Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun
Thursday, August 19, 2004

RICHMOND - A Richmond woman who has saved the lives of hundreds of unwanted cats is lashing out at the SPCA for choosing to kill its more difficult animals rather than spend the money necessary for rehabilitation or care.

Carol Reichert, president of Richmond Homeless Cats, a not-for-profit organization that currently houses about 800 cats in an elaborate indoor-outdoor shelter on a rural property in east Richmond, said she is angry that 34 cats were killed by the SPCA's Richmond branch last year.

The animals were destroyed, she said, despite a long-standing agreement that her shelter will take in any felines the Society can't handle, regardless of physical or psychological problems.

Reichert said she believes the reason for the killing is that she asked the SPCA earlier this year to absorb the costs of a blood test on all animals headed to the private shelter. (The test is necessary to determine the presence of feline leukemia or AIDS, both communicable diseases in the cat population.)

"The public does not know these animals are being put to death because they don't want to spend the $30 on a blood test," she said.

Animals are only euthanized at the Richmond Homeless Cats facility when old age or the ravages of disease make it the humane thing to do, she said.

Dr. Jamie Lawson, chief animal health officer with the SPCA, said the society shares a similar philosophy of taking in animals that are homeless or unwanted. But not at any cost.

"There are people who believe that absolutely every life must be saved. The fact is, we can't do that. We don't have the funds to do that," Lawson said.
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"There's only so much money and there are so many animals."

AAS comment: Both BC SPCA CEO Craig Daniell and the SPCA's P.R. person, Lorie Chortyk, have said that financial restructuring will not affect levels of care for animals.

The SPCA spent approximately $2 million provincially last year on veterinary care for animals, with an additional $1 million spent on spaying and neutering.

AAS comment: There is no way to prove or disprove these figures because the SPCA will not submit the audited statements that it is legally required to and the provincial government lets it get away with this.

According to SPCA executive director Craig Daniell, the organization works on a total budget of $20 million annually, most of that -- $12 million -- spent on wages. (SPCA employees in the Lower Mainland, Victoria and Prince George are unionized while the remainder of the province's shelter workers are contracted.)

Greater Victoria Animal Crusaders comment: This means 60 % of the BC SPCA's yearly budget is spent on salaries but there is no way to know what % of these salaries is for positions that actually impact the welfare of the animals .

Lawson said 85 to 90 per cent of all injured or "non-socialized" animals taken to the shelter are rehabilitated, fostered or adopted. Branch managers at each shelter make their own decisions on what animals are euthanized with a lethal injection of sodium barbital.

Michelle Rodgers, SPCA branch manager for Richmond and Delta, said that of the 34 cats euthanized in Richmond in 2003, 18 were killed because they had serious medical conditions.

"They were suffering," Rodgers said.

The remaining 16 were euthanized because of "behaviour problems," meaning they were deemed "fairly aggressive, feral or not able to be managed or handled," said Rodgers.

AAS comment: The SPCA says both that it has euthanasia statistics and that it hasn't. There is no independent verification of the various and conflicting euthanasia statistics the SPCA feeds the media.

Rodgers said she was aware of a past agreement with Richmond Homeless Cats but the request for payment for blood tests changed the ground rules.

Rodgers said the tests would run her shelter anywhere from $70 to $120 per cat, depending on the veterinarian used.
"It does pose a financial strain on us to be able to do that."

Greater Victoria Animal Crusaders comment: The feline leukemia snap test we run on some of our strays averages $30 or so depending on the veterinarian involved. It would be curious if the SPCA's vets were charging the SPCA as much as four times more.

Royal City Humane Society comment: RCHS tests all our adult cats. Since we're a charity, buying the snap FIV/FeLV
test direct from the supplier, as the SPCA does, costs us $17.65 (including GST) per cat. Our vets do the test for free. I'm sure the SPCA could train staff to take a wee bit of blood and wait 10 minutes for the test result.

The base cost of putting down an animal with a lethal injection of sodium barbital is approximately $35.

Greater Victoria Animal Crusaders comment: The cost of a dose of Euthanol (sodium barbitol) to kill a ten pound cat is 33 cents. Euthanol costs vets $41.50 for a 250 ml bottle and the dosage for euthanasia is 2ml per 10 pounds.

AAS comment: Based on the prices generally charged by vets who help rescue groups, if a cat is euthanized for the SPCA by a vet, the charge would more likely be around $30. But most SPCAs still do their own killing. Cheech narrowly escaped the walk down the hall to the Delta SPCA's killing room. (See photo below.)

The cost of Euthanol to kill a 50 lb dog is approximately $1.66. In Vancouver there may be a cost of cremation, but the SPCA has its own crematorium so it could only be pennies. In Victoria and most other SPCAs, the bodies go to the dump.

AAS has said for many years that killing is cheap, far cheaper than rehabilitation and medical care. This is why euthanasia is so widely practised in the billion-dollar pet disposal industry, of which the BC SPCA is still a part because of its two policies of pound contracting and unlimited surrender.

Lawson said that despite increasing financial restrictions, euthanasia rates have dropped significantly at shelters throughout the Lower Mainland.

AAS comment: Undoubtedly true, but this has little to do with the SPCA. In the ten years or so that AAS has been doing pet rescue we have seen the rescue community expand a hundredfold. In every case the reason given by a rescuer for doing what they do is that the SPCA is killing so many animals and the facilities are so inhumane that they felt they had to save pets from the SPCA.

When he first started in his job seven years ago, Lawson said approximately 9,000 animals were being killed in Vancouver each year. "You'll find that number is now well under 1,000."

AAS comment: 9,000 killed a year in Vancouver alone. Quite the flourishing business. Another reason for the drop in the numbers the SPCA kills is that the internet connected all the rescuers and started reporting on the SPCA. Decades of assured secrecy ended. Rescuers started to get the real facts out to the media. Decades of the media repeating only what the SPCA told it ended. Bad publicity (real facts) is the one thing the SPCA cannot withstand. Early in 2002, The SPCA was forced to do business differently after smart Vancouver SPCA volunteers went to the media with the fact that in January, the Vancouver SPCA had killed six nice dogs (six could be proven; the number is thought to be closer to 25), that had not sold fast enough and space was needed for the new surrendered "product" (Dr Lawson's term for SPCA animals) that arrives daily. The SPCA told the media that the dogs were killed for being aggressive. The volunteers countered that they had been allowed to walk and groom the dogs for months, and if the dogs were aggressive, why did the SPCA irresponsibly permit that? The SPCA had never been publicly humiliated in this way before. It's solution was to announce that it would no longer kill for space and then it quickly cobbled together a "scientific test" to prove that any dog it killed was "aggressive". The media fell for that too... until Cheech. Everything that AAS has alleged for years, has been publicly proven now.

He said Richmond kill rates have also dropped between 10 and 15 per cent over the past five years.

AAS comment: The SPCA says both that it has euthanasia statistics and that it hasn't. There is no independent verification of the various and conflicting euthanasia statistics the SPCA feeds the media.

But that's little comfort to Reichert and the 100 volunteers who help out at Richmond Homeless Cats.

She believes it's time for the SPCA to step aside and allow other, more compassionate groups to care for the province's animals.

"The most valuable thing any animal or human has is its life," she said.

The killing room at the Delta SPCA. Bare and business-like. Notice the muzzle to prevent a dog from its final struggle to live. Notice the cells where a dog can see a live dog being led (often dragged) into the room, hear its death throes, and watch it taken out in a bag. Staff have reported to AAS how traumatizing this is to dogs who fear what is happening. But in-house killing is cheap.