Shelter Killing Benefits Puppy Mills

The myth of pet overpopulation is the lie at the heart of shelter killing in America. It is the excuse that every shelter director who kills animals uses to rationalize that killing as a necessity, in spite of the fact that it is unsupported by both the data and the experiences of those communities that have achieved what was once regarded as impossible: an end to their killing of animals. And yet as self-evident as this truth is to me today, there was a time when I, too, believed in pet overpopulation and would have been both stunned and confused to learn that I would someday argue against its existence. Indeed, it is not as though I woke up one day and thought “Hey, I think pet overpopulation is a myth!” Nor did I think that someday I would champion the notion that it was. I did not even set out to prove it. It unfolded as part of my journey in the humane movement and the facts began to compel further analysis. In fact, at one time, I too drank of the pet overpopulation Kool Aid. The dedication of my book, Redemption, says it all:

To my wife, Jennifer. Who believed long before I did.

Once, on a date before we were married, we debated the issue. I insisted that, “There were too many animals and not enough homes” and asked her, “What were shelters supposed to do with them?” She correctly argued that even if it were true, killing animals was still unethical and that as animal activists, it was our job to find alternatives, not to blindly accept that the killing was a fait accompli about which we could do nothing to change. She argued that if we took killing off the table, human ingenuity and human compassion would find a way to make it work. But, more importantly, she asked me how I knew it was true that pet overpopulation was real and that killing animals was therefore inevitable.

How did I know? Because I had heard it repeated a thousand times. Because I took the fact of killing in shelters and then rationalized the reason backward. But I was too embarrassed to admit so. Here I was: a Stanford Law student who wore my 4.0 department GPA, my highest honors in Political Science, my Phi Beta Kappa, and my Summa Cum Laude, as a badge of my smarts and I came face to face with my own sloppy logic and slipshod thinking about the issue. “It just is,” I said (lamely).

But therein began a journey that started in San Francisco, then Tompkins County (NY), then visiting hundreds of shelters across the country only to find animals being killed in the face of alternatives, only to find animals being killed despite empty cages, sometimes banks and banks of them. And so I began reviewing data. I reviewed statistics on animal intakes and studies on available homes. I studied the data reported by over 1,000 shelters nationwide. I reviewed the data from the states that mandate shelter reporting. And the conclusion became not just inescapable, but unassailable: pet overpopulation does not exist not only because the number of homes in America vastly exceed the number of shelter animals in need of a home; but also because my experience creating a No Kill community and now the hundreds of cities and towns which have also done so since prove it. In those communities which have ended the killing, they did so through adoptions and the vast majority did so in six months or less. In my case, it was literally overnight.

And since that time, other studies have not only proved I was right, they show I was conservative. To be sure, millions of animals are being killed in our nation’s shelters every year, and that is nothing short of a national tragedy. But they are not being killed because of the reasons we have been historically given to blame. They are not dying because of a lack of homes. They are dying because of a lack of innovation, a failure to embrace of proven methods of lifesaving. As I state at the end of Redemption, animals are dying in shelters for primarily one reason: because the people in shelters choose to kill them in the face of readily-available lifesaving alternatives.

Yet simply because I say pet overpopulation is a myth, I’m continually accused by champions of shelter killing of having nefarious intent: of being in league with puppy mills and commercial breeders. But understanding that the facts do not support the notion of pet overpopulation and saying so publicly has nothing whatsoever to do with supporting breeding or being in league with puppy or kitten mills. In fact, advocacy for animals requires that we expose the lie that is the primary excuse shelters use to kill for the same reason we should oppose puppy and kitten mills: both harm animals. Puppy mills, like poorly performing shelters, provide minimal to no veterinary care, lack of adequate food and shelter, lack of human socialization, and cause neglect, abuse, and the killing of animals when they are no longer profitable.

And that is why my organization, the No Kill Advocacy Center, has held workshops on closing down puppy mills and has supported laws banning the sale of commercially bred animals in pet stores. And it is why I believe that regardless of why animals are being killed, they are being killed, and as long as they are, it is incumbent on everyone seeking to bring an animal into their life to either rescue or adopt from a shelter. Adoption and rescue are ethical imperatives. In short, one does not have to believe in or perpetuate the lie of pet overpopulation to want to close down puppy mills. Nor does recognizing that pet overpopulation is a myth somehow grant a license to commercially or purposely breed animals. Before I ever suggested that pet overpopulation did not exist, the puppy mill industry was alive and thriving. Given the lack of concern those who operate such mills show for animals, what does it matter to them if there is pet overpopulation or not? They couldn’t care less what happens to the animals they sell. But I do. In fact, I am opposed to the commodification of animals, of having the law regard them as property to produce, buy and sell. Animals are not property; they are autonomous individuals, individuals who should be given legal rights, chief among them the right to live.

Acknowledging the truth—that both the data and experience disprove the existence of pet overpopulation—does not mean a person therefore subscribes to a whole host of anti-animal positions. Quite the opposite. It means, simply and thankfully, that we do not have to kill the animals entering our shelters under the disproven notion that there are too few homes. There are not; in fact, there are plenty. To save rather than end the lives of half of all animals who currently enter shelters only to die, we do not have to reform the 310,000,000 Americans apologists for shelter killing consider “irresponsible” and to blame for that killing. We just have to reform those who are truly at fault: the 3,000 irresponsible shelter directors who kill when they don’t have to and the four individuals running the national organizations which defend and protect them: Ingrid Newkirk of PETA, Wayne Pacelle of HSUS, Matt Bershadker of the ASPCA and Robin Ganzert of the American Humane Association. U.S. shelters kill not only because killing is easier, but because, historically, they have enjoyed the political cover of pet overpopulation which allowed them to continue doing so, political cover that comes courtesy of the animal protection movement itself.

To save lives, shelters must begin doing a better job of competing for the market share of the abundantly available homes in America, and, just as important, they must begin keeping animals alive long enough for them to get into those homes. And when I realized this for the first time, rather than bury it, ignore it or downplay it, I did what anyone who truly loves animals would have done. I celebrated it. Why? Because it meant that we had the power to end the killing, today. And that is what I wanted to happen because I love animals.

And yet here’s the irony: the very supporters of the very groups who have made these spurious allegations against me are actually the ones who benefit puppy mills, not me. As my colleague Ryan Clinton recently wrote,

By fighting lifesaving shelter reform, PETA and other regressive animal organizations are effectively aiding and abetting the commercial breeding of animals. By arguing that all pit bulls in shelters should be killed, PETA and others are necessarily driving those who aim to adopt a pit bull to breeders who will gladly meet the demand. By killing nearly every animal that comes in its front door (and lobbying against No Kill reforms throughout the country), PETA is, in reality, aiding and abetting the continuation of the large-scale animal-production industry.

He’s right. But there’s actually more to it than that. By fighting shelter reform and both defending and promoting killing—which groups like HSUS, the ASPCA and PETA do—they discourage the adoption of shelter animals. By embracing draconian adoption policies, they drive good homes to breeders and pet stores. When they fight efforts to increase rescue partnerships, they lessen the supply of available shelter/rescue animals, again, driving people into the arms of breeders. Moreover, traditional kill shelters discourage adopters by the very fact that they kill.

Many people do not want to visit a shelter where they have to meet animals who face possible execution. This hit home for me one day when I answered the telephone at the shelter. The person who called asked me when our next offsite adoption was. After I gave her the information, I told her she should come down to the shelter because we had hundreds of animals, compared to the ten or so who would be at the offsite. Not knowing we were No Kill, she replied she could never do so and explained why: she couldn’t bear to see the hundreds of animals who might be killed if she didn’t choose them.

As No Kill advocates, we may not like the fact that people won’t face such a discomforting scenario to save a life, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is true. Kill shelters are disturbing, unsettling places to visit for those who care about animals, not to mention the fact that the more a shelter kills, the more dirty and neglectful it is likely to be, and the more hostile and poor its customer service—all driving the public away from shelters and into the arms of the commercial pet trade.

On the other hand, when we reform shelters, we not only make them safe for animal lovers to work at, but we make them safe for adopters, too. During the height of the San Francisco SPCA’s lifesaving success in the late-1990s, when we had seven offsite adoption venues every day throughout the city in addition to our main shelter, there was not a single store selling dogs left in the city. We had out-competed them and they all went out of the animal selling business. When I was running the Tompkins County SPCA, potential adopters in our community faced two main choices: they could buy a kitten at a pet store for $50 or they could adopt one from us (in the same mall) for $30.

