The SPCA's disconnect

What part of approving the killing of pest rabbits can be called animal welfare? Can an agency that not only approves of the control of pest pet animals by killing them, at one time actually offering to do the shooting, be said to be fulfilling it's mandate to prevent cruelty and provide animal welfare to BC's animals?

The SPCA's public Mission Statement even says it protects wild animals. But condoning the shooting of abandoned or feral rabbits doesn't protect them, whether they are considered pets or wildlife. In our opinion, the decades-long disconnect between the SPCA's Mission Statement and its actions is a conflict between the SPCA's animal control/disposal business and its legislated objects.

Not only that, but it's own 2001 Community Consultation Report said that of all the things that harmed the SPCA's abysmal reputation, none did more harm than its animal control contracts. Just to be clear: these contracts are with jurisdictions to be the paid dog-catcher, and the dog-catcher has historically been hated by animal lovers. The SPCA's legislated objects and it's public Charter do not mention animal control contracts so the public is still largely ignorant that it is. The fact is that the SPCA has no mandate to be the dog-catcher and killer. The SPCA is mandated to protect animals from people, not protect people from animals, be the animals dangerous (as with dogs), or just nuisances (as with feral cats and rabbits).

This caused, and is still causing, as AAS has repeated many times, anger toward the SPCA and self-inflicted harm to its reputation, when people discover that the SPCA is paid to apply to the courts to destroy dogs or read statements that killing pest rabbits is acceptable to the SPCA, especially by the use of the captive bolt gun. Erika Paul's statement is the first we have heard that does not sound like the words of the pest control industry.

The best examples of the disconnect between the SPCA's public mission statement and its animal control contracting business took place in 2008 when the Surrey branch of the BC SPCA applied to kill the dog "Raymond", seized by the SPCA after he bit the leg of a man attacking his owner, (http://www.animaladvocates.com/ed-the-bum-chase/) , and the case of the pit bulls that the Surrey SPCA applied to kill without testing them, some of them puppies.(http://www.animaladvocates.com/top-stories/harrispitbulls). In the case of the Harris pitbulls, it took a person hiring a lawyer to halt the SPCA's determination to kill the dogs, and the media paying attention. In my opinion, that the SPCA so often has only stopped acting against animals' welfare when real animal welfarists stops it or the media attention causes harm to the SPCA's reputation and donations.