The True Costs of Euthanasia in Animal Shelters: A Comprehensive Examination

The True Costs of Euthanasia in Animal Shelters: A Comprehensive Examination    

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 4
2. The negative externalities of euthanasia .................................................................. 6 
   A. Animal legal rights are cognizable under the current U.S. legal system .................... 6

B. Policy arguments against shelter animal euthanasia .......................................... 14

1. Impacts to individual actors ..................................................... 15
   1. The cost to shelter workers ............................................ 15
   2. The cost to veterinarians ............................................... 19
2. Impacts on communities ........................................................ 20
   1. Fiscal cost to communities ............................................. 20
   2. Collective action problems ............................................ 23
      1. Animal rights organizations as opponents to the no-kill movement ................................. 24
      2. Breeders as opponents to the no-kill movement ........... 25
      3. Kill-shelters as opponents to the no-kill movement ....... 27
   3. The success of community outreach ................................. 28
   4. Opposition: harms to the community ................................ 29
      1. No-kill provides safety hazard ............................... 29
      2. No-kill can create community nuisance .................... 30
3. Fiscal impacts ........................................................................ 30

1.

2. iv. Costs 1. 2. 3.

Price to euthanize in shelters is unsustainably high ........................ 30

for the shelter animals .................................................... 34 

Killing in itself is animal cruelty ..................................... 34

The no-kill movement as a source of funding ..................................... 32 

Ties between human and animal suffering .......................................... 36 

Opposition: killing is in the best interest of the animals ...................................................... 37

a. Animals do not languish in shelters if they are not killed................................................ 37

v. Euthanasia is not a viable solution to pet overpopulation in shelters ......................... 39 

1. Killing animals does nothing to address the source of the overpopulation problem .......................... 39
   
2. Homes are available for all shelter animals ......................... 40
   

3. A better solution for the current U.S. shelter system .................................................. 42 
   A. Affordable and mandatory sterilization ................................................ 43
   
   2. Restrictions on breeding ................................................................. 45
      
   3. Changing mentalities in animal shelters ............................................... 46
      
   D. Barriers to the solution ................................................................... 48
   
4. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 49 
   
   
   
   
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Behind the doors of thousands of animal shelters, mass slaughters occur every
day. These killings are hushed, masked with gentle words, rationalized away by big businesses eager to preserve their consumer base. And so, the animals die by the millions. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that around 3,500 hundred animal shelters currently operate in the U.S. 
While it is impossible to find truly inclusive accounting of shelter statistics, the 1997 National Counsel on Pet Population And Study (NCPPSP) found that the 1,000 shelters that replied to the Counsel‘s survey saw 4.3 million animals flow through their shelters in a single year. 

Of these animals, about 42 percent were picked up and brought to the shelters, 27 percent were surrendered by owners, and the remaining 31 percent came from unspecified or unknown sources. Roughly 64 percent of the total number that entered shelters were euthanized - approximately 2.7 million animals in just these 1,000 shelters. Some animals were put down due to overcrowding, but others may have been sick, aggressive, injured, or suffering from something unspecified.

Because comprehensive statistics are not available for every shelter in the U.S., institutions have extrapolated the information in the NCPPSP study and estimated that U.S. shelters euthanize between 3 and 10 million companion animals every year

These animals meet their deaths through lethal intravenous injection, carbon monoxide (CO) gassing, intercardiac injection (heartstick), or a handful of other, patently inhumane, means.

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Johnson v. District of Colombia noted that:

"Cruel treatment of helpless animals at once arouses the sympathy and indignation of every person possessed of human instincts, - sympathy for the helpless creature abused, and indignation towards the perpetrator of the act; and in a city, where such treatment would be witnessed by many, legislation like that in question is in the interest of peace and order and conduces to the morals and general welfare of the community."

 (Johnson v. District of Columbia, 30 App. D.C. 520 (D.C. Mar. 3, 1908).

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....morals present in communities that posture that abuse directed toward the helpless is a wrong in which citizens should not take part or condone. That is, if human beings abandon humane treatment of animals, then they run a grave risk of abandoning human treatment of fellow humans. 

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.....There is a U.S. legislation that explicitly promotes a dog‘s inherent right to life does not exist.

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.....regulatory themes tell us that humans do not view dogs as unfeeling entities and suggest that a shift from the view that animals are such unfeeling entities is plausible. As a starting point, most jurisdictions have statutes that make it a criminal offense to treat an animal cruelly. 

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The word "cruelty," as used in these statutes, has been frequently defined as including every act, omission, or neglect, whereby unjustifiable pain or suffering is caused or permitted. 