Unlike the pet store, our adoptions included sterilization, vaccinations, a free bag of cat food, a free visit to the veterinarian of the adopter’s choice, a free identification tag, a discount at the local pet supply, free grooming, a free guide to caring for their new kitten, free behavior advice for life, a discount on their next cup of coffee, the satisfaction of knowing they saved a life, and, during Christmas, Santa would deliver the kitten to their door. The pet store eventually approached us about working together by having us do cat adoptions in their store. Instead of selling animals, they began helping us find homes for ours.

The same thing is beginning to happen in central Texas, where No Kill reform efforts in various shelters are reducing the demand for purposely bred animals, as Ryan Clinton further explains:

If more Americans adopt dogs and cats from shelters rather than acquiring them from alternative sources like pet stores and on-line sellers, demand for commercially bred animals will necessarily decline. In fact, we’ve seen this come true in Central Texas: at least one large-scale breeder gave up in the face of increased competition from progressive area animal shelters and turned over his keys to a shelter to find homes for his animals… By saving shelter pets’ lives, No Kill policies and programs eat into commercial breeders’ profits.

If we reform our shelters, this could also be the story of every American community. Widespread No Kill success in our nation’s shelters would not only save the lives of almost four million animals every year, it—combined with legislative efforts to regulate, reform, close down, and eliminate their markets—would drive a dagger to the heart of the puppy and kitten mill industries. And yet HSUS, the ASPCA and PETA fight our efforts to reform shelters.

Worse, groups like HSUS, the ASPCA, and PETA act like puppy and kitten mills themselves. True animal lovers embrace the No Kill philosophy because they want to prevent harm to animals, such as their systematic slaughter in shelters. True animal lovers also want to shut down the commercial mill trade in animals because they want to prevent harm to these animals, such as their systematic abuse. That is ethically consistent. But PETA, HSUS, the ASPCA and their defenders ignore or fight reform efforts to stop shelter neglect, abuse, and killing which is the same type of harm that animals face in large-scale, commercial breeding operations for the pet store market.

PETA claims to want to stop puppy mill abuse but will defend the exact conduct if it occurs in a shelter. HSUS claims to want to stop puppy mill abuse but will give awards to shelters that sadistically abuse animals. The ASPCA not only fights shelter reform that would eliminate some of the worst abuses of the draconian shelter system we now have, but sends animals to be killed in those shelters. Neglect is neglect, abuse is abuse, killing is killing regardless of by whose hand that neglect, abuse, and killing is done. To look the other way at one because that neglect, abuse, and killing is done by “friends,” “colleagues,” or simply because the perpetrators call themselves a “humane society” is indefensible.

In the final analysis, it is HSUS, the ASPCA, and PETA which benefit puppy and kitten mills and the commercial breeding of animals, not No Kill advocates who refuse to subscribe to the lie of pet overpopulation which enables systematic killing. It is HSUS, the ASPCA, and PETA which benefit commercial breeding when they fight efforts to reform shelters and make them safe for animal lovers to both work at and adopt from. It is HSUS, the ASPCA, and PETA who act like puppy and kitten mills when they defend abuse and killing in shelters. And by extension, the people who defend these actions by HSUS, ASPCA, and PETA also benefit puppy and kitten mills, in spite of whatever disproven dogma—such as the myth of pet overpopulation—they may cling to in order to defend such a deadly and unethical position.

For further reading:

The Lie at the Heart of the Killing

The Enemy of Your Enemy

What’s In a Name?

Ethical Consistency for True Dog Lovers

Adopting Your Way Out of Killing

Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation & The No Kill Revolution in America

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Have a comment? Join the discussion by clicking here.

Here is my story: www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=11902

And this is my vision: http://vimeo.com/48445902

The Company Man

When Ed Sayres resigned from his $550,000 a year job as CEO of the ASPCA, I wrote ASPCA Board Chair Tim Wray and urged him not to hire yet another in a long line of empty suits. Specifically, I wrote,

The outgoing President of the organization you oversee, the ASPCA, leaves in his wake a legacy of controversy and betrayal. His tenure is marked by his heartless killing of Oreo and other animals who rescuers offered to save, his defeat of rescue rights laws in New York while championing laws that eviscerated shelter holding periods, of releasing manuals which sought to educate shelter directors about how to fight No Kill reform efforts (efforts that were characterized as essentially acts of terrorism), of promoting sham shelter “reform” programs which exacerbated rather than lessened shelter killing, of an animal cruelty investigation division which failed to do its job thereby leaving abused and suffering New York City animals to die, of funding operations that raise animals to be slaughtered for food, and of defending the cruel and abusive New York city pound. In short, Ed Sayres lack of philosophical commitment to the cause which he was entrusted to represent is evident in his tragic legacy, and can best be summed up in the statement he made to the most widely read newspaper in America, USA Today. In 2007, he was quoted as having said, “There is no room for No Kill as morally superior,” equating the needless killing of four million animals a year as the ethical equivalent of a movement which actually saves their lives.

After setting out how the ASPCA could truly be a leader in areas ranging from companion animals to wild animals to animal raised for food, I closed with a plea,

The possibilities are breathtaking, so I urge you not to do what the ASPCA Board has always done when choosing the next President of the ASPCA: do not elevate form over function. Do not choose someone who represents the lowest common denominator, but rather embrace a person of commitment and integrity who will rally the nation with the highest of aspirations. Do not take this decision lightly, but give it a consideration that is equal to its vast potential to help those who are now not only so horribly abused, but so misrepresented by those who are supposed to speak on their behalf as well. By making the right choice, the Board of Directors could not only breathe new and authentic life into the ASPCA motto, “We Are Their Voice,” the ASPCA would be given power to transform our country. The tenure of the next President of the ASPCA could be historic, a before-and-after moment in the cause of animal protection.

 

Given the vast, untapped potential that exists to help animals through the ASPCA; given how much the ASPCA could positively affect American society on behalf of animals in truly profound and lasting ways; and given the gravity of what is potentially at stake, I urge you not to pick yet another, in a long line, of empty suits.

 

The animals deserve better.

They won’t get better. Yesterday, the ASPCA put out a press release saying,

The ASPCA … announced that it has named Matthew E. Bershadker President and CEO. Mr. Bershadker is a 12-year veteran of the ASPCA, serving most recently as Senior Vice President of the Anti-Cruelty Group (ACG). Mr. Bershadker will assume the position June 1, succeeding Edwin Sayres, President and CEO since 2003.

 

Under Mr. Bershadker’s leadership, the ASPCA has risen to new heights in its response to cruelty and natural disasters. The Anti-Cruelty Group evolved from a fledgling team of responders to a robust, national program that confronts animal cruelty and suffering on all levels across the country. Mr. Bershadker helped form the Field Investigations & Response team to provide skilled support to state and federal agencies during large-scale puppy mill busts, dog fighting raids, animal hoarding cases, and other instances of animal cruelty as well as natural disasters such as the Joplin, Mo. tornado and Superstorm Sandy. The team has investigated hundreds of cases around the country. Last year, the ASPCA played a leadership role in the removal of 50 dogs from a Bronx dog fighting ring. Most recently, the ASPCA assisted federal and state authorities in the removal of nearly 100 dogs from a multi-state dog fighting ring.

 

Prior to leading the Anti-Cruelty Group, Mr. Bershadker served as Vice President of the ASPCA’s Development department, where he was responsible for creating fundraising strategy and implementing tactics for major gifts, planned giving, special events, capital campaign, and corporate and foundation grants.

In short, they hired a company man. When animal lovers emailed about Sayre’s war on animal lovers throughout his tenure, Wray defended his then-CEO saying that Sayres helped increase fundraising during his leadership to nearly $150,000,000 a year. To Wray, a money manager himself, profits appeared to define success, irrespective of how many animals were sent to the pound to be killed, how many animals were left to starve in the city, how much the ASPCA sided with cruel and abusive shelters.

The new CEO “was responsible for creating fundraising strategy and implementing tactics for major gifts, planned giving, special events, capital campaign, and corporate and foundation grants,” according to Wray, and therefore, he is qualified, period.

The ASPCA Board, however, claims they really hired him for his “success” at overseeing the Anti-Cruelty Group. Of course, to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s famous line, “it all depends upon what your definition of ‘success’ is.” In this case, failure is the new success.

The ASPCA allowed dogs to starve to death all over New York City. According to a Channel 11 expose,

Dogs, cats and other animals are suffering and even dying needlessly all over New York City, and the culprit behind their hurt, according to PIX11 News sources, is the management of an organization that’s supposed to be helping animals.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reported receiving $122 million in donations last year in its cause to prevent animal cruelty, but some whistleblowers told PIX11 News that the ASPCA is preventing its own animal cruelty investigators from doing their jobs.

