The politics of shelter killing bubble up to mainstream media
By Gina Spadafori
April 28, 2008
Newsweek Online has a good piece on the heated debate between those who see shelters killing instead of placing pets as lacking in community engagement and vision and those who see the killing as the only way to cope with the animals made homeless as a result of human irresponsibility:
[M]any animal lovers don’t realize is that PETA itself may have put down some of those unwanted [pets]. The organization has practiced euthanasia for years. Since 1998 PETA has killed more than 17,000 animals, nearly 85 percent of all those it has rescued. … Shelters around the country kill 4 million animals every year; by some estimates, more than 80 percent of them are healthy. In recent years those grim statistics have split the community. Ironically, PETA has emerged as a strong proponent of euthanasia. In defense of its policy PETA has insisted that euthanasia is a necessary evil in a world full of unwanted pets. But while the group has some well-known allies, including the , a growing number of animal rights activists claim to have found a better, more humane way.
[...] Bonney Brown, executive director of the Nevada Humane Society, says that in 2007, the first year her group went “no-kill,” her shelters managed to save 90 percent of the 8,000 animals they took in. Among other strategies, the organization ramped up its volunteer force, from 30 to 1,700, expanded its hours so that people could come in after work and engaged in extensive media outreach.
Here’s the rest.
Here’s a community’s disgraceful attempt at “no kill” in Marion-Grant Co in Indiana.
http://www.chronicle-tribune.c.....844183.txt
“The new shelter will not transfer animals from the current shelter to the new one to prevent disease; May said they are working to raise awareness and to adopt pets out of the current shelter.”
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=qUBsv3pzs00
These animals may be euthanized instead of transferring them to the new shelter. They want a “start from scratch” to go no kill.
Comment by Heather — April 28, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
Sad situation. But how is that a “community attempt” and not a policy decision by the current administration?
No kill communities aren’t about single organizations that warehouse or hoard animals. No kill communities are about organizations working together with each other and with the community to engage the people and get pets placed in homes.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 28, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
I’m glad to see the word about Peta finally hitting the MSM - as well as the H$U$-Peta connection.
Now, if only they’d grasp the difference between animal rights and animal welfare, we’d be on our way!
Thanks for bringing this article to our attention.
Comment by Caveat — April 28, 2008 @ 5:49 pm
You’re right, Gina. That was poorly worded.
In any case, it’s ironic that they need to kill animals to “start from scratch” so they can become “no kill”.
Comment by Heather — April 28, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
The comments following that Newsweek article are pretty amazing too. The PETA apologists are out in force, interspersed with some voices of reason. Also some who really, truly want to understand what is going on,
At least the article quoted Nathan and not just Ingrid and Wayne, as is usually the case. We all clearly have our work cut out for us…but we knew that.
Comment by Susan Fox — April 28, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
At Dogs Trust the belief is that if we plough resources and energy into educating this and the next generation of dog owners, every dog should be able to find a home. We operate a strict policy of never putting a healthy dog down, hence running dog sponsorship programs to cover the cost of maintaining a home for a dog at a Rehoming Centre for as long as it takes to find them a forever home.
Comment by Alex — April 29, 2008 @ 5:22 am
Hurray - MSM reporting that PETA KILLS HEALTHY PETS and that their friends at HSUS join them in their opposition to No Kill. Spread the truth!
From the article, PETA says “But we would rather offer these animals a painless death than have them tortured, starved or sold for research.”
Since when are these the only options available to homeless pets? Hullo! We are by and large a compassionate nation, not one who sees pets as things to torture, starve or sell to research. Maybe that’s how pets look in PETAworld but in my reality, pets are entitled to much better!
Comment by slt — April 29, 2008 @ 5:56 am
I’m not particularly fond of the phrase “no-kill”. It seems to just divide the animal welfare community into “those who kill” and “those who don’t” which, to me isn’t very meaningful.
The way I see it, if I as a “no-kill” am aware that the shelter down the street is using euthanasia as a means of population control, I cannot be truly “no-kill” unless I save all the animals in that shelter and any other shelters I know are still killing.
Too many (most? all?) “no-kill” organizations are operating in communities where there are too many pets and not enough homes. And when they reach kennel capacity, they turn pets away knowing those pets will end up killed at the shelter down the road….or if not sheltered, those pets end up dead on the streets. Either way, it’s still too many pets and not enough homes.
