By Kim Rogers Bartlett, Animal People

Glue-boards (glue traps) should be banned everywhere! They are barbarically cruel. The U.S. has them also, in almost every hardware store, mostly for rodents. It would be hard to think of a worse death than what these glue-boards deliver. The incident described below took place in Singapore.

Wall Photos

This poor community cat was caught on a glue-board trap placed by a pest control company overnight at a HDB bin centre. The cat in this photo was dying by the time it was brought to the SPCA. She was in deep distress and panting heavily. Our duty veterinarian made the decision to humanely euthanise the cat to prevent further suffering.

The board trap was about 4 feet by 5 feet in size and the amount of glue on the board was excessive. The cat never stood a chance.

SPCA has previously appealed to AVA to institute a ban of glue-board traps because of the suffering caused to animals that are trapped on them, not only rats, but other species. The case, which was reported to SPCA on Friday 17 February, only reinforces the extreme suffering that an animal goes through when glue-board traps are used. We have contacted the Town Council and the pest control company involved, to inform them that we will take this matter further We have also written to AVA to request that they ban the use of such traps with immediate effect and that action be taken against the parties responsible in this case.

Please help us by writing to AVA at ava_cawc@ava.gov.sg to urge them to ban the use of such traps and to your town council to make sure they do not use such traps.

Kim Bartlett can be found on FB at http://www.facebook.com/kim.r.bartlett . Friend her and help her.

 

 

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And what implications does it really have for the fate of so many homeless animals?
The logic behind such actions is often elusive, especially when all parties to the issue bear good intentions. Where do we draw the lines?

The letter below was sent to the magazine ANIMAL PEOPLE (November/December 2011):

Letters
Euthanasia

Ned Buyukmihci

this means that the individual dying would benefit from death by ending a situation that is causing intractable suffering. Ideally, the individual would be able to indicate that he or she prefers death to continued life. In the case of cats, dogs or other nonhuman animals, this may not be feasible because of our inability to communicate with the individual. In these situations, it becomes especially important that the person ending life must be clear on her or his motives which must derive only from a sincere belief that ending the life will end suffering that cannot be relieved otherwise.

Using a defense that one is somehow preventing future suffering does not even warrant consideration, being patently absurd.

One could not argue coherently that this particular dog would choose death over life. If one does not believe this, imagine killing a healthy human being, even one who is ostracized by others due to obnoxious behavior, in such a manner that he or she is unaware of impending death and feels no pain when it occurs. No rational person could consider this to be euthanasia. Taking the lives of animals for reasons of benefit to society or because funds are not available to provide care is not euthanasia, no matter how carefully and compassionately it is done, nor how fervently one wants to believe that it is. Such taking of life is killing, regardless of the rationalizations and justifications underlying it.

Letter by Doug Fakkema on Animal shelter killing terminology
Sent to ANIMAL PEOPLE (September 2011 issue)

As always,  I appreciate ANIMAL PEOPLE publishing the 2011 shelter data.  I find the data very useful in classes that I teach.  It is especially helpful for shelter workers to have facts to consider,  rather than just the emotional opinions that so often get thrown around.  I do have one bone to pick with you, however.  I especially dislike your use of the word “killing”–for example,  your headline “Shelter Killing falls to 3.4 million.”

Depending on which dictionary you use, the word “killing” usually connotes murder, slaying,  executions and the like.  In the 40 years that I have been involved in animal shelter euthanasia (“euthanasia” means “good death”) I have never once “killed” a dog or cat or other animal.  Using the word “kill” (or killing) is a disservice to those of us who insist that animals who are euthanized for reasons of temperament, health,  or even space be put to death gently, compassionately,  respectfully,  and with expertise.  On behalf of euthanasia technicians, veterinary technicians and shelter veterinarians everywhere,  make no mistake:  we do not “kill” them. Over the past four decades,  I have developed a relationship with euthanasia:  I don’t like it and don’t want to do it,  but when I do it,  I am very,  very good at it.  By “good,”  I mean compassionate,  gentle,  and technically proficient.  I encourage my students to likewise develop their own relationship with euthanasia.  My relationship with euthanasia does not include murder,  slaying or execution.