The incompetence has had fatal consequences:

An HLE case file obtained by PIX11 News features some very disturbing images. They are about a half dozen photographs that a responding HLE investigator was required to take of a pit bull mix that was so severely emaciated and badly neglected that it died. The case file clearly points out in its narrative, “This case is 2 weeks old,” too long after the ASPCA received an anonymous complaint about the starved dog for HLE officers to step in and save the dog’s life…

 

That case is by no means isolated. PIX11 also obtained other case reports in which dogs were dead by the time investigators were finally given the case files for the called-in complaints. In one case, the investigator wasn’t able to respond to the complaint until seven days after it was called in. In another, the complaint wasn’t followed up for two-and-a-half months.

The ASPCA Press Release announcing the promotion said it was Bershadker’s job “to help protect companion animals that are in danger of potential abuse or neglect.” In the case of animals in the ASPCA’s own backyard, they failed to do so. The anti-cruelty department has also been rocked with allegations of perjury. And when the ASPCA itself was accused in a federal lawsuit of abuse claiming an ASPCA employee, with an alleged history of abuse, kicked to death a man’s dog who was being treated at the ASPCA veterinary hospital, the ASPCA did not admit wrongdoing. ASPCA humane law enforcement agents did not swing into action. Instead, the ASPCA covered up the abuse. It is not clear whether he was in charge of that department at the time, but he was in management and there is little reason to believe the results would have been different. Bershadker’s team routinely looked the other way at horrific neglect and abuse at the New York City pound, continuing to send animals to be abused and killed there, while the ASPCA defended the pound to the animals’ detriment.

According to a lawsuit in federal court, the ASPCA abusively killed this man’s dog and then covered it up.

Finally, Wray lauds Bershadker for his oversight of ASPCA rescues around the country, including during Superstorm Sandy. But what happened to many of the animals “rescued” by Bershadker’s group? After the photo-ops and after the fundraising appeals went out, they were sent to kill shelters. Even if these shelters did not kill any of the ASPCA animals, a dubious proposition in itself, they likely killed local animals to make room. Either way, animals needlessly lost their lives because an agency with annual revenues of nearly 150 million dollars, its own shelter in New York City, and access to the single largest adoption market in the nation didn’t care what happened to the animals once the money people donated was safely deposited in the bank.

Of course, Bershadker promises to take the ASPCA to the “next level.” And animal lovers want to believe, want to be wrong about him, want to hold out hope that he was just biding his time until he could take control and lead the ASPCA in a new direction: just like they wanted to believe when another company man, long-time PR spinmaster and HSUS lobbyist Wayne Pacelle was promoted to CEO of that organization. When he took over HSUS after ten years there, Pacelle also promised a new, improved HSUS. Specifically, he stated that HSUS,

[W]ill honor the highest ethical standards in pursuing our mission, working within the system to advance our objectives. At the same time, we will strive to be nimble, hard-hitting, and aggressive, seizing opportunities as they arise and pushing ahead in a determined way with our proactive agenda. We exist to change the status quo and to change social norms. As such, confrontation and controversy are not to be feared; instead, they are logical consequences of meaningful and effective action.

Instead, they got more of the same: more killing, more support of killing, and a defense of neglect and abuse of animals, so long as the neglect and abuse occurred in shelters. In other words, like Pacelle before him, there is little reason to elevate hope above experience with Bershadker. When someone shows you who they are and what they represent over and over again, believe them. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Learn more:

The ASPCA Allows Dogs to Starve to Death

In the Arms of the Angel of Death

No More Empty Suits

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Have a comment? Join the discussion by clicking here.

Here is my story: www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=11902

And this is my vision: http://vimeo.com/48445902

Death, the Great Equalizer

For most of his life, my dog, Pickles, has been afraid of strangers. Although age and infirmity have mellowed this tendency, his reaction to the new or foreign has generally been one of suspicion and caution. When approached by a stranger, he lets out a low rumble, then a growl and finally a bark, complete with raised hackles. His message: keep away, the same message his mother repeatedly gave to those who worked at the shelter where she gave birth. Very few people could get near his mother at the shelter. She, too, did not like strangers.

I decided to adopt Pickles when he was seven weeks old and just back from foster care. That was 13 years ago. The shelter’s dog trainer was with me. Pickles and his brother, Top-Top, were the last two of a litter of five. As I sat on the ground, his brother came running toward me, climbed on top of me, wiggling his whole body in delight. Pickles stayed back, eyeing me suspiciously. It took a lot of coaxing to get him to come to me. The trainer recommended I adopt Top-Top. “That one,” she said pointing to Pickles, “will give you trouble.” I didn’t need to hear any more. I was sold, but not in the way she intended. He needed me. So I adopted Pickles (and Top-Top) on the spot. He did give us trouble, growling and snarling and barking at strangers. Pickles is, after all, his mother’s son.

To us, though, Pickles has always been an angel. When offered food, he opens his mouth slightly, careful to grab only with the slightest pressure, to avoid biting the hand that feeds him. He is affectionate, devoted, loving. We are his peeps. But we are not the only ones.

When Pickles was just a puppy, he came to work with me at the San Francisco SPCA every day. Besides my family, one person he grew up with was my friend and coworker, Mike Baus. He saw Mike and spent time with Mike five days a week. In fact, coworkers who Pickles finally accepted after months of eyeing them suspiciously and were allowed to enter the office considered it a high honor. Pickles was picky about the people he let into his circle, and it came to be regarded as an exclusive club. To be in Pickles’ good graces meant you were something special. And once you were in, you were in, forever.

We moved from California to New York and Pickles did not see Mike for three years. When Mike came to visit us, Pickles was outside in the yard. As Mike pulled up in his rental car, Pickles let us know how he felt about this stranger in our midst. Weary, he let out his signature low rumble of discontent. As Mike exited the car, the rumble became a growl. On cue, the hackles came up, but then something else happened. He cocked his head slightly and a look of recognition came across his face. It was Mike! The hackles receded and Pickles celebrated, barking wildly, jumping on him, and licking his face in a way he never would with anyone but our family. To Pickles, Mike was family, the prodigal son who returned after a three year hiatus.

Dogs are not alone in celebrating family. In a workshop on extending the No Kill safety net to wildlife at last year’s No Kill Conference, Mike Fry, former Clinic Coordinator for the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center at the University of Minnesota and the former Rehabilitation Manager for the HOWL Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Seattle, Washington, told the story of an injured crow.

This particular crow had become entangled in kite string high in an old Oak tree in the yard of a resident of St. Paul. Unwilling to watch the bird suffer, the home owner where the tree grew climbed the tree and cut the crow free. Unfortunately, the kite string had been wrapped tightly around the bird’s left wing for an extended period of time, resulting in loss of blood flow and significant tissue damage. The bird could not fly. Because of the extent of the damage, rehabilitation took many weeks. Eventually, the crow recovered and was released at the base of the Oak tree from which he had been rescued.

When his transport carrier was opened, he hesitated for a moment, then jumped out and quickly flew to the top of the tree. Immediately, he began jumping up and down, bobbing his head and cawing enthusiastically. It was a happy dance, celebrating his return home. Within seconds, crows from throughout the neighborhood flew to the tree, where they joined in the dance. Soon the tree was full of bobbing, bouncing and cawing crows, celebrating the return of their friend. Mike credits this incident with a renewed appreciation for the significance of his work as a wildlife rehabber: saving a wild animal doesn’t just help the sick or injured animal, but the friends and family members of that animal, too, who no doubt notice the loss of their companion or, in the case of animals who mate for life as many birds do, their life’s partner.

Animals are capable of great joy when it comes to those they know and love. So it should be no surprise that they also are capable of great sorrow. In the recent Time magazine article “The Mystery of Animal Grief,” the author writes,

A dead crow lying in the open will quickly attract two or three other crows. They dive and swoop and scold—emitting a very particular call that summons up to a hundred other members of the flock. With near ceremonial coordination, they land and surround the body, often in complete silence. Some may bring sticks or bits of grass and lay them next to—or even on top of—the remains.

He also explains how cats will cry at the loss of a mate, elephants will reverently caress the bones of a departed friend even years after their death and dogs and rabbits mourn, too: “[S]orrow following a death has been observed on the farm—among goats, pigs, ducks—and in the oceans…” Indeed, there is great evidence proving that, like humans, animals “honor, mourn and even hold wakes for their dead.”