So how does one organization really ever truthfully claim “no-kill” if they are turning needy animals away? Shouldn’t it more truthfully defined? Like “we are a limited capacity organization” and then explain that you don’t kill the animals you choose to intake because you only intake the type/amount of pets you know you can save?
I don’t know. I prefer to look at a community, a shelter or an organization and discover what they are doing (or not doing) to compel or inspire change in the people whose attitudes and behaviors are affecting the animals.
Neither mass adoption nor mass euthanasia are the answers. We can’t adopt OR kill our way out of pet overpopulation; both are statistically and logistically impossible. Prevention is really the only solution.
I think the biggest impact we can have on pet overpopulation and the suffering it causes is in our support of organizations that operate, not with a focus on “kill rates”, but with a focus on prevention.
What is your community or organization doing to reduce pet abandonment (keeping pets with their guardians through education, support, assistance, etc.) or to reduce overpopulation (preventing births through comprehensive spay/neuter initiatives)? In my opinion, these are much more important questions than whether a community or group fits the decidedly vague standards of what constitutes “kill” or “no-kill”.
Comment by Joy — April 29, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
This is a straw man argument. It is a very common to attack the no-kill movement by saying that “no kill shelters” are turning animals away and letting someone else do the dirty work. But the no-kill movement is not about single shelters. It’s about no-kill communities.
Look at Maddie’s Fund: Their goal is to create a no-kill nation, and they won’t even fund single shelters or agencies; it has to be a community-based effort.
Read Redemption: Nathan Winograd never talks about a single shelter changing to no kill while some other agency down the road does the killing as a success or even a stepping stone to no kill.
And I’m sorry, but while I agree that prevention is a very important part of ending the use of killing in animal population control, we already have widespread spay/neuter of owned dogs and cats, and we’ll always have a small number of people who are jerks and dump their pets just as they cheat on their taxes and let their kids live on Cheetos and Coke. That’s just life.
The upriver supply of animals has been massively lowered in the last 20 years, and today we’re at a point where institutional practices and assumptions need to be challenged and a new paradigm needs to be put in place, in order to end the killing of animals for population control.
Continuing to blame pet owners and trying to legislate spay/neuter simply lets bad animal control policies continue, bad shelter management remain entrenched, and animals suffer and die because we haven’t implemented policies and procedures that effectively put shelter pets into new homes, and are burdened with the belief system of the old guard and the past.
If this was 20 years ago, it might be true to say we can’t adopt our way out of “pet overpopulation,” but that’s no longer the case. There are enough homes for the animals that are in need of homes. Killing for population control is wrong, and it’s unnecessary, and it has to end, and I can think of no better name for the movement to accomplish that than NO KILL.
Comment by Christie Keith — April 29, 2008 @ 9:42 pm
Great points. And maybe I’m wrong in my assessments. I do agree that euthanasia is not an acceptable means of population control. But I wasn’t aware that there are enough homes willing and able to adopt all the needy pets in America.
If that’s the case, then maybe the issue is really more about distribution of services?
If there is a home for each and every needy pet in your community, and you have mastered the formula for a “no-kill” operation….then why not just empty your local shelter and get those pets into those waiting homes?
Comment by Joy — April 29, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
Go read my interview with Richard Avanzino of Maddie’s Fund, he explains the “turnover figures” about enough homes for the animals in need of homes.
Killing for population control is not euthanasia… it can’t be, because when you kill a healthy animal, it’s not euthanasia by any definition of the word.
Joy, the myth of “emptying the shelter” is just that… a myth. The shelter will never be empty because in every community, there will always be animals in need of sheltering. That’s why we have shelters.
The goal is to have the inflow of animals in a community not exceed that region’s ability to care for those animals. It involves keeping the animals moving through the animal control system and out into new homes.
As to the formula…. every community that’s done it has followed pretty much the same formula. It’s not a secret. Read Redemption.
Comment by Christie Keith — April 29, 2008 @ 10:38 pm
I live in a Maddie’s-funded community and am very aware of Avanzino’s descriptions of the no-kill goal. I’m not entirely disagreeing with you - just wondering about the realities of the movement as I have seen it being played out in my community the past few years.