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.....requires minimum standards for feeding, watering, sheltering, and handling animals, and also requires that animals receive adequate ventilation in their living quarters and that these areas be sufficiently sanitized. 

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........fundamental premise that animals can feel pain.    

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Animals are capable of suffering.    

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Killing animals does not simply end the animal‘s life, thereby bringing shelters one step closer to solving the shelter overpopulation problem. Rather, it creates a ripple effect that impacts realms of human life far beyond the doors of the shelters. 

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The role of animals as family members has become progressively important over time.

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Humans feel a more intimate relationship with dogs than with any other animal.    

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The conceptualisation of pet animals as something more than lowly beasts creates a unique bond between the lives of humans and domestic animals that has resulted in a considerable discomfort with shelter euthanasia. Animal abuse incites in humans a reaction at least as ambivalent as the reaction we harbor toward human abuse, and perhaps an even stronger one, given that our relationships with dogs are not tainted with the ambivalence we often feel toward other people. 

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This combination of empathy and connectedness that we feel toward dogs, cats, and other pet animals, when merged with our natural aversion to and distaste for death, triggers a complicated set of emotional processes and coping mechanisms in those inextricably linked to these deaths. That is, for each animal killed, feelings of guilt, stress, and coping mechanisms such as denial are internalized in a human being – perhaps ironically, most often in the killers. 

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Although the level of emotionality increases with the length of the relationship between the animal and the human shelter animal euthanasia negatively, and repeatedly, impacts humans as well.

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 Often shelter workers are drawn to the field because of their love of animals. Ironically, these same workers often will have to euthanize animals with which they had daily interactions. 

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I walked through the kennel today and cried as I saw a beautiful Australian Shepherd puppy, with ice blue eyes, playing with his own tail. He did not know he was a stray. This one will get a home soon. The puppy in the cage next to him might not. He is so ordinary.
I cried when I saw the litter of five. Why did the people allow their dog to have a litter of puppies if they were just going to drop them off here? I wonder. Oh, I get it, to teach their children about the cycle of life. Life with no responsibility? Good lesson Mom and Dad.
I cried as the dog, so happy last week, just raised his head and looked. All his enthusiasm lost. At one time he would greet those nearing his cage door, but they just walk on by. So disappointed, he stopped trying. He learned; they all learn eventually. His card reads ― stray. ‖ I cried, as I wondered why his owner has not come for him. It‘s been three weeks!!!! Will they come and save him?
Then there is Penny. Her owner died. She is nine. I cried.
Then I got angry, but that doesn't help. Anger stops the pain, that‘s good. But no, it stops all feeling, that isn‘t good. So I cry.
Make a difference where you can and cry for the rest. (written by a shelter worker)

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Depression often keeps company with guilt....

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.....unnecessarily killed thousands of animals.    

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One euthanasia technical described the process as such:

After the fact (the euthanasia) just to resolve the cognitive dissonance in your head, you would say, well, it‘s infinitely better to kill them to confine them to cages for months. But if you do this you are needlessly killing animals that need to be rehomed. That doesn‘t feel right to me. We didn‘t go into this business to be cruel. A shelter worker is not a killer. 

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Offering killing as the solution to, or as the unfortunate effect of, pet overpopulation provides nothing but a sensation of hopelessness..... 

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The breeding industry pumps millions of dollars into ensuring two things: 

(1) people continue to purchase animals rather than adopt and 
(2) excess‖ animals continue to ―go away‖ so as to make room for new animals produced by breeders. 

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Perhaps most disturbing is the vast amount of information kept from the community in an attempt to further the pet breeding industry.  

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If No Kill is going to become a reality in our hometowns, the ethic, the beliefs, the desire must penetrate the community. No-Kill may be defined by what happens to the animals within the halls of the shelter, but it can only be achieved by what happens outside of them. How much the lifesaving ethic is embraced in the cafes, storefronts, squares and neighborhoods. By how much we build our image by reflecting the values that people hold dear, and in turn expand the resources to save more and more lives at risk. 

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The price of euthanizing animals in shelters is unsustainably high    

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There is nothing humane‘ about a humane society that kills healthy animals.    

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Although legally we separate human beings and animals through a designation of animals as property, animals‘ unique ability to suffer as other property cannot transforms our actions toward them into acts of violence.  

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Euthanising as a form of population control is a conceptually and practically ineffective way to curtail shelter numbers as it does not address the source of these numbers.

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ALL QUOTES ON THIS PAGE ARE HAND SELECTED DUE TO APPROPRIATENESS AND TAKEN FROM THE FOLLOWING 

(http://lawlib.wlu.edu/lexopus/works/487-1.pdf)