In court, the SPCA will try to say that killing for space "is only one of many acceptable versions of animal welfare" and that it is defamatory of this website to say it isn't. But that argument was settled when the SPCA announced a moratorium on killing for space in 2002, in reaction to the bad p.r. over the killing of dogs for space at the Vancouver SPCA. The moratorium announcement was an admission that killing for space is not acceptable animal welfare. And yet it has gone on killing for space.

At http://www.spca.bc.ca/northcariboo/clinic.asp the SPCA acknowledges that it kills because of overcrowding:
"Of the 4,490 animals that were taken into the shelter in 2004, fifty-one percent (2,285) had to be euthanized due to a deterioration in their physical and/or psychological health that was directly attributable to the overcrowded conditions."

By killing animals that have deteriorated at SPCAs the SPCA stays within the law. The law - the PCA Act - says it is on offence to permit an animal to be in distress. One must treat the distress or kill the animal to not be in violation of the law. So the SPCA stays within the law by killing the animals that it has caused to be in distress. In the last couple of years the SPCA has increased the number of animals it treats instead of kills, but in some parts of BC. more are killed than treated.

Putting the argument that killing for space is real animal welfare into human terms makes it easier to debunk: Imagine if an orphanage (that got donations by claiming to love and shelter children) was found to be killing children who got sick (even just a cold), behaved badly, or didn't get adopted, and then argued that they had to kill the children because they didn't have enough money to treat them when they got sick (when the bosses made big salaries, when money was spent on vehicles and perks, and when money is spent on lawsuits to shut up those who tried to tell what was going on), and they didn't have enough homes, and they didn't have enough space, and anyway, killing the orphans was the fault of all those parents who don't take responsibility for their children, and when asked how many children they had killed, said they didn't know, they haven't kept statistics.

Animal orphanages attract the majority of donations in the animal welfare business, probably close to 100%. Even the BC SPCA's president has acknowledged that. But building more and fancier orphanges is just capitalizing on the problem of homeless animals, unless equal effort and expense is given to the root causes of pet abandonment. In fact, building orphanages actually encourages pet abandonment and keeps the orphanages in business.