Welfare, both human and animal, does not kill the ill. Real animal welfarists treat and cure the ill. Only if there is no cure, and no relief of suffering, can the term "euthanasia" be honestly used. To use that gentle, compassionate term to describe killing to avoid expense is deeply dishonest.

The SPCA uses the weasel-word "adoptable" when it claims that it kills no adoptable animals. "Unadoptable" simply means unsellable. Being a too-common colour like black has been used in the past by the SPCA to explain why cats and dogs have been killed for being unadoptable. The terrible irony of using the word unadoptable is that it puts the blame on the animal for its own death. It is the animal's fault for being too big, or too nervous, or too ugly, or too depressed, or too anything that the SPCA wants to accuse it of.

More recently, the SPCA has codified the reasons for a dog being unadoptable and therefore killable with what it claims is a "scientific behaviour assessment" test, so that it can no longer be accused of killing for any reason it feels like using, especially for space. But the test has been shown to be highly unscientific and the SPCA cannot seem to produce the research data to prove its claims of science.

In the end, all killing other than to end unrelievable suffering comes down to only two reasons: either a lack of caring about killing as a solution, or the avoidance of expense.

As long as the BC SPCA will not give up its policy of unlimited surrender, which supplies it with all its free product while it encourages a culture of pet-dumping, it will have to find justifications for killing a lot of unsellable pets. "Unadoptable" seems to work well as the donating public is easily misled by the SPCA's words to assume that killing "losers" is real animal welfare.