In my recent correspondence with a pet rescuer who has yet to embrace No-Kill, I saw firsthand the phenomenon that Nathan Winograd discusses in Redemption: that we hear so much about pet overpopulation, but has anyone seen it?

The e-mailer wrote:

[Shelters] only kill the animals because THERE ARE TOO MANY! Hello? Have you heard of the overpopulation problem?

Why yes, I’ve heard of it quite a lot. I’ve also heard extensively about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If the modus operandi of the shelters in this country were to throw dogs off cliffs because the Easter Bunny commanded it, there’d be an uproar. If you had to trade Santa Claus a euthanized shelter dog for each present, the tragedy of “Christmas Puppies” would have a much darker and more sinister outcome.

I’ve heard a lot about “pet overpopulation,” but I’ve never seen a feral dog colony or a single dog starving in the street. I’ve never seen a dog abandoned at the dog park. Every loose and stray dog that I’ve picked up has always had a tag and an owner. I’ve never seen a pet store going out of business. The breeders I got my dogs from two decades ago are both still in the breed with occasional litters. Every breeder I met in the last few years who are active in some aspect of the dog world are actually “growing” their business. They are all expanding their activities and having more frequent litters. The only breeder I know who is “getting out of the business” was paralyzed in an accident.

Last October I became a dog breeder and just a few weeks ago I became a dog seller. I certainly didn’t get any hint that there was a Border Collie overpopulation problem. I had to go out of state for both of my last two dogs, and I sold two of the four puppies out of state. If I were just out for money I could have sold my litter five times over in one week. That’s all it took to find really good homes. One week. And I’m only catering to a very small fraction of the dog owning and buying world. People who are interested in purebred Border Collies who have had the breed before, who have a good sized yard, who won’t have to leave the animal at home for long periods of time, who are active and healthy themselves, who are willing and able to offer vet care to a high standard to the pup, who are willing to sign a contract, who agree to spay and neuter their pets or who pay a premium to keep them intact, who are willing to pay a premium for pedigreed dogs, who are willing to pay a premium for extensively health tested dogs, who are willing to put up with my interviewing them, who are interested in dog sport, etc.

I found four really excellent homes for four really excellent puppies and a handful of other A+ to A- homes that I’d gladly sell a dog to, and by that I mean make a contractual and emotional commitment to for the lifetime of that dog. Around 10 homes that would probably make excellent homes for a Border Collie but who just didn’t outshine the best homes, or excellent homes who just weren’t ready for a Border Collie now (new baby or too many very young children which would mean little time to train the dog during the crucial early months, their current dog is old and infirm and probably wouldn’t appreciate a new puppy, excellent experience with other breeds but brand new to Border Collies, too many Border Collies already, etc.). And then a slew of people who may or may not be great homes but who were either too far away, too inexperienced with dogs or Border Collies, or who were uninterested in training for dog sports for me to take a chance and who would be better served by a breeder in their area or a different breed of dog. And that doesn’t count the legions of callers who just wanted a price quote on a puppy.

In other words, if an aspiring Breeder like myself, first time breeding, who is an elitist, ultra picky about where my puppies go, selling puppies in the $450-600 price range (unregistered BCs go for $100, average price for a papered dog off of a Ranch is probably $250-300, show quality pups being sold to show homes sell for $600 and up, and rare colors like Merles go for about twice the market price for each of those classes), selling dogs in a relatively unpopulated area of the country, can find homes and put people on a waiting list in only a week, I have no evidence of a pet overpopulation problem.

The very existence of all these new designer dogs speaks volumes against a pet overpopulation problem. If there are mutts overflowing our shelters, filling the streets, and bringing about their own destruction, why are people paying $1200 for “designer” mutts? Perhaps it’s a shelter advertising problem, not a pet overpopulation problem. If shelters have too many dogs coming in, why are they importing them from overseas, and across our borders?

If I had to go out of state for my last two dogs, and so did two of my puppy buyers and many of the potentials, that speaks to a greater demand than supply, not an overpopulation problem.

