----- Original Message -----
From: Animal Advocates
To: BCSPCA ; board@spca.bc.ca
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 3:56 PM
Subject: Your surrender policy

Monday, July 25, 2005

BC SPCA
Vancouver BC

Re: BC SPC Animal Surrender Policy

Animal Advocates has been receiving reports in the last few months of SPCA branches that have turned away people who wish to surrender their pet. The most common reason given by the SPCA is that they are full or won't take the animal because it is sick.

After many years of criticizing the SPCA for its unlimited surrender policy, which required the killing of many thousands of animals a year and therefore led to a lot of dishonest covering up of that fact, we are pleased to hear that the SPCA is turning away some animals that it knows it will only have to kill.

But we don't know if this a new policy. Your official policy is still that you don't refuse any surrendered animal. We have searched your web site, but have been unable to find a page that tells the public that your surrender policy has changed or is changing. If such a page exists, can you please send us the link to it? Searching your site for the word "surrender" found us Animal Sense Magazine Spring/Summer which has an article in which you complain about how easily the public surrenders its pets. I am sure that you know, after over 100 years of animal welfare, that as long as an agency makes it easy to surrender, surrendering will be acceptable to the public; especially if that agency is widely believed to be the most authoritative and is therefore the leader that all others look to for the highest standards of animal welfare ethics.

The risk of setting a wrong example by facilitating the surrendering of unwanted pets is admitted at http://www.spca.bc.ca/Educators/encounters.asp in the words, "In addition, should a teacher surrender the classroom animal at the end of the school year to a shelter, students may learn that animals are disposable."

AAS has been urging the SPCA in hundreds of posts and letters, to start to practice limited surrender. We would like to know if there is a new surrender policy and if so, is it posted on the SPCA web site?

We would also like to know if there are any web pages, either on the BC SPCA's mail web site, or the web sites of any branches that are practicing limited surrender, that give the public guidance to rehoming a pet.

We look forward to your earliest response,

Judith Stone, President,
Animal Advocates Society of BC
www.animaladvocates.com