I think my comments earlier were along the lines of something Richard said in your interview with him:
“We have to act locally and think globally and the globally, I think, has to be on a community-wide basis. Because if we’re doing a great job saving X number of animals, whether it’s a small x or a big X, but down the street a larger number of animals are being killed and we’re not doing anything to alleviate that or not doing as much to alleviate that as we can, then we’re not doing as much as we should.”
Comment by Joy — April 29, 2008 @ 11:11 pm
The online Newsweek story missed the mark with respect to HSUS’ position on no-kill. CEO Wayne Pacelle clarified on his blog today at http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/.....kill.html.
Comment by Jennifer — April 30, 2008 @ 2:06 am
Jennifer, that’s a change in HSUS’ position—a welcome change, but a change.
Comment by Lis — April 30, 2008 @ 3:49 am
Actually, Wayne blogged about this in detail back in November 2007 - as an effort to clarify what has been HSUS’ position for some time. But glad to hear your support for it.
Comment by Jennifer — April 30, 2008 @ 5:12 am
Joy, I’m awfully glad to see you commenting, and hope you are doing well. You are one of the real heroes of the pet-food recall, and an unsung one, at that!
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 30, 2008 @ 5:33 am
from Wayne Pacelle’s blog post:
“What stands in the way of achieving no-kill? Too few people are adopting animals from shelters; too many people are relinquishing their pets; too few animals are spayed or neutered; too many rental properties do not allow pets; and too little promotion of our ideas is reaching the public.”
He criticizes the Newsweek article for oversimplying things and spinning the truth and yet this is exactly how I interpret his quote above.
If you want to soundbite it: What stands in the way of achieving no-kill is major organizations like HSUS refusing to put their political and financial capabilities 100% behind it.
Comment by slt — April 30, 2008 @ 6:09 am
I read that as Mr. Pacelle trying to serve two masters … giving the “we’re certainly not against no kill” line while being very careful not to anger his shelter industry constituency and related donors.
“What stands in the way of achieving no-kill?” he asks.
How about putting in that list a shelter industry that chooses banker’s hours over hours that people keep, that prefers clean, empty cages over messy pets waiting for homes, and has resentment for “having to kill” on behalf of the communities they “serve”? How about putting in that list a shelter industry that conducts the blame game as usual, instead of embracing innovative programs that put pets into homes? Read through the comments on the Newsweek piece, and you see tons of anger and resentment channelled into a desire to “punish” the public, with legal neutering mandates if at all possible. (Geez, you get the vibe from these people that they’d neuter people, too, given half a chance.)
How about leading, instead of blaming? How about enforcing the laws we have instead of shoving new ones that are misguided at best — and hidden animal-rights domestic animal extinction plans at worst — down our throats?
And how about not patronizing animal-lovers by labeling no kill as “a noble goal” with the suggestion that such nobility is unattainable?
The HSUS can put its might and money into making this happen. They cleaned up shelters in the first place — and kudos for that! — helping to put animal-control guidelines into place in many a hell-hole.
But that was then, this is now. The numbers of animals needing homes annually has dropped by millions — yes, millions! — in the last couple of decades. New policies and strategies need to close the gap, and there are plenty of homes available if you can reach them. Running efficient killing shops and blaming the public isn’t enough anymore.
Walk the talk, Mr. Pacelle. It’s time to get off the fence.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — April 30, 2008 @ 6:58 am
What do you guys think of this article?
*
While the overpopulation of unwanted pets in America is indeed a reality with harrowing consequences, the practice of touting it as the root cause of the suffering of companion animals is flawed.
“There are too many pets and not enough homes”, the long-suffering cry of the animal welfare community, is more of a sentiment or unified belief system rather than a fact.
True, there are too many pets being housed and eventually euthanized by understaffed, poorly funded, overpopulated shelters and humane societies - and these facilities generally cite “lack of homes” as the leading cause of death of the animals they shelter each year.
But the idea that there aren’t enough homes for them all is one that makes little sense when we look at how few people ever even attempt to adopt from a humane group or shelter compared to how many are acquiring pets elsewhere.
Of the estimated 110-120 million pets owned at one time in this country, most reports reveal that only about 5-9% were adopted from a shelter or humane group. The majority of pets are acquired through other sources such as professional breeders, backyard breeders, pet shops, and free-to-good-home advertisements.
Over the years, the animal welfare community has generated many slogans, catchy phrases, and mottos that are meant to urge the public to choose the “Adoption Option” and to avoid acquiring pets from these other, less humane sources.