I’ve licked my finger and placed it in the wind, and every indicator tells me that dogs are getting more popular, more homes are opening up their doors to them every day, and as we grow as a society our animals are becoming even more significant and being given higher status at every turn.

If we wouldn’t throw dogs off cliffs for the Easter Bunny or sacrifice puppies for Santa Claus, why are we so accepting of killing dogs for another myth that there is little evidence for: the “pet overpopulation” problem?

The Myth of Pet Overpopulation

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.”

— William Shakespeare (circa 1600)

Sometimes the obvious eludes us. We are told something so often that we accept it a priori. We ignore evidence to the contrary, even overwhelming evidence. It is so because we believe it is so. And we believe it is so because we have been told it is so for as long as we can remember. Each time we say, read, or write it, we reconfirm it. It is so. It is so. It is so. But pet overpopulation is not so.

There is little reason why most people, your average animal lovers in the United States, would know pet overpopulation is a myth. The one fact that would dispel the myth is something they almost never see consistently because they do not go to shelters everyday. But animal rescuers see it. Animal activists see it. And others in sheltering do also. They see it daily, but still believe in pet overpopulation. What do they see every time they go into animal she
lters? They see empty cages. Shelters kill dogs and cats every single day, despite empty cages.

The City of Los Angeles Animal Services Department kills every day despite empty cages. A veterinarian who tried to keep more animals alive by keeping the cages full was fired in 2005, in part, due to staff complaints of “too much work.” In September 2006, the Department killed twenty-five kittens because they had a cold, despite empty cages. In Eugene, Oregon, activists noted a high percentage of empty cages at their local shelter in the summer of 2006 due to killing that shelter management blamed on pet overpopulation and lack of a cat licensing law. The Lane County Animal Regulation Authority kept all but a half dozen cat cages empty at the height of the busy season, even though it killed approximately 70 percent of cats during the last year, many of them ostensibly for “lack of space.” According to local activists, doing so makes it easier for staff to clean. In Philadelphia before a new leadership team took over later that year, I counted over seventy empty cat cages in February of 2005 on a day they were killing “for space.” These are not isolated examples. They are epidemic–and endemic–to animal control.

Empty cages mean less cleaning, less feeding, less work. Some shelter directors simply don’t care and do it for that reason. Others do it because they falsely believe that no one will adopt the animals anyway. Still others kill because they believe the cages will get full. And others–such as Tompkins County before my arrival–require a certain number of animals to be killed in the morning to make room for the new animals they expect that day–animals who might or might not come, animals who might come after those animals killed could have been adopted, lost animals who might be reclaimed, thereby opening up space without the need to kill, animals who instead could have been transferred to rescue groups or placed into foster care.

There are many reasons why shelters kill animals at this point in time, but pet overpopulation is not one of them. In the case of a small percentage of animals, the animals may be hopelessly sick or injured, or the dogs are so vicious that placing them would put adoptive families at risk. (This killing is also being challenged by sanctuaries and hospice care groups, a movement that is also growing in scale and scope and which all compassionate people must embrace). Aside from this relatively small number of cases (only seven percent of the animals in Tompkins County), shelters also kill for less merciful reasons.

They kill because they make the animals sick through sloppy cleaning and poor handling. They kill because they do not want to care for sick animals. They kill because they do not effectively use the Internet and the media to promote their pets. They kill because they think volunteers are more trouble than they are worth, even though those volunteers would help eliminate the “need” for killing. They kill because they don’t want a foster care program. They kill because they are only open for adoption when people are at work and families have their children in school. They kill because they discourage visitors with their poor customer service. They kill because they do not help people overcome problems that can reduce impounds. They kill because they refuse to work with rescue groups. They kill because they haven’t embraced TNR [Trap, Neuter, Release] for feral cats. They kill because they won’t socialize feral kittens. They kill because they don’t walk the dogs which makes the dogs so highly stressed that they become “cage crazy.” They kill them for being “cage crazy.” They kill because their shoddy tests allow them to claim that animals are “unadoptable.” They kill because their draconian laws empower them to kill.