Thanks to your data for pointing out our success.  I am confident that one day in the not too distant future animal shelters will no longer euthanize animals for space.
—Doug Fakkema
Charleston,  South Carolina
<dkfakkema@aol.com>

The Editor (Merritt Clifton) responds:

Doug Fakkema was instrumental in abolishing the use of decompression chambers to kill homeless dogs and cats,  and continues to help push gassing,  “heart jabs,”  and shooting dog and cats toward abolition.  Unfortunately,  though killing animals by unacceptable methods is less and less common, examples still often come our way.

ANIMAL PEOPLE does not consider population control killing or culling to be “euthanasia” in the exact sense of the word.  The term “euthanasia” is most properly used to describe putting to death hopelessly suffering creatures in order to relieve their misery.  Reflecting the contentiousness of the issue,  there is internal disagreement within ANIMAL PEOPLE over whether the word “euthanasia” might accurately be applied to painlessly ending the lives of healthy animals who are in clear and present danger of experiencing a more miserable death.     

The humane community long ago began misusing the term “euthanasia” as a synonym for all use of lethal injections–and sometimes all killing done within animal shelters or by animal control agencies,  by any method–in order to feel better about the necessity of killing healthy animals from lack of other options.

The dimensions of these problems can be gleaned from the exchange below, also appearing on ANIMAL PEOPLE (AP):

Navajo Nation

An estimated 445,000 dogs roam the Navajo Nation, animal control manager Kevin Gleason recently told Associated Press. Please help these U.S. animals!
–Pat Stork
Worth, Illinois

AP Editor’s note:

The semi-autonomous Navajo Nation and contiguous Hopi and Ute territories include 27,425 square miles in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, with 180,000 human residents. Also bordering Colorado, the region is usually called the Four Corners. Associated Press appears to have misreported the estimated dog population of about 44,500.

More than a dozen agencies hold local animal control authority in parts of the Four Corners. The Four Corners has had the highest rate of animal control killing per 1,000 people in the U.S. for as long as ANIMAL PEOPLE has tracked the numbers, but a variety of sterilization projects–many of them described in ANIMAL PEOPLE coverage–have gradually cut the toll from 136 per 1,000 circa ten years ago to about 50 per 1,000 now.—M. Clifton

ADDENDUM

END THE KILLING…
by Doug Fakkema

Note: the word “kill” means many things to many people.  Some suggest it means an unlawful or horrible death, to others it simply means the ending of a life.  This essay implies no negative connotation.  The word “euthanasia” also means many things to many people.  Its use here is in the strictest denotation: “good death” or death without fear, stress or pain.   

The problem is too many animals; the solution is reducing population growth to a level where rehoming (adoption) programs will support 100% of healthy adoptable animals.  A community-based spay-neuter program is the core of the solution.  Euthanasia or killing by animal shelters has never been any part of the solution; it is merely a symptom.

At a minimum, animal care and control agencies nationwide must provide community-level, low-cost sterilization services.  Since the government is mandated to fund shelters for homeless animals, it is fiscally irresponsible for them to not reduce the need (and accompanying cost to the taxpayers) for that sheltering.  It is well understood (and proven over and over) that it is much more cost effective for a municipality to invest in programs that prevent homeless animals, than to build bigger shelters to house them.  And is there any doubt that prevention is kinder than killing?

The spay-neuter solution has worked in cities all over the United States.  The objective of zero euthanasia is achievable.  

Whether to limit admission (“no kill”) or accept every animal that comes to the doors (“open door”) is entirely missing the point.

The “no kill” position is a marketing philosophy, a fund raising edge to get animal lovers to open their pocketbooks and give money.  A “no kill” policy is not solution-based it merely declares the organization’s admission policy.  Hanging out a sign proclaiming “no kill” does nothing to further zero euthanasia.  It neither teaches nor informs.  It sends out a mixed or even wrong message.  It implies that a good rehoming program is all that’s needed, it says: “look at us, unlike the agency down the road, we don’t kill”.  A “no kill” policy does nothing to raise people’s awareness of the problem of pet overpopulation or tell them what they need to do to help solve it.