In the overall fight to end the suffering of companion animals, adoption programs have become very important to most welfare groups, humane societies, and shelters. Providing pets to the public serves to help us increase awareness, improve shelter image, provide great opportunities for face-to-face education, enforce sterilization, improve volunteer and staff morale, provide long term support to the pet and new pet owner, and, of course, provide good homes for pets that might otherwise have been abused, neglected, strayed, or euthanized.
Since the animal welfare community is the ONLY source of pet acquisition in America that is funded, and therefore morally obligated, to provide humane education, guidance, and ongoing support to new pet owners, it makes little sense for us to complain about the lack of these services by other pet sources.
While it is a nice sentiment to say that they SHOULD, breeders, pet shops, and free-to-good-home advertisers are not obligated to provide any humane services. In fact, aside from obeying a few animal protection laws, they are not obligated to do much at all for the pets in their care. These pet sources are merely in the business of meeting the demand of the public with a supply of pets - to the tune of many million new pet acquisitions every year.
As frustrating as it is to acknowledge, the mass production of pets is big business in America. And, like most big business, it generates an astounding amount of greed and waste.
We, the animal welfare community, have taken on the responsibility of trying to check the greed, clean up the waste, and generate a kinder, more humane attitude toward all companion animals - this is OUR business and it is unique to us.
Collectively, we are the custodians of several billion dollars a year given to us by the public to help us accomplish our jobs; we receive a vast amount of media attention, free services, grant opportunities, and government financing, and we enjoy overall acceptance and support of our programs by the general public. The animal welfare movement too, is big business in America.
Why then are we still killing over 60% of our supply of adoptable pets while failing to meet the demand of the millions of families each year bringing a new pet into their home?
Some people working in shelters and with rescue groups might say that “adoptions are not all we do“ and many believe that other programs, such as humane education, are most effective in changing the overall attitude toward companion animals. While humane education is indeed imperative to true and lasting change, what better audience do we have than the potential adopter?
Since we are the only source of pets that regularly promises to provide humane education and ongoing support for the new pet owner, to take the pet back into our care if the human/animal relationship fails, to provide spay/neuter surgery for the pet, and to teach people to be good pet guardians, then we should be loath to ever miss the opportunity to provide a potential adopter with a pet!
It’s not the fact that more adoptions would equal less demand for other pets being bred and sold so much as the fact that, if we do our jobs well, the animals adopted from us are not likely to ever reproduce, suffer from cruelty or neglect or ever see the inside of a shelter.
Since lack of new pet owner education, lack of spay/neuter, lack of support, and lack of alternatives when and if the human/animal relationship fails are all the biggest contributors to pet relinquishment, then it seems that where and how people get their pets is a very important, if not the most important issue.
Rather than the frustrating and futile practice of angrily placing blame on the breeders, backyard breeders, free-to-good-home advertisers, and pet shops, wouldn’t we better serve the pet population by actually COMPETING with these sources?
In order to do more adoptions (therefore preventing more pet relinquishment), we must try to understand the family or individual that is looking to bring a pet into their home. And we must reject any ideas we may have that a potential adopter is anything more or less than a “consumer.”
People want pets and people get pets. Social class, income, age, gender, or level of education have no real bearing on the type of people who keep pets. While it is a widespread sentiment within the animal welfare community that “owning a pet is a privilege - not a right” it is nothing more than sentiment. In fact, pretty much any free person in this country, regardless of how much we may wish they didn’t, has a right to go out and get themselves a pet.
So, the “consumer”, or the potential adopter, can most simply be understood as - a person who has a right to get themselves a pet, is on a mission to get themselves a pet, and most likely WILL get themselves a pet - regardless of how qualified they may or may not be to actually care for that pet.
They set out looking for a pet and are given a multitude of options; breeders, newspaper ads, pet shops, the shelter, a humane society, etc. Keeping in mind that shelters are already notorious for being “too depressing” of a place for most families to visit, and shelters and rescue groups typically keep very short, inconvenient hours of operation, coupled with the fact that most everyone knows that adopting a pet from one of these places is “saving a life”, “being responsible, “helping a homeless animal”, and all the other things we’ve taught the public over the years….any person who walks into an adoption center to get a new pet has already proven that they want to do the right thing.