Some kill because they are steeped in a culture of defeatism, or because they are under the thumb of regressive health or police department oversight. But they still kill. They never say, “we kill because we have accepted killing in lieu of having to put in place foster care, pet retention, volunteer TNR, public relations, and other programs.” In short, they kill because they have failed to do what is necessary to stop killing.

What allows them to continue killing without total condemnation for doing so is the religion of pet overpopulation. It is the political cover that prevents even the animal rescuers and advocates from demanding an immediate end to the whole bloody mess. And, at its core, it is an unsupportable myth. The syllogism goes as follows: shelters kill a lot of animals; shelters adopt out few of them; therefore, there are more animals than homes. Hence, there is pet overpopulation. It is as faulty a syllogism and as untrue a proposition as exists in sheltering today. But people believe it, and because they do, local governments under-fund their shelters, appoint and retain incompetent employees in animal control, and give shelter directors the carte blanche they need to kill because the problem is portrayed as insurmountable.

This also begs the question of why pet stores and commercial breeding operations (sometimes referred to as “puppy mills” or “kitten mills”) are still in business. Hobby breed enthusiasts notwithstanding (since these groups often support No Kill and assist in animal rescue), pet stores and puppy/kitten mills are motivated by profit, and they would not go into the business if homes weren’t available. In addition, the more animals dying in a given community) which traditionalists claim means lack of homes), the greater number of pet stores that sell dogs and cats (which show homes readily available). Generally, pet stores succeed when a shelter is not meeting market demand or competing effectively, and because animal lovers do not want to go into a shelter that kills the vast majority of the animals as this is usually accompanied with under-performing staff, poor customer servie, and dirty and unwelcoming facilities.

- Excerpt from Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America by Nathan J. Winograd

Here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, over fifty million household dogs live in the United States. Europe houses an estimated thirty-five million. … If I add Canadian dogs to these populations, I get one hundred million household dogs in the industrial West.

In the United States each year, households produce 3,700,000 puppies. Hobby breeders produce another two million, and half a million are produced by commercial breeders for department store and other retail sales. That is a turnover of 6,200,000 dogs a year. If the population is not going up or down, then 6,200,000 dogs die every year. That is a 12 percent annual mortality rate, which for a species with a life span of a little over ten years is a low mortality rate in the wild.

In the United states, four million of these dogs spend part of a year in animal shelters. For 2,400,000 of them it is the last stop. Almost 5 percent of our companion animals are dogs nobody wants, and they get “put to sleep.” Culled. Again, disaster for the individual dog. Some of this culling may be related to competition between people and dogs for food resources. People soon decide they can’t afford the dog, and turn them over to humane societies

- Dogs, Lorna Coppinger

Is a five percent disposal rate really that much of a concern? The bleeding heart loud mouths would have us believe that there is an “overpopulation” problem and that it is an epidemic. So much so that they demand for (near)universal sterilization laws, moral outrage at hobby breeders, misplaced hatred of purebreds and the people who buy them.

Nathan Winograd has shown again and again that many dogs that are killed don’t need to be, but the onus is on shitty shelters that don’t get the job done, mostly because they are defeatist from the outset. Huge strides have already been made in sterilizing pets and in lowering the percent of pets that are abandoned. But this number will never be zero.

Will the bleeding heart loud mouths not be satisfied until it is, as in never? Will they be like the Christians and the Jews waiting for the next coming of their prophet/savior? And will they, in their growing frustration as their dogma fails to deliver success year after year, become even more preachy and unreasonable?

Evidence suggests that they will. Here’s a comment posted recently that is filled with references to PeTA’s veritable Book of Revelations (which documents the Pet Overpopulation Armageddon we are now living in according to their dogma):

Of course Joe Biden killed a dog [by buying a puppy instead of rescuing from a shelter]. Are you all delusional? Can you not count? Joe could have adopted a dog at a shelter or from a rescuer and opened up another spot for one of the millions of dogs dumped at shelters by people, and saved a dog from being euthanized due to over crowding. There is NO justification for breeding a dog when millions of adoptable dogs are put to death. All 3 of my rescue dogs were well behaved and lived to 15 + years old, so don’t tell me about damaged, sick dogs. Most of the people I know with “pure breeds” encounter health problems at age 7 or 8 and behavioral problems earlier due to inbreeding. The whole notion of breeding a specific type of dog is archaic.

