AAS has been saying exactly this for ten years. We only disagree with Dr Bestrup on one point: "well-meant actions can have unintended consequences".

We never believed that the SPCA's actions and policies were well meant or unintended, at least not for the last fifty years. We know that the SPCA tends to hire uneducated people who are less likely to think out the moral contradictions in their jobs, and are unlikely to read scholarly articles on the ethics of their jobs, and we believe that many SPCA branch staff know but don't care about the contradictions as long as they get paid. And we know that the SPCA gets rid of staff and directors who are "too concerned" with animal welfare.

But we don't believe for a moment that head office is so unintelligent that it didn't know all this long ago, and we think it unlikely that none of them have read all the scholarly articles that have been published on this subject for decades.

We think that the SPCA knew and made a business of it. We've proven the business. The SPCA's unlimited surrender policy is one proof. Unlimited surrender provides all the free product it sells in its used-pet business, even though much of the incoming product is unsellable and has to be killed. Dog-catching contracts that pay the SPCA to be the killer of stray dogs is the other business. The two businesses account for most of its $20 million annual revenue. The proof that the SPCA was doing business, not animal welfare, is the SPCA's own deadly facilities for animals while it lived high off the hog. The SPCA spent no money on its plants. Why would it when it had a business monopoly and was allowed by government to operate in complete secrecy?

We've proven the secrecy. We've proven the attendant policies such as letting staff and directors make money breeding and selling animals while the SPCA makes millions a year killing excess animals. We've proven the lies that covered up the businesses. We've proven the easy killing, when the SPCA has been so indifferent that it finds it faster and easier to kill a dog rather than go through the paperwork of letting a real rescue group (the competition) take it.

We've searched back for fifty years to show that the SPCA actually aggressively expanded its dog catching business during the period of time that real animal welfarists were writing on the ethical contradictions of unlimited surrender and pound contracting.

We've proven that the SPCA did not ever stop any anti-animal policy, no matter how long it was begged to, unless there was such bad P.R. that donations were impacted.

Just a bit of that history can be seen at http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-electrothanator-history.htm and http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-100-years.htm.

Saying that the SPCA knew all along and chose profit over animal welfare is why the SPCA is suing us. But the proof is in thousands of actions and the policies of the BC SPCA itself.