Promises made, such as no intact animals being sold anymore, have not been kept - as far as we can tell. Again, the SPCA makes sweeping promises for the media but there is nowhere to get specific information on its web site, and letters are not answered.

Fifty years of begging by real animal welfarists to the SPCA to stop all its killing and to treat animals humanely did less than nothing. During those 50 years the SPCA hugely increased its animal control contracting business. Fifty years of people thinking they could change the SPCA by "getting involved" by becoming Directors failed. The simple truth is that if a business is profitable, it has systems in place to prevent any changes to unprofitable practices, and everyone who thought the SPCA would change its business practices willingly was naive.

The only thing that has caused any improvement in the SPCA is loud and strong criticism. That is not an opinion - it is a provable fact. It is also provable that only when the criticism was so loud and attention-grabbing that the SPCA started to lose money, did the SPCA make any changes and then only the barest, just to get the media off the trail. Loud accusations are the only things that made any change.

Critics have been forced by the SPCA's intransigence to use strong language to make their point. Critics have been forced by the SPCA's secrecy to make guesses.

It can be proved that changes are made only after extreme and constant criticism has impacted the SPCA's bottom line, not its conscience. Change has been business-driven not ethics-driven. No change has come entirely from within the SPCA. Any change has come only after from outside pressure on the SPCA. It is those voices of change that the SPCA is spending thousands of dollars to try to bully and terrorize into silence.

How can any intelligent person be expected to shut up and trust when change is only bottom-line driven and honest voices are threatened by the SPCA's deep pockets?