does frequent inspections for cleanliness, obviously, and it's common knowledge that pets are not allowed in supermarkets any more than they're allowed in restaurants. If "evidence" of any type of animal is found (roaches, rats, birds, OR pet-type animals) in inspections, there will be fines levied on the business and their (public) inspection score gets hurt considerably. If the violation is strong enough, the business could be forcibly shut down until it undergoes a major cleaning and re-inspection. THAT could ruin a small business like a mom-and-pop restaurant or bodega. I find it the height of selfishness for these people to drag their pet dog or cat into such a business and endanger the business's very existence. I can imagine a health inspector (typically some bureaucrat with a puffed-up sense of self-importance) taking delight in shutting a place down if he or she saw a situation occur like the one I mentioned upthread. The problem is that these days, there is a prevailing sense of "the rules don't apply to me". As for the service animal paperwork, there ARE laws on the books requiring the animal to wear a special "service animal" vest, and the owner to carry a state-issued card stating the details of their service animal. The problem is that anybody can order one of those vests off the internet (fake, but looking official enough to pass), and the new "comfort animal" designation muddies the waters further because those are much harder to quantify. There are fewer regulations, and if someone is confronted about the veracity of their claims, they threaten lawsuits. A seeing-eye dog is easy to spot as they do their work, but if Granny wants to say her pot-bellied pig is a "comfort animal" that keeps her from having...I dunno, panic attacks, for instance...then how are you going to prove or disprove it? It used to be that good manners would stop people from abusing the laws in such ways, but like I said, nowadays people only care about having what they want when they want it, and to heck with everyone else. [/QUOTE]

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