Animals grieve, and grieving requires awareness of a before and an after, a difference between then and now, of possession, or for the purposes of this discussion, the presence of someone dear, and the subsequent loss of that someone and the pain and emptiness that their departure creates. Like us, animals suffer from death—not only do they flee harm that might cause it to themselves, but they feel pain from the death of other animals with whom they are bonded. “In humans,” the author writes, “mourning is mediated by the frontal cortex, the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala, a deeply seated structure that processes emotions. We share that basic anatomy with many other animals…”

Yet despite the research that shows that animals are aware of death and both fear and mourn it, groups like PETA state that killing animals is not unethical if it is done by lethal injection. According to PETA staff, ‘it is just like being put under anesthesia for spay/neuter, with the only difference being that the animal never wakes up.’ But whether an individual is aware they are about to be killed isn’t why it is wrong to take someone else’s life. In the horrifying 1978 thriller, Coma, a doctor intentionally put patients into a coma (and ultimately killed them) when they were admitted to a hospital for surgery and were under for anesthesia. The victims had no concept of their own death because they simply never woke up. By PETA’s logic, this sort of killing is perfectly acceptable, a viewpoint made all the more absurd by the growing body of evidence that proves PETA’s assertion that animals do not value their lives as we do is not true. Not only does their proven ability to mourn prove an awareness of death, but so does the behavior of animals forced to witness the killing of other animals.

A former Los Angeles and New York City pound director once stated that animals “do not have a conception of death,” a claim disproved not only by the science, but by the very practices in his own shelters. In fact, go to any regressive shelter, where animals are killed in front of each other because lining them up and killing them in a row is quicker and more efficient. In these shelters, kittens are killed in front of their mother, and mothers are killed in front of their puppies, and dogs and cats are killed in front of others. As employees go down the row, you will see concern, stress, fear, and even resistance on the part of the others. Brain studies of animals in situations involving death show what they show in humans: higher amygdala activation. They know death and they understand its threat to themselves and to others, just like we do.

Animals are only like us—or in Ingrid Newkirk’s famous pronouncement, “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy”—when PETA, HSUS, and others want others to treat animals a certain way, but not when it comes to the inhumane way they treat animals (as trash to be disposed of). In other words, when they are the ones harming animals, a dog is no longer a boy. Why?

It is easier for PETA to kill, for shelter directors to kill, and for groups like HSUS to defend killing, if they can downplay the gravity of what they are doing by continuing to maintain the fiction that animals are not like us when it doesn’t suit them. So long as animals are incapable of grief, so long as they cannot conceptualize death, killing them (if it done by lethal injection) doesn’t matter to these groups, effectively eviscerating not just the science, but the entire philosophical and ethical foundation of the animal protection movement. In both their practices and their defense of killing, they model to the American public the very notions they should be working hardest to overcome: the lie that animals have no value and that robbing them of their life is of no moral consequence.

But try as they might, once again, the truth will out. And the truth is simple: we can no longer conveniently deny that animals lack awareness, do not grieve, lack morality, and have no language. They do. In other words, they are just like us. But you do not need to be a scientist to make that connection. In fact, science is finally catching up to what every person who shares his/her life with an animal companion has known for decades.

When your dog dies, you will grieve. When you die, your dog will grieve. That alone should take killing off the table.

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Postscript: In one sense, it should not matter whether animals are like us or not. In other words, whether animals are capable of the same range of emotions or the same abilities as humans has nothing to do with whether they have a right to live and the right to be treated compassionately. However, groups like PETA claim animals do not have the “right to life” and maintain the fiction that they are promoting their “welfare” in killing animals by preventing potential future suffering. That this is a logical contradiction is not hard to see (harming animals now to prevent possible future harm), but given the science, killing an animal can no longer be rationalized by the false and convenient cover of “animal welfare.” Killing itself robs an animal of something they value, and that is incompatible not only with animal rights, but animal welfare, too, another reason why “animal welfare” without animal rights is impossible: where there is no respect for life, there is no regard for welfare.

Have a comment? Join the discussion by clicking here.

Here is my story: www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=11902

And this is my vision: http://vimeo.com/48445902

The Myth of “Animal Welfare”

“Humane” Meat, Shelter Killing and How HSUS, the ASPCA, PETA, and AHA Enable Abuse & Killing of All Animals

By Nathan & Jennifer Winograd

To Vegans & Animal Rights Activists Who Support the Killing of Companion Animals:

Animal shelters in this country exist for primarily one purpose: to provide a safety-net of care for our nation’s homeless animals. With half of all animals entering our shelters being killed rather than given the new beginning that they not only deserve, but which the No Kill movement has proven unequivocally is possible, to say that most of our animal shelters are failing in their mission is a gross understatement. But the betrayal goes even deeper than the killing, although by far that is the greatest harm. Because in addition to taking the lives of four million animals a year, animal shelters in this country are rife with abuse and neglect as well. Why? Because they kill.

Studies of slaughterhouse workers have found that in order to cope with the fact that they are paid to kill day in and day out, self-preservation motivates those workers to devalue animals in order to make what they are doing less morally reprehensible. In other words, the workers make the animals unworthy of any consideration on their behalf. The two most common methods of achieving this are indifference to animal suffering and even intensifying it, becoming sadistic toward the animals. In too many communities, the implications for shelters are frightening: American shelters are themselves frequently little more than slaughterhouses. By its very nature, therefore, shelter killing breeds a lack of compassion and caring for animals.

And not only do people in shelters work at a place that commits this ultimate form of violence, they have, in fact, been hired to do exactly that. Can we really be surprised when they don’t clean thoroughly, don’t feed the animals, handle them too roughly, or neglect and abuse them? How does shoddy cleaning or rough handling or failing to feed the animals compare with putting an animal to death? Because shelter workers understand that they have the power to kill shelter animals, and will in fact kill many of them, every interaction they have with those animals is influenced by their perception that the animals do not matter, that their lives are cheap and expendable and that they are destined for the garbage heap.

The tragic state of American animal shelters proves that when the harm of killing animals is permissible, other kinds of harm are fostered as well. And that is why the historical distinction between “animal rights” and “animal welfare” is a false one. Where there is no respect for life, there is no regard for welfare.

Indeed, the right to life should be the bedrock of any movement that claims to be rights-based, as the animal rights movement by its very name, does. Not only because each animal, like each of us, has an inalienable right to life, but because all the other things the animal protection movement claims to be seeking on behalf of animals are impossible without that first and most essential right. Without the right to life, no other “rights” can be guaranteed. How can we ensure animals the right to food, water, shelter and kind treatment, when those things can be taken away by killing?

Yet tragically, there is not a single, large national animal protection organization that represents a consistent moral philosophy for animals, one that advocates that animals have both a right to be free from suffering and a right to live. The ASPCA doesn’t. The Humane Society of the United States doesn’t. PETA doesn’t. And the American Humane Association doesn’t. And so their philosophy and actions on behalf of animals are inconsistent, sloppy, harmful and ultimately deadly.

With one hand, PETA passes out literature encouraging people to go vegan while the other hand injects thousands of animals, even species of animals raised for food, with a fatal dose of poison. HSUS claims to oppose the clubbing of baby seals in front of their mother, but gives a “Shelter We Love” award to a shelter where employees placed a mother cat and her kitten into a gas chamber with a raccoon so that they could watch the animals fight before turning on the gas, killing those animals slowly and painfully and laughing while they did so. The ASPCA’s makes millions on their now infamous commercials promising to protect abused and neglected animals in need even as they send the neediest of animals dropped on their doorstep down the street to be killed at one of the most abusive and filthy shelters in the nation and have allowed dogs to starve to death all over New York City. And last but by no means least, the American Humane Association, an organization that claims to be the “the nation’s voice for the protection of animals,” not only trains people to kill healthy companion animals with their “Euthanasia by Injection” workshops (“hands-on” workshops where living animals are killed) but condones, encourages and enables the suffering of millions of animals raised for food with their sham “Certified Humane” label which perpetuates the myth of humane meat.

Which of these harms would be permissible were these organizations to authentically represent a true animal rights philosophy, one that recognizes the inherent right to live of every animal? None of them. How could they justify their actions which lead to animal suffering and death in light of a concomitant belief that animals, like people, have an unalienable right to live? They couldn’t. And yet, paradoxically, because I criticize these groups for moral inconsistency that sabotages our cause and for actions that they take which undermine rather than further the rights and well-being of animals, I am constantly attacked by the very people who should share my concerns: my fellow animal rights activists and vegans.

And so while I normally post vegan-related blogs on allamericanvegan.com, my website devoted to vegan advocacy, I wanted to post this article on the page that my detractors continually monitor—this one—so I can be sure that they will see it. I want those who claim to be vegan—who claim to care about the plight of animals raised for food—but who constantly condemn me for criticizing the large, national groups they love for the actions they take which brutally harm companion animals to see what, exactly, they are enabling when they defend groups which claim to speak for animals but do not promote their right to live. I want them to see how they don’t just hurt dogs and cats whose lives and rights they so casually discard, but how they enable the suffering and killing of animals they do claim to care about—chickens, cows and pigs. I want them to see the crimes against animals which a belief in the myth of a “humane death” enables and which they, in turn, further enable by promoting the groups that champion such a myth.

