From reason:

This is not the first time an isolated case of a pet death or two has inspired fear-driven calls for occupational licensing. Shoshana Weissmann, a fellow with free market think tank R Street and an expert analyst on occupational licensing, wrote in 2018 about a New Jersey bill that would have introduced dog grooming regulations there. The inspiration was apparently several dogs being injured or dying after visiting with pet groomers at PetSmart stores.

Weissmann noted at the time that demanding dog grooming licenses wouldn’t actually resolve the problem because PetSmart could easily afford to pay for the training. But there would be completely unrelated consequences. The irony here is that occupational licensing would likely harm PetSmart’s smaller independent competitors:

[A]dding licensing requirements will prevent smaller groomers from practicing—including struggling small businesses, teens who have learned to groom to earn some extra money, and other individual groomers of poorer means who have been grooming pets for years but cannot afford the training.

She repeated her concerns today to Reason in response to Fox’s fearmongering.

“People babysit without a license,” she points out. “Licensing was not the issue with the grooming. If you harm the dog, either the dog had some sort of issue or you’re out to hurt dogs.” Grooming licenses wouldn’t fix either issue, “it will just put people out of business.”

Rather than relying on government licensing, Weissmann encouraged pet owners to engage in a bit of research and due diligence for the pet groomers near them. Ask friends and look for online reviews. Even without the government mandates, there are voluntary pet grooming certification programs for professionals, and pet owners can ask for proof of training.

Weismann says she loved seeing all the tweets back to Fox criticizing her piece, though Weismann wishes folks were a bit nicer to the reporter in their responses.

“I wish [Fox] had reached out more,” Weissmann says. “It was nice to see people on both the left and the right criticize it. It was nice to see people realize this is ridiculous.”

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