Animal Advocates Watchdog

Notes to Daniell's letter

Note: The terrier incident was just over a year before Yaffe's article, not "several years ago". The terrier was left to suffer terribly at Christmas, 2002. Daniell was told early in January 2003 by an employee and a volunteer.

The "action" taken against the branch manager (placed there by the BC SPCA) was to move him elsewhere. The whistle-blowing employee asked that the manager be charged with cruelty. Daniell slid out of it by claiming that the manager was not the dog's "owner". But the PCA Act says the owner or the person in charge of the animal, is guilty of the offence of cruelty and that was the manager. The treatment of this dog is not an isolated incident by any means.

The "overhaul" was in November 2001, not as Mr Daniell says, after the terrier incident of December 2002.

There are still no "consistent animal care policies' in the branches. In fact, there are terribly wide differences in not only standards of care and in the condition of the facilities, but even in policies such as pre-sales sterilization, a policy that real animal welfare has always has and which the SPCA, after years of criticism, just recently started to enact. For decades the SPCA sold intact "breeding" animals, and in some branches, it still is.

"An animal is euthanized only as a very last resort when no other option is available". There are hundreds of recent examples of how untrue this statement is from real animal welfarists all over BC. In fact, the SPCA uses live animals to teach its staff how to kill animals.

"In fact, the B.C. SPCA has one of the lowest euthanasia rates anywhere in North America". And yet Daniell is quoted in Yaffe's article saying, "It does not have statistics on the number that get euthanized although it is working on compiling them for The Vancouver Sun."

"Daniell acknowledged that a lack of resources would be a factor that could lead to euthanasia, especially if such a circumstance were combined with other factors such as the animal suffering from a cold and/or an inability to adopt the animal out." There cannot ever be any time when any agency would have the "resources" (money) to give every animal real animal welfare as long as the agency has a policy of unlimited surrender, which the SPCA has.

"...and this has been achieved through the extraordinary efforts of our management, shelter staff and volunteers." The BC SPCA fired the volunteers who helped to rescue Cheech one of whom was Amanda Muir, its star employee before she was critically injured while restraining a Rottweiler so that it could not attack anyone else. It is Muir that made the Delta SPCA the best branch in BC while she was an employee and volunteer by working with animal rescue groups (which the SPCA ignores) to get animals at risk out of the shelter.

Messages In This Thread

BC SPCA Negative Press: Vancouver Sun: April 23, 2003
BC SPCA Negative Press: Vancouver Sun: May 26, 2003
BC SPCA Negative Press: Province: November 7, 2003
BC SPCA Negative Press: Province: December 14, 2003
BC SPCA Negative Press: CEO Craig Daniell: VSPCA urges an end to backbiting among animal activists:ancouver Sun: April 23, 2003
BC SPCA Negative Press: Jennifer Dickson, OKAWF: Vancouver Sun: January 28, 2004
BC SPCA Negative Press: Donna Liberson, ARC: Vancouver Sun: January 30, 2004
The controversial CEO of the B.C. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
BC SPCA Negative Press: Vancouver Sun: "A Prison Camp for Animals" by Barbara Yaffe: April 29, 2004
BC SPCA Negative Press: CEO Craig Daniell's response to: Vancouver Sun: April 23, 2003
Notes to Daniell's letter
BC SPCA Negative Press: "If animals could speak they'd tell us off" , Barbara Yaffe: Vancouver Sun: may 8, 2004
BC SPCA Negative Press: CKNW: June 1, 2004
BC SPCA Negative Press: The Province: SPCA should be probed: June 13, 2004
Re: BC SPCA Negative Press: North Shore News: 40 years ago
BC SPCA Negative Press: Vancouver Courier: Pound Foolish: May 2001
BC SPCA Negative Press: Vancouver Courier: B.C. SPCA suing critics for defamation in latest dog fight: September 5, 2004

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