Like HSUS, the ASPCA, and PETA, the American Humane Association defends animal shelters that kill animals despite readily available lifesaving alternatives. AHA in fact, teaches people how to kill healthy and treatable animals and provides them with animals to kill. And so it should come as no surprise that when Foster Farms slits the throats of millions of chickens every year or when other factory farms put live, baby male chicks into a giant grinder because they don’t lay eggs or grow fast enough to provide maximum profitability to the industry. AHA does not condemn it. Instead, they give it a seal of approval.

Recently, Foster Farms announced that they were awarded the American Humane Association’s “Humane Certified” label which now appears on the package of every dead Foster Farms chicken sold in America. Thanks to AHA, American consumers will be lulled into a false sense of complacency that eating animals is consistent with being humane, that supporting a company that kills millions of animals a year is consistent with a belief in animal protection. Like HSUS and the ASPCA which likewise promote the myth that raising and killing animals for food can be “humane”–and like PETA which, in Ingrid Newkirk’s own words, does “not support right to life for animals” and who told the New York Times that when it comes to people eating animals, “screw the principles”–when AHA condones and enables harm to animals, when they call cooking the bodies of dead animals a “joy” and recipes which call for those bodies “scrumptious,” they do so on behalf of the entire animal protection movement.

According to AHA, Foster Farms raises its chickens in a humane manner. But, what, exactly, do they mean by “humane?”

Does it prevent animals from being kept in crowded indoor cages in warehouses? No.

 

Does it require chickens to be allowed to go outside, to get fresh air and sunlight, to be able to act in accordance with all of their instincts to ensure their happiness and psychological as well as physical well-being? No.

 

Does it mean you cannot cut the beaks of chicks? No.

 

Does it mean that you cannot place live, newborn male chicks into a grinder to be killed? No.

 

Does it prevent chickens from being hung upside down by the feet, electrically stunned, and then have their throats slit? No.

 

Does it mean you cannot cut the teeth of piglets? No.

 

Does it mean you cannot cut the tails off pigs? No.

 

Does it mean you cannot use an electric prod on cows? No.

 

Does it mean that you cannot use restraints to forcibly inseminate a cow or a pig? No.

 

Does it prevent castration of newborn calves by placing a rubber band around their scrotum to cut off blood supply? No.

 

And, like chickens, does it mean that these cows and pigs are not ultimately slaughtered? No.

Under what warped definition of “humane” can a process that ends with animals having their throats slit possibly qualify? The kind where Foster Farms pays AHA a royalty/certification fee to say so.* Whether by selling out companion animals or those raised and then killed for food, it is evident that AHA and the other national organizations do not speak for the animals, but for the people and industries which harm them. That much is evident. The question becomes: why do those who should be their most ardent critics—vegans and animal rights activists—defend them?

The simple answer is that they have been taught to. With the lie that killing companion animals is a “necessity” and that the system of animal agriculture based on exploitation and killing can be “humane;” with the philosophy that no one within the animal protection movement is allowed to stand up for principles if it means speaking out against powerful organizations; in a movement in which cults of personality are everything and names like Newkirk, Pacelle and others demand unquestioned allegiance even when they consistently betray the cause they have pledged to protect; and by selling a model of dependency where activism means donating and deferring to large organizations rather than empowering the grassroots to effect local, and by extension, national change, these groups not only shield themselves from scrutiny and accountability for their harmful actions, but they have taught legions of activists to regard the most sincere and authentic voices within the animal protection movement—those who question the prevailing dogma and who argue that all animals have an inalienable right to live—as dangerous and threatening instead.

Whether it packaged as “humane meat” or “pet overpopulation,” the idea that killing animals is acceptable if done for the right reasons, by the right people or under the right circumstances are merely different manifestations of the same insidious lie that permeates and hinders the animal protection movement at the beginning of the 21st century: that killing animals who are not suffering can be humane. It can’t. It isn’t. And if you are a person who is going to claim to speak on behalf of animals, then authenticity, morality, and integrity compel you to challenge and stand up to this pernicious idea and the groups that perpetuate it.

* AHA does not say how much its “royalty” or “certification fee” amounts to. In the past, companies have paid tens of thousands of dollars for an AHA humane seal.

For further reading:

ASPCA Donates to Kill Chickens

Is It All Its Cracked Up to Be?

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Have a comment? Join the discussion by clicking here.

What’s In A Name?

This year, we have shelter reform legislation pending in several states with more to come. In Minnesota, for example, there’s a bill pending that would ban the use of the cruel gas chamber, end the practice of convenience killing (killing when there are empty cages), end the practice of retribution killing (killing when rescue groups are willing to save them), end the practice of allowing animals to languish without prompt and necessary care, and end the practice of killing healthy “owner surrendered” animals within minutes of arrival. As always, we are going to fight an uphill battle because the very groups—HSUS, the ASPCA, PETA, and state animal control/humane groups—that should be leading the charge do not support our efforts and, in fact, historically fight us. But this year, we are coming prepared and intend to educate legislators that the groups they defer to as the undisputed sheltering “experts” are in fact the primary roadblock to a No Kill nation. What’s in a Name? from the No Kill Advocacy Center will allow legislators and policy makers to understand why groups like HSUS, the ASPCA and PETA oppose badly needed shelter reform legislation.

To download or print your free copy and send to your legislators, click here.

 

For other shelter reform guides, including How Does Your Community’s Shelter Measure Up?, No Kill 101, Dollars & Sense, and more, visit the No Kill Advocate’s Toolkit by clicking here.

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In 2012, over one new community per week achieved a save rate of at least 90% and as high as 99%. The No Kill revolution is ON THE MARCH. Join me as we celebrate that achievement and teach you how to do the same: nokillconference.org

No More Empty Suits

A letter to Tim Wray, Chairman of the ASPCA Board of Directors

By Nathan & Jennifer Winograd

The outgoing President of the organization you oversee, the ASPCA, leaves in his wake a legacy of controversy and betrayal. His tenure is marked by his heartless killing of Oreo and other animals who rescuers offered to save, his defeat of rescue rights laws in New York while championing laws that eviscerated shelter holding periods, of releasing manuals which sought to educate shelter directors about how to fight No Kill reform efforts (efforts that were characterized as essentially acts of terrorism), of promoting sham shelter “reform” programs which exacerbated rather than lessened shelter killing, of an animal cruelty investigation division which failed to do its job thereby leaving abused and suffering New York City animals to die, of funding operations that raise animals to be slaughtered for food, and of defending the cruel and abusive New York city pound. In short, Ed Sayres lack of philosophical commitment to the cause which he was entrusted to represent is evident in his tragic legacy, and can best be summed up in the statement he made to the most widely read newspaper in America, USA Today. In 2007, he was quoted as having said, “There is no room for No Kill as morally superior,” equating the needless killing of four million animals a year as the ethical equivalent of a movement which actually saves their lives.

As bad as Sayres was, as a President of the ASPCA, he was rather typical in his lack of positive accomplishment for animals. Besides Henry Bergh, there isn’t a single person who has served as the former President of the ASPCA over the last 100 years whose name we celebrate or remember as having achieved substantive progress for animals, of having authentically and effectively championed the cause or furthered the animal protection movement in any meaningful way. Why? Because they were not expected to.

The qualifications the Board of Directors has looked for when recruiting for the job of ASPCA President have historically been simple ones: to look the part, to give the impression of being concerned about animal welfare by merely regurgitating clichés about the human-animal bond, to be able to rub elbows with rich people and to have a body temperature in the range of 98.6 that would occasionally (though not reliably) warm the seat vacated when the great Henry Bergh, the tireless and dedicated founder of the ASPCA, died. That’s it. The ASPCA of 2013 is not a firebrand, it is not on the front lines of the cause of animal protection, and for most people, its name and reputation do not connote much more than sad, heart-wrenching commercials on television or calendars filled with pictures of puppies and kittens.

And yet with so much money and so much influence at their disposal, Ed Sayres and every one of his predecessors could have emulated Bergh’s legacy and changed American society for the better had they actually wanted to do so. When rescue rights access legislation was pending in New York State, despite over 20,000 calls and emails of support for the bill which shut down the email servers in Albany two times, all it took to defeat the bill was the ASPCA’s powerful opposition. With people like Sayres at the helm of the ASPCA, that power has either been left untapped or used to the detriment of animals. But it could be used for their benefit—and not just the betterment of animals in shelters, but all animals.