A typical “no kill” organization is by necessity a limited or closed admission facility.  Since killing of healthy and adoptable animals for space is (by policy) prohibited in no kill organizations, animal intake is limited to available space.  Also, only those animals that have a better than average chance of being rehomed; the good looking, young, and unusual dogs and cats are taken in as space allows.  This means the dog and cat who isn’t quite so adoptable is refused and sent “down the road” to whatever fate awaits.  In a zero euthanasia community (there are now dozens of such communities across the US) the animal shelter takes all animals but does not euthanize healthy or treatable animals for space.

Although simple, the solution is far from easy.  It is simple because we know how to get it done and success stories are plentiful.  The solution requires a strong and uniform commitment from the community.  In order to stop the killing of healthy, adoptable dogs and cats, community-supported low cost spay-neuter clinic or clinics must be built.  An aggressive education and an adoption program that informs the community and reaches out with healthy and treatable adoptable animals are also part of the solution.  Within 10 years the surplus begins to melt away.  Euthanasia of adoptable animals for space at the local animal shelter diminishes and then stops altogether.  It is not necessary to spay and neuter 100% of the community’s animals.  Some suggest that if 50-75% of the community’s animals are sterilized, then zero euthanasia will be achieved.

Zero euthanasia is about eliminating the conception and birth of unwanted dogs and cats.  It is best achieved by being honest and transparent with the public.  A limited admission or no-kill position is essentially dishonest in that it implies that the problem is euthanasia.  It is also dishonest because even in so called no-kill organizations, animals are still killed for behavior and / or health reasons.  The problem isn’t euthanasia, the problem is unwanted animals.

Some excellent models for zero euthanasia communities exist   Such communities do not euthanize dogs or cats for space, haven’t done so in several years. 

By all means, strive to be an organization that does not euthanize healthy, adoptable animals, but do it honestly.  Do it by reducing the community’s dog and cat population growth through spaying and neutering.  Once that’s done there will be a home for every healthy adoptable animal that comes to the shelter.

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BY KIM BARTLETT

Broccoli dish: where do we draw the line?

        While it is essential to realize that these arguments are virtually always made by people as a way to dismiss the idea of not eating animals without having to seriously consider the moral advantage of a vegetarian diet, the vegetarian advocate must be prepared to respond to these objections.  There are three main points to understand.

        Third, while humans and other animals sometimes eat the entire plant or otherwise destroy the plant during feeding or harvesting, the cost of meat production in terms of the amount of plant protein needed to feed an animal to produce meat is so high that people are responsible for far less plant consumption by eating plants directly rather than eating the animals who ate the plants.  It takes approximately 20 pounds of plant protein to provide one pound of beef.  The plant protein/meat ratio is lower for the production of other kinds of animal flesh, but a pound of any kind of meat costs several times more plant protein than if one eats the plant protein directly.  This was basically the argument used by Francis Moore Lappe in DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET, when she pointed out that many more people could be fed (and fewer plants would lose their lives) if people adopted a vegetarian diet.

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We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you.
Do your part while you can.
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OpEds—
BROKEN MOVEMENT

By ED DUVIN, Editor at Large

The founder of this publication, Patrice Greanville, and I made our way to the beginnings of the “activist” animal rights movement in the 1970s, believing it was an overlooked bastion of exploitation. Ignoring the intrinsic interests of our nonhuman family makes a mockery of social justice, as justice is indivisible. We eventually returned to our broader quest for an egalitarian ethos, but our hearts remained with the plight of oppressed beings. As we turned our attention to other moral imperatives, we weren’t about to leave our animal friends behind.

I penned an essay in 2008 for Cyrano’s Journal Today, addressing the ever-growing dominance of the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS).  A new leadership team assumed the reins at HSUS, believing the cause suffered from a surfeit of diffusion. Their vision for remediation was not without merit: acquiring sufficient clout through mergers and other means to match power with power, dealing with our formidable adversaries from a position of strength. They increasingly became the prevailing force in the movement, and as I wrote in 2008, “It is difficult to hear other voices when one organization owns the preponderance of microphones.”

