How much will this conference cost? It would be worth every penny and more if it were being held to inculcate animal welfare ethics into SPCA employees who lack the basic ethic that killing is not a form of welfare. That would be all of the SPCA employees who don't quit the SPCA. Those who think that they can help the SPCA to stop killing, always quit because they have been entirely unsuccessful in making this huge Juggernaut that is the SPCA pet selling/disposal business, change course by even one degree.

There has been some change at the SPCA, but it is always in reaction to bad P.R. when something particularly egregious gets the attention of the media. To the best of our knowledge the SPCA has not ever improved its attitude to, or treatment of, animals because of pressure from within. It chews up and spits out good people who want the SPCA to save more and kill less. People like Amanda Muir and Kirsten McConnell who helped to rescue the dog Cheech from the Delta SPCA.

There are hundreds of other examples of good people who were steamrollered by the SPCA machine when they tried from within to get it to reform.

Read how decent Directors on the Vancouver SPCA Board were treated when they tried to get the SPCA to stop using a barbarically cruel machine to electrocute dogs to death: http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-electrothanator-history.htm. These Directors were forced to go public with their information. The Vancouver SPCA stopped using the machine shortly after the story got into the media, but the BC SPCA (all the rest of the 30+ branches) took years to phase out the machine.

This conference seems, from the P.R., to be all about the SPCA, not about animals. “Managing the Menagerie: Planning and Effectiveness in the Animal Protection Movement.” "Effectiveness"? "Managing"? "Growth"? "Fundraising"? "Recruiting"?

We can't help but wonder if Dr Rowan will talk on the latest sales gimmick in the "Animal Protection Movement" - the seizing of healthy animals with the media in tow, then killing them off camera? That gimmick has only been around for the last three years or so, but it is already blowing up in the faces of the big players in the Animal Protection Movement. What animals are in dire need of more than ever is protection from the SPCA.