Though the platform most commonly associated with the ASPCA is companion animals, that was not the founding vision for the organization. Henry Bergh was a fierce advocate for animals exploited in a variety of contexts. During his lifetime, he not only fought the New York City dogcatchers, he opposed hunting (helping to invent the clay pigeon) and almost succeeded in getting it banned statewide. He opposed vivisection, he advocated for animals raised for food, and he was relentless in his advocacy for “working animals.” In fact, had the ASPCA not gone off the rails after his death, not only abandoning Bergh’s vision by accepting the contract to run the city pound but the precedent that only a dedicated, passionate animal lover be entrusted to run the organization, what might the ASPCA look like today? What, in fact, could it look like today with the right person in charge? I urge you to consider those questions as you choose the next President of the ASPCA.

With a revenue stream of almost 150 million dollars annually, the ASPCA has virtually unlimited resources. Yet the vast majority of those donor dollars are now squandered on meaningless campaigns that are not driven by a concrete agenda, or on programs such as its Poison Control Hotline (providing the public with information any vet or a Google search can provide) which do nothing to address the causes of animal suffering and death in America. At its best, the ASPCA is merely ineffective. At its worst, it causes animal suffering and death. It is bloated, bureaucratic, and insincere. But it doesn’t have to be. It could, in fact, be amazing.

A genuine, dedicated, hard-working ASPCA would have the following departments working on the following issues in the following ways:

Companion Animals
Right now, the ASPCA fights No Kill reformers and No Kill legislation while celebrating cruel and abusive shelters that kill. It champions the abusive New York City pound, undermining No Kill reformers in the city, and it even sends animals to the pound where they are killed. It claims to rescue animals from high-profile abuse situations and raises a lot of money while doing so, but often sends the animals they claim to “rescue” to shelters where they are killed or displace local animals who are killed to make room for the animals they send.

Imagine, instead, an ASPCA that is an uncompromising champion of No Kill, the No Kill Equation, No Kill reformers and the laws mandating No Kill policies and procedures in shelters nationwide. Through its publications, through a national conference and in its communications with the sheltering industry and the American public, the ASPCA could champion No Kill and provide the guidance and tools for shelters to achieve it, forcing its now powerful detractors to embrace No Kill as well. This would erode all opposition and pave the way for a No Kill nation, and it would elevate a new group of individuals to positions of authority and leadership within the movement, replacing the current tier of failed shelter directors who tenaciously defend killing with people who reject it.

And a No Kill nation would benefit not just the animals entering shelters who would no longer be killed, but the larger animal rights platform as well. Today, when animal lovers go to work at traditional animal shelters (often SPCAs or humane societies), they often do not remain, uncomfortable working in an environment of killing that is also frequently abusive. By making these organizations safe for animals, we make them safe for animal lovers to return to, as well. And once the No Kill movement reorients these organizations away from killing and toward protecting life, they, like the ASPCA, can return to the cause of their early founders: making the town or city in which they reside a more humane place for all animals, regardless of species. A No Kill nation would mean that thousands of existing SPCA’s and humane societies across the nation recovering their original missions, missions they abandoned when they took over the job of killing.

And with an authentic ASPCA they can look to for guidance, an ASPCA setting a national agenda and a national example of what a humane society or an SPCA should be, the animals would gain powerful advocates in virtually every community in America. Allies that would further the following causes as well:

Wildlife
Today, hunting is on the decline. Interest groups that champion hunting know this, and are working to encourage younger generations to take up the killing to stop this decline. A campaign geared towards young people that opposed hunting by appealing to their compassion and love of animals would counter this effort and push hunting closer to extinction.

Millions of animals die on our highways every year and no national animal protection group is working to research and seek implementation of strategies to make our roads safe for wildlife. The ASPCA could lead this effort, as well as researching and encouraging methods of organizing cities and building structures that minimize impact and dangers for wild animals. In Toronto, for example, all new building projects require “bird friendly” design to avoid collisions. The ASPCA could push for such standards to be required by building codes across America.

Nationwide, invasion biologists and “environmentalists” are stepping up their attacks against animals they label as “invasive.” They kill with poisons, traps, fire and guns, while not a single animal protection organization is challenging the flawed moral and scientific basis for such distinctions or highlighting and condemning the health dangers, environmental havoc and suffering such efforts result in. The ASPCA could speak out against this dangerous movement, countering its hyperbole, hysteria and biological xenophobia with science, and its intolerance with calls for compassion and respect for the inherent rights of all beings regardless of their antecedents.

Many laws which protect wild animals, moreover, are based on protecting species rather than individual rights. To many environmentalists, animals are judged worthy of activism on their behalf in relation to how useful they are to humans or how many members of their species exist. There is no objection to taking the lives of animals such as crows, raccoons, or rats, animals belonging to species which are plentiful or have no material value to humans. Yet if there are limited numbers of a species humans have traditionally exploited, or if a species is threatened with extinction, environmentalists advocate that we adjust behaviors negatively impacting their numbers. For instance, some non-profit organizations have mounted campaigns encouraging the public to eat only fish caught in accordance with their “sustainability” standards. These organizations are seeking to ensure the continuation of certain species not because they believe individual fish deserve our respect but because some species, those which historically have been exploited as food, are being pushed to the brink of extinction by what they call “overfishing.” Ultimately what they want are limitations on how many animals of certain species can be killed. Killing is acceptable so long as it falls within certain parameters. In other words, they want to make sure we don’t kill all the fish so that there will be some left to kill indefinitely. That is the essence of the environmental philosophy which predominates today, but is this really what “environmentalism” should be?

A true environmentally-friendly society would seek to meet the needs of humans through the least destructive and most non-violent means we can imagine. It would no longer allow animals to be regarded as “resources.” It would interfere in the lives of other animals as little as possible, grant protection to the habitats animals need in order to thrive, and, above all, be guided by the principle that respect for sentient life is paramount, irrespective of the species in which that life is manifest. To be authentic, environmentalism must be grounded in a foundation of animal rights. In fact, we must come to regard the two movements as one and the same. The ASPCA could embrace and publicly promote this approach to environmentalism.

Animals Raised for Food
Today, the ASPCA’s “advocacy” for animals killed for food is to perpetuate the myth of humane meat and to partner and even fund companies which raise animals for slaughter. One of the first things the ASPCA needs to do in working to help animals killed for food is to dissolve these partnerships. Just as important, it must also work to render meat, eggs and dairy obsolete by teaching Americans what to eat instead, and by working to improve the taste, convenience and availability of vegan foods nationwide so it is easier for people to make humane dietary choices.

Imagine an entire department at the ASPCA dedicated to laying the infrastructure necessary to transition our country to veganism. This department would be dedicated to increasing vegan options at restaurants, grocery stores, schools, hotels, amusement parks, sporting venues—everywhere Americans work, live and play. It could have an in-house research and development department developing cutting edge vegan analogs and a restaurant in New York City which featured these new and exciting foods. ASPCA employees from this department could encourage the veganization of America’s favorite brand name foods by meeting with representatives from food companies, promising to promote popular foods in exchange for veganizing them. It could offer the public classes on how to be vegan. It could offer vegan cooking classes, some of them specifically designed for chefs to encourage restaurants to begin offering delicious vegan options. It could sponsor the public distribution of free meals or free samples of vegan foods throughout the year and throughout the nation to introduce Americans to delicious vegan food: vegan BBQ’s on the Fourth of July, turkey-free dinners on Thanksgiving, etc. And every day of the year, ASPCA food trucks could tour the nation, handing out free samples and coupons for tasty vegan foods, pamphlets that encourage them to go vegan as well as cookbooks filled with recipes for delicious vegan foods; while teams researched and publicly exposed the animal cruelty occurring in farms so that Americans would be motivated to embrace the more humane way of eating that the ASPCA is so effectively promoting.

Serving the Community of New York City
Locally, the ASPCA could make New York a No Kill city. It could end the carriage horse trade and place those horses into an ASPCA sanctuary where they could live out the remainder of their lives in peace. It could create animal ambulances to care for animals who have been injured in the streets. It could promote pro-pet policies: housing, rentals, restaurants (integrating animals into daily life). It could provide free veterinary care for the animals of homeless people.

In addition, like the traditional sheltering establishment, the wildlife rehabilitation community is plagued with harmful dogma that leads to the killing of animals. The ASPCA could create its own wildlife rehabilitation program for the city of New York, one that include lifetime sanctuary care for animals who could not be released safely into the wild, and one that would be based on No Kill principles, thereby providing an alternative No Kill model of wildlife rehabilitation that could begin to challenge the current, deadly paradigm which permeates that field. The ASPCA could also push the city of New York to embrace only the most innovative, humane and non-lethal alternatives when handling conflicts with animals historically viewed as “pests” such as rodent-proofing buildings rather than using traps and poisons. And the ASPCA could create local, NYC campaigns, for example, that teach tolerance and respect for the wild animals who also call NYC their home, including skunks, opossums, raccoons, pigeons and rats. These campaigns (bus posters, billboards, etc.) could highlight the qualities of animals that people are likely to find endearing and which might teach them to view these animals in more positive light, such as info about pigeons mating for life, or male pigeons being very dedicated fathers, sharing equally in the task of rearing their young.