HSUS’ tactical expertise is principally legislative, an area in which they set the standard for proficiency. For that and other achievements, we owe them a profound debt of gratitude. Questions remain, however, vis-à-vis the strategic soundness of their moral compass. This inexorably leads to the old incremental vs. abolitionist debate, which is hardly the crucial issue. Indeed, all social change is incremental. The salient question is whether a given step sets the stage for the next advancement toward ending speciesism, or does it in fact impede future progress by institutionalizing cruelty? In the Battery Cage Agreement with the United Egg Producers (UEP), it is axiomatic to any thoughtful person that HSUS woefully lost its way.

Without enumerating every detail, HSUS negotiated some cage and climatic “enrichments,” along with egg-carton labeling. In return, HSUS agreed to stop undercover investigations, ballot measures, state legislation, and litigation during the 18 year implementation period. HSUS and UEP are now imploring Congress to codify this agreement into law, confining many millions of hens to “enriched” cages in perpetuity, as the UEP has no further mandate or incentive to ever reach a cage-free end point. These hens will never know a day of freedom…not in 18 years, not ever. How in the name of sanity did we get here, literally settling for crumbs baked by the UEP at the expense of any hope for liberating hens from their heinous imprisonment.

Having formerly headed an environmental ethics center affiliated with HSUS and knowing many of the principal parties involved in this agreement, I neither question their good faith nor doubt their negotiating skills in light of UEP’s intractability. It was the best they could achieve, but instead of walking away and relentlessly intensifying pressure on the egg industry, HSUS confused compromise with concessions. No agreement at all would have been infinitely preferable to forever condemning many millions of hens to confinement for life. Are those in healing professions not morally bound by the Hippocratic “do no harm” maxim, and yet HSUS incredulously continues to defend the indefensible.

The 34 board members of the UEP consist of egg farmers, representing the collective voice of the egg-producing industry. Conversely, HSUS, absent the authority to represent any other organization, unilaterally signed on to this agreement as though “father knows best.” Who ordained HSUS as spokesperson for a diverse movement composed of several thousand organizations? What unmitigated hubris, as though might makes right. The French speak of sine qua non, an essential element, and is it not essential if one speaks for the movement that they represent the movement? It would seem so, but apparently not to our friends at HSUS.

The central players in this tragic farce, however, are not HSUS’ leadership, but a broken movement that is largely paralyzed by passivity and myopia. Were it not so, organizations across the country would be looking in the mirror, not simply seeing the aforementioned limitations of HSUS, but also galvanizing a massive effort to defeat the ill-advised legislation—legislation that mortgages our core principles to expediency. HSUS didn’t steal our votes; we freely gave them away by proxy. If we are to criticize HSUS, let us not give ourselves a pass.

We are granting to HSUS that which is not our right to grant: our solemn responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves. With a few notable exceptions, our movement’s unconscionable silence speaks to our complicity. We claim to be the voice of the voiceless, but who is speaking for the hens whose freedom and future were negotiated away? Even traditional groups that concur with the Battery Cage Agreement should be offended, as no organization vested HSUS with the power to negotiate on its behalf. As noted above, if HSUS is a “runaway” organization, it reflects a damaged movement as much as HSUS’ manifest lack of humility.

Over two decades ago, I “indicted” the shelter industry for accepting the mass killing of healthy cats and dogs as an acceptable means of “controlling” overpopulation. Compounding matters, a quiescent animal rights movement sat silently on the sidelines while the barrels were filled with precious bodies. Once again, I feel that same shame, not only due to HSUS placing its imprimatur on such an agreement, but the acquiescence of the movement to the blatant usurping of power by a sister organization. Send a message to Congress opposing H.R. 3798 today, before it does irreparable damage to our extended family. If we fail to do so with efficacy and urgency, it will leave an indelible stain on the very fabric of this movement’s conscience.

