No excuse for animal cruelty http://www.chilliwacktimes.com/issues04/084104/opinion/084104le1.html

Editor:

As I write a cheque in response to the SPCA's plea for dollars to help with the cost of feeding 40 emaciated and sick calves recently seized from a hobby farm, I feel compelled to question this and other cases of extreme cruelty and suffering to animals. On this supposed civilized and advanced continent, there has to be something horribly wrong with a system which will only issue a warrant to seize animals when the situation becomes so critical that animals are already dead, have to be euthanised as a result of long term neglect, or require extensive veterinary care.

The SPCA needs to closely examine its acronym SPCA particularly the 'P' and the 'A'. Prevention of cruelty. How much prevention is actually happening? Don't tell me this particular case and others that I am aware of are not known to the Society long before the actual intervention occurs. Allowing irresponsible owners time to clean up their act is an exercise in futility. Why? Because they don't get it and probably never will.

As a result, the situation doesn't change, the good citizens who report the abuse give up because nothing is being done and the animals are forgotten and left to suffer in silence.

In the name of prevention of cruelty to animals who will be their voice? Who will lobby to make the changes necessary to these medieval laws and policies? It behooves all of us to do so. I like to believe whatever small contribution I make towards these unfortunate animals will go towards relieving and preventing their suffering before the situation becomes irreversible. Is this too much to hope?

Carolyn Pinsent
Chilliwack