These campaigns would not only save animals locally, they would have a parallel, national impact. And they are just the tip of the iceberg of what can and needs to be done for animals in the United States. There are many more opportunities to remediate common practices which currently cause animals to suffer and die, including vivisection and entertainment. The ASPCA could lead and effort to replace dissection in American schools with cutting edge 3-D and computer modeling, to urge zoos and aquariums to transition into sanctuaries for animals who cannot be released safely into the wild, to replace the use of animals in film with computer generated imagery and other technologies. Each of these areas could become an ASPCA department; each department could be tasked with devising concrete goals and strategies to bring an end to the particular form of animal exploitation they are tasked with eliminating.

A President Henry Bergh Would Be Proud Of
Were the ASPCA to embrace platforms of this nature, to put real action behind its now hollow rhetoric, not only would the ASPCA be transformed, but the entire animal protection movement would be as well. Other large national groups which are now long on rhetoric but short on delivering substantive change would be forced to evolve in order to effectively compete with the ASPCA. Right now, the most authentic voices in animal protection are in the grassroots; the least sincere are in positions of power. A new ASPCA President could change this by staffing the ASPCA with bright, passionate animal lovers, empowering those whose allegiance is to the animals first, and strip away power from those who place the interests of colleagues or industries which harm and exploit animals before the animals themselves. A sincere, hard-working, determined and goal-oriented ASPCA could accomplish in a manner of years what would take the grassroots decades to achieve. There is now so much untapped potential for animals laying fallow that the ASPCA would no doubt succeed in ways that would be nothing short of astounding.

The possibilities are breathtaking, so I urge you not to do what the ASPCA Board has always done when choosing the next President of the ASPCA: do not elevate form over function. Do not choose someone who represents the lowest common denominator, but rather embrace a person of commitment and integrity who will rally the nation with the highest of aspirations. Do not take this decision lightly, but give it a consideration that is equal to its vast potential to help those who are now not only so horribly abused, but so misrepresented by those who are supposed to speak on their behalf as well. By making the right choice, the Board of Directors could not only breathe new and authentic life into the ASPCA motto, “We Are Their Voice,” the ASPCA would be given power to transform our country. The tenure of the next President of the ASPCA could be historic, a before-and-after moment in the cause of animal protection.

Given the vast, untapped potential that exists to help animals through the ASPCA; given how much the ASPCA could positively affect American society on behalf of animals in truly profound and lasting ways; and given the gravity of what is potentially at stake, I urge you not to pick yet another, in a long line, of empty suits.

The animals deserve better.

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In 2012, over one new community per week achieved a save rate of at least 90% and as high as 99%. The No Kill revolution is ON THE MARCH. Join me as we celebrate that achievement and teach you how to do the same: nokillconference.org

The ASPCA Allows Dogs to Starve

Last year, the ASPCA had total revenues which were just shy of $150 million dollars. That not only made it the richest SPCA in the country, it is one of the richest 200 charities in the nation. Yet, it adopts out less animals than some rescue groups and small shelters. It fights progressive shelter reform legislation that would save lives. It defends corrupt shelters who neglect and then needlessly kill animals. It fights No Kill efforts nationwide. Rather than treat them, it sends animals, including kittens, to the local pound to be killed. Its animal hospital has a history of abuse. And now an expose by a local news station has uncovered that its humane law enforcement division is allowing abused animals to die all over New York City.

In the latest scandal, Channel 11 reports,

Dogs, cats and other animals are suffering and even dying needlessly all over New York City, and the culprit behind their hurt, according to PIX11 News sources, is the management of an organization that’s supposed to be helping animals.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reported receiving $122 million in donations last year in its cause to prevent animal cruelty, but some whistleblowers told PIX11 News that the ASPCA is preventing its own animal cruelty investigators from doing their jobs.

The incompetence has had fatal consequences:

An HLE case file obtained by PIX11 News features some very disturbing images. They are about a half dozen photographs that a responding HLE investigator was required to take of a pit bull mix that was so severely emaciated and badly neglected that it died. The case file clearly points out in its narrative, “This case is 2 weeks old,” too long after the ASPCA received an anonymous complaint about the starved dog for HLE officers to step in and save the dog’s life…

 

That case is by no means isolated. PIX11 also obtained other case reports in which dogs were dead by the time investigators were finally given the case files for the called-in complaints. In one case, the investigator wasn’t able to respond to the complaint until seven days after it was called in. In another, the complaint wasn’t followed up for two-and-a-half months.

The ASPCA was founded by Henry Bergh, a man of great conviction and a tireless fighter for animals. “Day after day,” Bergh once wrote,

I am in slaughterhouses; or lying in wait at midnight with a squad of police near some dog pit; through the filthy markets and about the rotten docks; out into the crowded and dangerous streets; lifting a fallen horse to his feet, and perhaps sending the driver before a magistrate; penetrating dark and unwholesome buildings where I inspect collars and saddles for raw flesh; then lecturing in public schools to children, and again to adult Societies. Thus my whole life is spent.

Yet, today’s ASPCA, with unlimited resources and unlimited staff, cannot even investigate cases a few simply cases of dogs being starved to death. Bergh once said that,

The chief obstacle to success of movements like this [is] that they almost invariably gravitate into questions of money or politics. Such questions are repudiated here completely… If I were paid a large salary… I should lose that enthusiasm which has been my strength and my safeguard.

In 2010, the ASPCA paid its president over half a million dollars—$555,824—in salary and other compensation. It is no surprise that it also has spent the better part of the last 50 years defending killing and fighting reform efforts that would expose, by example, how ineffective and waste that organization has become. By contrast, when Henry Bergh founded the ASPCA, he fitted it with what he called “the very plainest kind” of furniture. When the Governor of New York visited the ASPCA, he stumbled over a hole in the old carpet and said: “Mr. Bergh, buy yourself a better carpet and send the bill to me.” To which Bergh replied, “No, thank you, Governor. But send me the money, and I will put it to better use for the animals.”

Moreover, for the last 15 years, the shelters, rescue groups, feral cat caretakers and No Kill proponents who have tried to restore Bergh’s vision through the No Kill revolution have been opposed by those like current ASPCA CEO Ed Sayres, supported by a Board of Directors content to count the money, all of whom appear intent on squandering Bergh’s noble legacy.

Near the end of his life, Bergh often worried about the future of the ASPCA, stating, “I hate to think what will befall this Society when I am gone.” His worst nightmares have been realized. That the very organization Bergh founded to save animals is one of the primary roadblocks to saving them, that allows animals to be killed, defends their killing, and even allows them to starve to death despite the resources to stop it, would have hurt him very deeply.

Learn more by clicking here.

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Oreo and 60,858 Others

Today is the three-year anniversary of the ASPCA’s killing of Oreo, an abused dog, who a No Kill sanctuary offered to save. Since the ASPCA killed Oreo and then killed Oreo’s Law, legislation which would have made it illegal for NYS shelters to kill animals who rescue groups were willing to save, 60,858 animals who had an immediate place to go have also been killed.

Excerpted from my new book, Friendly Fire:

  

Meet Oreo. Oreo was a one-year-old dog who was thrown off the roof of a six-floor Brooklyn apartment building in 2009. Oreo suffered two broken legs and a fractured rib. Several of the neighbors in the building reported having heard the sound of her being beaten. The ASPCA nursed her back to health and arrested the perpetrator. They also dubbed her the “miracle dog” and fundraised off her plight. But the miracle was short lived.

According to ASPCA President Ed Sayres, when Oreo recovered from her injuries, she started to show signs of aggression. After the money was counted and safely deposited into ASPCA bank accounts, Sayres made the decision to kill her. (Although there were videos taken of Oreo, the ASPCA has refused to release them and the only public documentation of Oreo is photographs of ASPCA employees hugging her—their own faces inches from hers—which do not demonstrate any aggression). The New York Times reported the story the day before Oreo’s scheduled execution. The reaction among animal lovers was strong and swift.