Some might see these criticisms as unfair, as why would HSUS negotiate such an agreement with endorsements from several organizations?  Doubters can form their own opinions by going to HSUS’ website and reading, “An HSUS Report:  Welfare Issues with Furnished Cages for Egg-Laying Hens” (if it hasn’t vanished!). ⁽¹⁾  The abstract’s conclusion from HSUS’ own report follows:  “While allowing for some natural behavior denied in conventional cages, furnished cages remain unable to adequately provide for an acceptable level of welfare for hens kept in commercial egg production.”  If an agreement takes 18 years to implement and fails to “provide for an acceptable level of welfare,” is this the future for hens we want Congress to enact into law?
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A WORD ABOUT THE AUTHOR, BY THE EDITOR

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⁽¹⁾ If the document should prove unavailable for any reason, try this location in our own servers, where we store background information.
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By Wayne Pacelle, HSUS

In War Horse, director Steven Spielberg treated his audience to a compelling case of historical fiction, grounding his World War I saga of a boy and his horse on a set of common facts including that the Germans and the United Kingdom were combatants and horses had a major role in the conflict. In The Grey,  director Joe Carnahan makes up something out of whole cloth in his drama about stranded oil riggers who are hunted as intruders by a pack of wolves.

Fiction is a perfectly respectable form of storytelling, but demonizing animals, in this case wolves, has destructive consequences especially at a time when a renewed persecution of wolves in the United States places the lives of these creatures more at risk than ever.

The historical record is unambiguous. Through the centuries, European settlers and generations of their descendants have slaughtered wolves, nearly exterminating them from the lower 48 states. There were federal hunters and trappers who killed wolves almost without limit. There were state-sponsored bounties. And ranchers and hunters did their own ruthless killing of wolves.

Now after modest recovery efforts over the last 35 years, wolf populations in the Northern Rockies and Upper Great Lakes have been removed from the list of federally protected species. Anti-wolf hysterics had a big part in the de-listing actions, and now these forces are clamoring for renewed widespread killing. Trophy hunters continue to make irrational claims about the impacts that wolves have on deer and elk, while ranchers exaggerate the threat that wolves pose to cattle and sheep. These notions are not grounded on fact, but on the mythology of the wolf as a rapacious predator who slaughters everything in its path.

Hollywood has generally been a force for the good in elevating the status of animals. But there have been awful stereotypes that have been fostered too none worse and more lasting than Jaws with its vivid misrepresentations of sharks. Since that blockbuster made beaches feel so unsafe, hundreds of millions of sharks have been killed in an orgy of human-caused cruelty.

Let s hope The Grey is a horrible flop, and doesn’t resonate with people like Jaws did. Putting aside its commercial prospects, The Grey does rival Jaws for its sheer ignorance and folly in terms of natural history and the human-animal relationship. The drama in the film revolves around bloodthirsty wolves hunting down humans as prey, even though there s almost nothing in the historical record to reflect that wolves are any threat at all to people.

Carnahan: Small man with a big (and stupid) ego.

Director Joe Carnahan (right) reportedly bought four wolves from a trapper and convinced the cast to eat wolf meat while on the set. The cast members, encouraged by Carnahan, apparently ate the meat in a preposterous attempt to create the atmospherics that real-life characters might find themselves in.

Even with protection under the Endangered Species Act for some wolves for 35 years, wolves now occupy less than 5 percent of their historic range in the lower 48 states. There are some 4,000 wolves in the Northern Great Lakes and fewer than half that number in the Northern Rockies. There is abundant scientific evidence that these animals have had enormously beneficial ecological impacts in the range they inhabit. And they are not a threat to people.

Wolf haters have staked out an anti-science, anti-environment, anti-animal posture. Hollywood has no business adding to the hysteria. Do stay away from this box office stinker. Go rent Babe or Bambi or Free Willy as an act of protest, or spend a little extra time with your dog, who as it happens is a descendant of these dreaded wolves.

Wayne Pacelle is the president of The Humane Society of the United States. He is the author of “The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them.” This piece first appeared on his blog, A Humane Nation.

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We are in a battle of communications with entrenched enemies that won’t stop until this world is destroyed and our remaining democratic rights stamped out. Only mass education and mobilization can stop this process.

It’s really up to you.
Do your part while you can.
•••

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