When someone walks into an adoption center to adopt a pet - we have just beat out our competition (and we must admit, our competition will likely have better hours, cheaper prices, friendlier customer service, and/or more selection than us!). If that person leaves our adoption center empty handed, we have served only to push them back out into the mass-market of breeders, free ads, and pet shops- the very places we plead with people to avoid - the very places that we know are generating the biggest contributing factors of pet abandonment.
So, when we fail to provide that adopter with a pet, either directly (a refused adoption application) or indirectly (lack of selection of the types of pets people want, poor customer service, overly complicated adoption procedures, etc.), we should be quite sure that there was no hope whatsoever of teaching that person to be a responsible pet guardian.
To define “responsible pet guardian”, we must first understand the basic needs of companion animals. Food, water, shelter, companionship, and safety are really all any pet needs to thrive in a home. Of course, many unfortunate pets in this country are deprived of these basic needs and that is why cruelty laws, the justice system, animal control, and preventative humane education programs are so critical to our cause.
However, these laws and programs are generally set forth as a necessity to prevent the ill-intentioned criminal or the truly incompetent person from causing harm to an innocent pet. Since responsibility must be taught, especially in the case of caring for a living creature, a truly irresponsible pet guardian would be someone who knowingly, and with intent, failed to provide a pet with it’s basic needs - someone who knew how to be responsible but chose to act irresponsibly.
If pet overpopulation and/or the suffering of unwanted pets is to be blamed on “irresponsible pet owners”, and if the animal welfare community is the only group out there funded to educate those people to be more responsible, then we must take responsibility ourselves; each and every pet that suffers and dies as a result of an irresponsible person, is a pet we failed.
Whether we failed to prevent that pet’s birth, educate his owner, provide his family with support, or rescue him from the hands of a true abuser, it was our responsibility, our business, to have used our donations, our resources, and our energy to prevent that tragedy.
How can we take money from the public to educate the public only to turn around and blame the public for being uneducated?
Only when we truly take responsibility for the fact that we are the only ones who have stood up, voiced a concern, collected a donation, and made a promise will we understand that, with that responsibility, will come many successes and failures.
The animal welfare community has yet to ever acknowledge, much less show any remorse for, its failure rate - instead we have gathered around in hot pockets of anger, furtively calculating the staggering death statistics of all the pets we kill. We produce facts and figures, come up with catchy slogans, hold fund raisers, make emotional, compelling statements on TV, and print glossy brochures that blame everybody else but ourselves for the fact that we kill most of the pets we are funded to protect.
Meanwhile, the rest of America is quietly busy breeding, selling, and acquiring pets from everywhere else but us.
Why? Because we, the animal lovers, the most pet-compassionate of us all, have chosen to take jobs and volunteer positions that would expose us daily to the absolute worst of human behavior, greed, waste, and dispassionate attitudes. We love animals and we hate people who hurt animals. But can we fathom our own power, not only to help, but to actually harm the very population of animals we dedicate our lives and careers to protect?
In a knee-jerk reaction to save the pets in our care from the atrocities we see every day, we’ve grouped together the public and separated ourselves from them. We’ve somehow concluded that the only power we have is, not to educate people, rather to prevent uneducated people from acquiring our pets.
We’ve forgotten that we are in the business of creating responsible pet guardians, not finding them. We are not funded to be in the business of providing nice pets to nice people - that is not even a luxury we can afford.
If given a choice, maybe we should even let the “nice, responsible, good pet guardians” go get their pets from the places that do not provide humane services…after all, good, responsible people don’t need those services. Let us, the animal welfare community, focus on learning to recognize an irresponsible, uneducated person, lure that person into our adoption facility, find them a pet, and then use all of our resources to make that person a responsible pet guardian!
Comment by Joy — May 11, 2008 @ 10:58 am
Joy … who wrote it, and where’d you find it? Link, please.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 11, 2008 @ 11:08 am
Hi Gina….(btw, thanks for the kind words and for remembering me in your earlier post re: the pet food recall).
This is something one of my volunteers wrote years ago. It’s never been published anywhere.
I recently rediscovered it buried in my files and wondered about it. Post-Maddie’s Fund, I’m wondering if overly-complicated adoption procedures are still an issue with rescues and shelters.
Comment by Joy — May 11, 2008 @ 11:43 am
They sure seem to be. I’d say your volunteer was a visionary!
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 11, 2008 @ 12:19 pm