From the Kamloops Daily News July 3, 2002

SPCA ALTERS ITS POLICY ON EUTHANASIA

"The B.C.SPCA's moratorium on euthanasia has been changed so that animals
will not be put down because of space constraints, but might if their needs
can't be met.

Jennifer Gore, executive director of the agency's Kamloops branch, said
Tuesday she's hopeful the number of animals euthanized will continue to
drop, but that will depend on how well the needs of the dogs and cats coming
into the shelter can be met.

Provincially, the B.C. SPCA has adopted a new Companion Animal Management
Policy, which sets out criteria for the appropriate care of animals in a
shelter.

The criteria comes from a variety of sources, including the U.S. SPCA and
the Royal SPCA in Britain, and involves measuring the animals' stress levels
and monitoring their behaviour.

Gore said there are signs to watch for, such as whether the animals move
around in their cages, they're eating or hiding.

The new rules call for the animals to be checked daily, if possible, so
their progress can be watched and their suitability to the shelter
conditions can be monitored. If the animals are under inhumane stress,
other options such as foster homes or transporting to shelters needing more
animals will be looked at first, Gore said.

"We'll know in the long term if this means more euthanized animals. But we
have to look at whether we have the resources to meet their needs," she
said.

"If the setting is too crowded and they're getting sick, it's inhumane to
keep them in a situation where they're really stressed."

The criteria are based on scientific research involving cat and dog behavior
observations, she said."

Sounds good doesn't it? Unless you know its background and how it is being used. The recent seizure of 53 huskies by the Kelowna SPCA from the Hub Cap Guy in Beaverdell is worth watching. Best bet (based on the SPCA's past and current behaviour) is that if the owner doesn't take the SPCA to court, the Kelowna SPCA will kill most of these dogs for physical ill-health (giardia) or for behavioural ill-health (timidity, which they are displaying). It will use its new "cutting edge assessment tool" (junk science cobbled together by sending the SPCA's cat expert to England at huge expense, instead of using the internet) by people who know almost nothing about dogs, and being used by people who have had a few days "training", but who sure know when they need a justification for all the killing they do which is now so public, instead of so hidden as it was for fifty years.

This seizure is a long-overdue message to other animal neglecters that the boom is starting to fall, and we applaud that, but the SPCA has a long history and an ingrained habit of killing instead of rehabilitating, or getting a lot of attention and donations by a splashy seizure, cameras often rolling, and then returning the animals to the owner when the public has forgotten.

What Gore says in this article shows how the SPCA may be oiling the wheels for the Beaverdell dog's deaths by hinting about having to kill them if their needs cannot be met. She is referring to their needs in an SPCA shelter, while under the care of the SPCA. The "inhumane stress" Gore refers to is life in SPCA shelters. Gore is saying that it is more humane to kill them than to keep them in a grim SPCA "shelter".

The SPCA has used killing to good purpose (for itself) for fifty years. The answer to the dilemma that Gore describes is not to kill because SPCA shelters are so horrible that they actually create the behaviour in animals that is then used to justify killing them, but to improve the shelters that seized animals are held in.

Building new facilities that really do shelter will cost a lot of money. In the meanwhile the SPCA is spending trusting donator's money on things like trips to the UK, and retreats to Harrison Hot Springs.