For decades the SPCA has claimed to do animal welfare and has received donations amounting to approximately $15 million a year. True animal welfare and actions spring from the heart which then informs policy.

None of these SPCA policies and actions are true animal welfare. They do not spring from the heart. They are business policies and actions:

1. Being paid to be the municipal dog-catcher by contracting to do dog control/disposal: This dog-catching business is for human welfare. It protects humans from loose, stray or dangerous dogs. It is the antithesis of animal welfare. It requires the contractor to kill all dogs deemed dangerous. That is why the SPCA kills so many pit bulls, because it has the dog-catcher contract in municipalities with high levels of pit bull ownership. The contracts require the contractor to dispose of unwanted dogs (and in some municipalities, unwanted cats), and that is done by killing them. It is a competitive business where costs are cut to get contracts, hence dirty, run-down, diseased facilities. And it requires the hiring of employees who will go on taking a paycheque for years to kill pets merely for being unwanted or for being made ill by the pound. Truly humane employees eventually quit in despair at not being able to change the way this business is done. Almost half of BC SPCA branches have a dog-catching contract, and most of those have more than one so the SPCA may have over 100 of these contracts. No true animal welfarist would take a contract to be the dog-catcher.

How has the SPCA got away with holding so many dog-catching contracts for so long when they are clearly in conflict with real animal welfare? It argued that it was more humane than other contractors. In the end, it wasn't. Its "shelters" were (many still are), dirty, run-down, disease-filled dumps where dogs and cats were imprisoned until sold or killed. There were no dog walking programs, no blankets, or toys, no kind hands or voices. Cells were hosed out and the dogs often got hosed too, even in the middle of winter. Dogs and cats, kittens and puppies, died of neglect, often in pain and suffering. Cats were killed in gas boxes. Dogs were killed by electrothanators. (Read more if you can bear it: http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-electrothanator-history.htm.) Dogs and cats were sold to anyone who walked in off the street as long as they paid. Home checks were never made and if the SPCA were complained to by a neighbour of a dog that was purchased from the SPCA and then put on a chain, forced to live in its own feces, the SPCA said there was no law against it. Staff were surly and uncompassionate and didn't care if they had your lost pet or not.

2. Breeding and selling on the side: For decades, some SPCA employees, and even directors, bred and sold cats and dogs and reptiles. The Society was urging the public to sterilize their pets because of the pet-overpopulation problem, which the SPCA blamed for it having to kill so many animals every year. It claimed the moral high ground by saying it was a terrible job, but someone had to do it, and the SPCA was nobly doing it for the rest of us. Yet it permitted its own staff and directors to profit from the breeding business. The day job paid to dispose of excess pets and the side-job paid to breed and sell more. If the SPCA were practicing real animal welfare it would never have permitted this policy. Only under the unremitting pressure of critics such as AAS, did the SPCA finally say in 2002 that no new employees could do this (but the ones already doing it could go on). It is not possible, given that the SPCA permitted such an anti-animal welfare policy for so long and then only changed the policy under pressure, to conclude from that, that the SPCA is dedicated to true animal welfare. No true animal welfarist would breed and sell animals while animal shelters are full and are killing, especially when they are the ones doing the killing. Read more at http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-breeds.htm.

3. Taking in more animals when you know you will have to kill some for lack of space: This is another policy that is explained by saying it is humane, because otherwise people will dump their dog or cat on the side of the road. Putting aside the fact that the lucky animals get put by the side of the road where some truly humane person will find them and really save them, and the unlucky ones get taken to an SPCA where a miserable existence in a cell and possible disease and death awaits them, two wrongs do not make a right. The evil of pet killing cannot be excused because of the evil of pet abandonment. No one would believe child welfare if it said it had to kill some babies because it was out of room and no one wanted them, yet many animal lovers buy into that specious excuse and let the SPCA off the hook. No real animal welfarist would kill animals to make room for more.

4. Selling intact animals: Until the last year, the SPCA sold all animal unsterilized (unless they came into the SPCA already sterilized) and it still does in some branches. The SPCA charged a purchaser for a sterilization certificate which could be redeemed if the dog or cat was spayed or neutered within a period of time. If the dog or cat was never sterilized, then the SPCA got to keep the money paid for the certificate. The SPCA did not follow up to see that the intact animals it sold were sterilized as its sales agreement said they must be, not even when complainants told the SPCA that the owner of the dog it sold was openly planning to breed the dog and sell the pups. The SPCA followed this practice for many decades. No real animal welfarist would sell an intact animal.

5. Selling sick animals: The SPCA sold dogs and cats with rotten teeth, flea-infested, with infections of eyes, ears, skin, and with untreated injuries. No real animal welfarist would do that. Real animal welfarists make sure all necessary medical attention and procedures have been done before rehoming.

6. Selling yard dogs: The SPCA has, as recently as this year, told prospective customers that a dog will make a good "outside" dog - right on its web site! It has recommended that dogs it is selling who suffer from separation anxiety be kept outside! That would only reinforce the separation anxiety until the dog was mad, but that is what the SPCA recommends. Real animal welfarists would never give a dog to anyone who would keep it outside, much less recommend it.

Real animal welfarists would: work tirelessly to educate the public about why pet abandonment is immoral, instead of complicitly encouraging it as the SPCA does. Real animal welfarists would lobby for licensing of breeding; for prohibitions against the selling of reptiles especially, and of any animal that has to be caged, instead of complicitly participating in this cruelty by telling children how to "properly" keep a helpless animal in caged isolation its whole sad existence, as the SPCA does; would work tirelessly to get prohibitions against chaining and isolation of dogs instead of just pretending that it is doing something for neglected yard dogs, as the SPCA does; would encourage vegetarianism to end the suffering of billions of food animals instead of serving meat at its functions, as the SPCA does; would speak loudly against whales being penned their whole pointless lives and made to perform, instead of attending fund-raisers with the whale entertainment industry as the SPCA does.

How does the SPCA get away with calling all these anti-animal policies and actions animal welfare? It just says that its policies are animal welfare and is believed by the uncritical, unthinking public and media. It says all the killing it does is not its fault and it is believed. It says that it is so compassionate that it kills animals rather than make them live too long in their "shelter", and that is accepted uncritically by the majority. Few question why an SPCA "shelter" is so awful that an animal is better off dead than living in one, and yet the general public uses the phrase, My dog or cat was "rescued" from the SPCA. That is the clue that reveals the truth about the SPCA. No one says they "rescued" their dog or cat from a real animal welfarist.