Breed-specific legislation targeting perceived dangerous breeds imposes significant welfare costs with minimal evidence of public safety benefit.
Breed-specific legislation imposes direct, severe welfare harms — execution of healthy animals — without achieving its stated public safety goal. The welfare harm is compounded by the stress of shelter holding during legal challenges, separation from families who have provided adequate care, and the psychological impact on shelter workers required to euthanize behavioral healthy animals. Evidence from jurisdictions including Denmark (which repealed BSL after finding no safety benefit) and the systematic review literature consistently shows that breed-neutral dangerous animal ordinances focusing on individual dog behavior and owner responsibility outperform BSL on both welfare and safety metrics. Welfare advocates and legal reformers should work to repeal BSL and replace it with evidence-based alternatives.