- Comment by Janice — December 12, 2008 @ 6:41 pm

Janice is a perfect example of a bleeding heart loud mouth with a savior complex. Since feeding her ego with 3 rescue dogs wasn’t sufficient (and how could it be, rescuing a dog does nothing except save that dog) to even influence the dog abandonment issue, she’s now grasping at totalitarian measures to bring about her “my bleeding heart is more important than your freedom, so I’m going to force my uniformed blather down your throat even though what I demand you do has never been effective at accomplishing the goals I want” religion.

I’ve already debunked the “buy a dog, kill a dog” fallacy. (Myth of Christmas Puppies, Parroting PeTA, Buy From a Breeder, and Adopt a PeTA pet and kill 248 more). This is a displacement tactic used by PeTA to blame someone else because they don’t want to take responsibility for killing 97% of the animals they take in. Have no doubt, it’s the shelters who kill the dogs, and in almost all cases, it’s not because they have to. It’s because they want to. Thinking you’re opening up a spot by capitulating to the kill shelters is like appeasing a terrorist. You think you’re saving lives but you’re really just making a deal with evil. You are allowing them to operate and continue their extortion.

Would you buy drugs from your neighborhood street dealer simply to take that small amount of product off the market?

As I’ve shown (Garbage In, Garbage Out), the major causes of abandoned dogs are HUMAN problems, not problems with the dogs themselves and not problems with purchased dogs or purebred dogs or even pet store dogs, or dogs given as pets.

So given that humans are imperfect and will always be such, what do we expect the natural rate of culling should be?

In economics, there is a concept called the “natural rate of unemployment.”

The natural rate of unemployment is the healthy unemployment rate that will always occur in an economy, unless it is severely overheated. Some level of unemployment results from:

1. Frictional unemployment that comes from job turnover,
2. Structural unemployment that is caused by a mis-match between job skills and job availability,
3. Unemployment caused by minimum wages laws and unions.

In short, it’s economist speak for “the unemployed will always be with us” and observationally, economists place the rate at between 4% and 6%.

Given that, do you really think that the bleeding heart loud mouths are justified in breathing their fire and spitting their venom on the rest of us? I think their outrage is entirely disproportionate to the size of the problem. I think the targets of their rage are also inappropriate and thus their rage is ineffectual. They aren’t going to change the kill rate by even one dog by putting breeders out of business, ending the concept of purebred dogs or even reaching saturation levels of desexing dogs.

The first way to cut the rate is to tackle the issues that actually cause people to relinquish dogs: Moving, landlord issues, cost of pet maintenance, no time for pets, inadequate facilities, too many pets at home, pet illness, personal problems, biting, no homes for litter mates.

The second way to cut the rate is to improve the ef
ficiency of shelter placement programs: adopt the entire no-kill paradigm.

The e-mailer wrote:

[Shelters] only kill the animals because THERE ARE TOO MANY! Hello? Have you heard of the overpopulation problem?

Why yes, I’ve heard of it quite a lot. I’ve also heard extensively about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If the modus operandi of the shelters in this country were to throw dogs off cliffs because the Easter Bunny commanded it, there’d be an uproar. If you had to trade Santa Claus a euthanized shelter dog for each present, the tragedy of “Christmas Puppies” would have a much darker and more sinister outcome.

I’ve heard a lot about “pet overpopulation,” but I’ve never seen a feral dog colony or a single dog starving in the street. I’ve never seen a dog abandoned at the dog park. Every loose and stray dog that I’ve picked up has always had a tag and an owner. I’ve never seen a pet store going out of business. The breeders I got my dogs from two decades ago are both still in the breed with occasional litters. Every breeder I met in the last few years who are active in some aspect of the dog world are actually “growing” their business. They are all expanding their activities and having more frequent litters. The only breeder I know who is “getting out of the business” was paralyzed in an accident.

