Animal Advocates Watchdog

At the heart of the matter is what we allege are the two money-making businesses that the SPCA has been running for fifty years

The SPCA incriminates itself almost daily. We post what it does and then we link to other similar instances to show that the incident is not a single instance, but has been repeated by the SPCA so frequently that it can only be policy.

At the heart of the matter is what we allege are the two money-making businesses that the SPCA has been running for fifty years.

These are the POUND CONTRACTING BUSINESS and the USED PET BUSINESS.

The Pound contracting business makes the SPCA about $2 to $5 million a year. Pound contracting is simple: stray dogs (and with some contracts, stray cats) are collected and impounded. Three things can be done with them:

1) returned if claimed and costs are paid:
2) sold if unclaimed and sellable:
30 killed if unsellable.

The used pet business is only profitable if joined with an unlimited surrender policy, which the SPCA has always had. Unlimited surrender supplies lots of new product (the SPCA's word for the animals in its custody), for the pet shopper to choose from. The product is free (surrendered), and new product arrives daily, so it makes no business sense to spend money on any product that is not in selling condition, for example, if it is sick, old, ugly, common, or unsocialized. The SPCA continues to kill some of this substandard product daily.

Spending money making its stores (which the SPCA calls its shelters even though no real shelter kills the sheltered) more welcoming for humans as well as for animals also makes no business sense if the customer accepts that the store will have surly, unhelpful, unknowledgeable staff with product in miserable cages, which one president of the SPCA called "Alcatrazes for animals". And the customer does accept that because all the SPCA has ever had is bare-bones, bottom-line cheap,and often diseased, outlets.

Selling as quickly as possible also reduces expenses and increases profitability. That is why the SPCA sells to anyone who will pay, even to owners who will isolate a dog outside its whole life (indeed, sometimes even recommending this) even though publicly the SPCA says it will seize dogs for this "psychological neglect".

Unlimited surrender also creates the impression that the agency is humane because it won't turn an animal away (as the SPCA says). And it gives the animal-loving public the impression that the agency needs help (donations) because it is so full. The used pet business generates revenue for the SPCA of about $15 to $18 million a year. This is how the used pet business works profitably.

It is so simple that AAS alleges that the SPCA knows this is how it is profitable. It is not possible that the BC SPCA runs itself the same way that hundreds of other SPCAs and big animal welfare organizations do without it being deliberate. The business has been described by many respected writers and animal welfare observers for many years.

Since AAS published all this on its web site in May 2000, the SPCA has done much damage control, from threats to ruin me personally, to hounding AAS from one web server to another, by increasing its P.R. output, by creating spurious moratoriums on killing for space, and by creating a "scientific" dog temperament test that, in the words of one SPCA volunteer, "has just become a way to get around the moratorium in that it gives staff an opportunity to destroy perfectly adoptable animals under the blanket of an SPCA internal process."

Messages In This Thread

THE THIRD LAWYER'S ATTACK ON AAS BY THE BC SPCA
At the heart of the matter is what we allege are the two money-making businesses that the SPCA has been running for fifty years
This post is the most concise and clear summary of the business activity of the BC SPCA I have yet to read!
Why does the SPCA every so often spend thousands of dollars to try to silence AAS?
The SPCA incriminates itself almost daily. This letter from a volunteer confirms all AAS's allegations against the BC SPCA
Re: The SPCA incriminates itself almost daily. This letter from a volunteer confirms all AAS's allegations against the BC SPCA
Here is a short list of the organizations and individuals that will be called as witnesses by me if this goes to court

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