If it was true that Oreo was still traumatized and untrusting, who could blame her? She needed time. Although the ASPCA could have cared for Oreo as long as it took to get her to trust again, Sayres refused. But others came forward to offer what the ASPCA would not: time and space to learn that not all humans are abusers. Pets Alive, a No Kill sanctuary near the ASPCA which specializes in rehabilitating aggressive dogs (and, if that proves impossible, safely caring for them for the rest of their lives), contacted the ASPCA to ask if they could save Oreo. They made numerous telephone calls and sent numerous emails. They were ignored, hung-up on and lied to. Two volunteers of the group even went to the ASPCA but were escorted out after Sayres and others in charge of Oreo’s fate refused to meet with them.

On a cold, Friday November morning in 2009, Oreo was killed; not by her abuser, but by those whose mission it was to protect her. The kennel that the sanctuary readied in anticipation of her arrival lay empty and unused that day, filled with a soft bed, a pool of water and several toys for her to play with. Instead, Oreo’s body was discarded in a landfill.

As word spread among animal lovers about what had happened, the furor and condemnation of the ASPCA was severe. No Kill rescue organizations, tired of shelters killing animals they wanted to save, adopted Oreo as their mascot and sought the introduction of a bill that would make it illegal for a shelter to kill an animal a rescue organization was willing to save. The New York State legislator who introduced the legislation dubbed it “Oreo’s Law.”

Although Oreo’s death was the catalyst, the legislation was desperately needed statewide. A survey of New York State rescue groups revealed that 71 percent had been turned away from shelters, which then killed the very animals they had offered to save. In one case, a rescuer described how the shelter manager specifically walked a dog her group wanted to save right past them and into the room where animals are killed. It was estimated that if Oreo’s Law passed, roughly 25,000 animals a year—most of them young, friendly and healthy—would be saved rather than killed by New York shelters.

Ed Sayres—spiteful over the backlash against his killing of Oreo—declared that he would use his leverage in the State Capitol to defeat the bill. And although the public support for the bill was overwhelming, with calls to New York legislators shutting down the email servers in the Assembly not once but twice, Oreo’s Law was defeated by a coalition of shelters and other organizations including Best Friends Animal Society, spearheaded by the ASPCA…

Since then, 60,858 animals who rescue groups were ready, willing and able to save have been killed by NYS shelters instead.

Buy the book by clicking here.

Learn more:

50,000

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My Facebook page is www.facebook.com/nathanwinograd. Many people mistakenly believe that the Facebook pages at No Kill Nation and No Kill Revolution are my pages. They are not.

50,000

In November of 2009, ASPCA President Ed Sayres ordered the killing of Oreo, an abused dog who had an immediate place to go. Pets Alive of New York, a No Kill sanctuary near the ASPCA which specializes in rehabilitating aggressive dogs (and, if that proves impossible, safely caring for them for the rest of their lives), contacted the ASPCA to ask if they could save Oreo. They made numerous telephone calls and sent numerous e-mails. They were ignored, hung-up on and lied to. Two volunteers of the group even went to the ASPCA but were escorted out after Sayres and others in charge of Oreo’s fate refused to meet with them.

In response, New York State Assembly Member Micah Kellner introduced “Oreo’s Law,”  which would have mandated collaboration between large, non-profit and municipal animal shelters and smaller rescue groups which wanted to save the lives of animals on death row at these facilities by making it illegal for shelters to kill animals when qualified rescue groups were willing to save their lives.

The law was projected to save roughly 25,000 animals a year at no cost to taxpayers. And despite overwhelming support for the legislation from rescue groups and New York animal lovers, what finally killed the bill and tipped legislators in favor of the opposition, dooming to death tens of thousands of animals every year whom rescue groups statewide were willing to save, was the opposition of the ASPCA.

Despite over 20,000 emails, telephone calls and letters from New Yorkers, the bill was tabled and animals who had an immediate place to go continued to be killed. The bill was introduced two more times, each time being defeated because of ASPCA opposition. As of today, the number of animals killed who could and would have been saved since Ed Sayres and the ASPCA first defeated Oreo’s Law has hit 50,000.

It is not easy to conceptualize 50,000 dead animals. But here they are. Each paw represents an animal who was killed. As you scroll through them, remember that each had a rescue group ready, willing and able to save them.

 

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In the Arms of the Angel of Death

The healthy 3-week old kitten was delivered to the ASPCA, probably by a Good Samaritan who found him. Perhaps, they saw the commercial, heard the Sarah McLachlan song “In the arms of an angel,”

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold … room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here;

knew that by taking him to the organization that bills itself as the animals’ “voice,” whose revenues exceed $140,000,000 a year making it one of the wealthiest overall charities in the nation and the single richest SPCA in America, the kitten would be safe.

After all, the ASPCA has more resources than it knows what to do with. So many resources, in fact, that they could afford to pay their CEO over half a million dollars a year, even provide him a driver to get him around Manhattan. And only a few short days away from eating on his own, with a full-service medical hospital named after the great Henry Bergh staffed by a team of veterinarians and hundreds of employees, the kitten was surely safe.

Maybe the Good Samaritan even wrote a donation check, to thank the ASPCA for taking in the kitten. It is not uncommon. And the ASPCA could then use that money to buy formula, the bottle, some cotton balls to help stimulate the kitten to go to the bathroom if he was not yet doing so on his own. It was just one kitten. Even if he didn’t write a check, no matter, the ASPCA could afford it. It would cost peanuts:

1. Bottle of powdered KMR: $12.99
2. Kitten bottle: $5.19
3. Cotton balls: $1.39
4. Heating pad: $13.49
5. Towel: donated

Only $33.06 to save this kitten’s life; a mere fraction of the revenues: 0.00000002% to be exact. They’d make that back in interest before the kitten needed his next feeding. Yes, the kitten was safe. And not only did he have the animals’ “voice” protecting him, he had a veritable army: the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful army in the animal protection world.

According to Maddie’s Fund, New York City and its shelters are a “national model.” They’ve given over $25,000,000 to arm it. Best Friends also claims it is a model of compassion, “well on its way to meeting its no-kill goals.” They opened up an office in New York City. The Mayor’s Alliance for New York City’s Animals boasts that the City does not kill healthy animals—under “Health Issues,” the kitten’s record is marked “None”—and claims they are “on track” for achieving No Kill. And since they’ve been “on track” for 11 years, surely they’ve built the ultimate safety net for healthy motherless neonatals with all those tens of millions they’ve taken in. Even HSUS has an office there. Combined, the four organizations with fundraising offices in New York City—ASPCA, HSUS, Mayor’s Alliance, and Best Friends—take in over $320,000,000 per year. The kitten just needs 0.00000001% of the total take. In fact, they could fundraise off the kitten and make that back ten fold; a hundred fold; even a million fold.

And why shouldn’t that kitten be safe? After all, there are No Kill communities which have per capita intake rates ten times higher than the City. Add the largest adoption market in the nation to one of the lowest per capita intake rates; add to that that the City is the center of the nation’s wealth; top it off with New York City being the most cosmopolitan and progressive community in the U.S. and the center of the Western World, and there is absolutely NOTHING that could and would stand in the way of the bright future this kitten has to look forward to.

The sky has parted, providence is bathing the world in sunshine, and one tiny little kitten is in the arms of an angel. Check that. He’s not just in the arms of an angel, the entirety of the heavens has opened up to protect him. He’s got a fleet of angels—Maddie’s Fund, the ASPCA, HSUS, Best Friends, the Mayor’s Alliance, even the “model” city shelter—all there to protect this little baby kitten because he is healthy, has his whole life ahead of him, and all of them are in New York City raising money promising to protect little kittens like him. They all tell us they believe in No Kill and they all tell us they are No Kill “experts,” and they all tell us that every single last one of them is dedicated to saving lives. And this one is easy, a no-brainer; saving-lives-for-dummies. No surgery, no heroic efforts, just your run of the mill, garden variety need for a volunteer, some powdered milk, a five-inch plastic bottle, and a little TLC.

Two hours later, the kitten is dead.

Under orders from Ed Sayres and his team, the kitten was taken to the city pound to be killed. The pound would oblige. Less than one hour after he arrived (41 minutes to be exact), he was scheduled to be killed. Why? “No placement.” The Mayor’s Alliance was busy fighting legislation that would save animals to actually save him themselves. Best Friends was too busy coming up with magical five year plans in other cities based on the very same Mayor’s Alliance model. HSUS, of course, was not interested. The ASPCA pleads lack of resources. Maddie’s Fund would like to refer all concerns about what is happening in New York back to the Mayor’s Alliance, who is also too busy fighting legislation to save animals to respond to your questions.

One hour and 27 minutes later, he was given a fatal dose of poison. He was tossed on a pile of other dead animals. His kennel number was updated to “Freezer.” There he sits, awaiting transport to the crematory.

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Although this is not him, this is what a 3-week-old kitten looks like. How could they possibly kill him?

 

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