Last October I became a dog breeder and just a few weeks ago I became a dog seller. I certainly didn’t get any hint that there was a Border Collie overpopulation problem. I had to go out of state for both of my last two dogs, and I sold two of the four puppies out of state. If I were just out for money I could have sold my litter five times over in one week. That’s all it took to find really good homes. One week. And I’m only catering to a very small fraction of the dog owning and buying world. People who are interested in purebred Border Collies who have had the breed before, who have a good sized yard, who won’t have to leave the animal at home for long periods of time, who are active and healthy themselves, who are willing and able to offer vet care to a high standard to the pup, who are willing to sign a contract, who agree to spay and neuter their pets or who pay a premium to keep them intact, who are willing to pay a premium for pedigreed dogs, who are willing to pay a premium for extensively health tested dogs, who are willing to put up with my interviewing them, who are interested in dog sport, etc.

I found four really excellent homes for four really excellent puppies and a handful of other A+ to A- homes that I’d gladly sell a dog to, and by that I mean make a contractual and emotional commitment to for the lifetime of that dog. Around 10 homes that would probably make excellent homes for a Border Collie but who just didn’t outshine the best homes, or excellent homes who just weren’t ready for a Border Collie now (new baby or too many very young children which would mean little time to train the dog during the crucial early months, their current dog is old and infirm and probably wouldn’t appreciate a new puppy, excellent experience with other breeds but brand new to Border Collies, too many Border Collies already, etc.). And then a slew of people who may or may not be great homes but who were either too far away, too inexperienced with dogs or Border Collies, or who were uninterested in training for dog sports for me to take a chance and who would be better served by a breeder in their area or a different breed of dog. And that doesn’t count the legions of callers who just wanted a price quote on a puppy.

In other words, if an aspiring Breeder like myself, first time breeding, who is an elitist, ultra picky about where my puppies go, selling puppies in the $450-600 price range (unregistered BCs go for $100, average price for a papered dog off of a Ranch is probably $250-300, show quality pups being sold to show homes sell for $600 and up, and rare colors like Merles go for about twice the market price for each of those classes), selling dogs in a relatively unpopulated area of the country, can find homes and put people on a waiting list in only a week, I have no evidence of a pet overpopulation problem.

The very existence of all these new designer dogs speaks volumes against a pet overpopulation problem. If there are mutts overflowing our shelters, filling the streets, and bringing about their own destruction, why are people paying $1200 for “designer” mutts? Perhaps it’s a shelter advertising problem, not a pet overpopulation problem. If shelters have too many dogs coming in, why are they importing them from overseas, and across our borders?

If I had to go out of state for my last two dogs, and so did two of my puppy buyers and many of the potentials, that speaks to a greater demand than supply, not an overpopulation problem.

I’ve licked my finger and placed it in the wind, and every indicator tells me that dogs are getting more popular, more homes are opening up their doors to them every day, and as we grow as a society our animals are becoming even more significant and being given higher status at every turn.

If we wouldn’t throw dogs off cliffs for the Easter Bunny or sacrifice puppies for Santa Claus, why are we so accepting of killing dogs for another myth that there is little evidence for: the “pet overpopulation” problem?

The Myth of Pet Overpopulation

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.”

— William Shakespeare (circa 1600)

Sometimes the obvious eludes us. We are told something so often that we accept it a priori. We ignore evidence to the contrary, even overwhelming evidence. It is so because we believe it is so. And we believe it is so because we have been told it is so for as long as we can remember. Each time we say, read, or write it, we reconfirm it. It is so. It is so. It is so. But pet overpopulation is not so.

There is little reason why most people, your average animal lovers in the United States, would know pet overpopulation is a myth. The one fact that would dispel the myth is something they almost never see consistently because they do not go to shelters everyday. But animal rescuers see it. Animal activists see it. And others in sheltering do also. They see it daily, but still believe in pet overpopulation. What do they see every time they go into animal shelters? They see empty cages. Shelters kill dogs and cats every single day, despite empty cages.

The City of Los Angeles Animal Services Department kills every day despite empty cages. A veterinarian who tried to keep more animals alive by keeping the cages full was fired in 2005, in part, due to staff complaints of “too much work.” In September 2006, the Department killed twenty-five kittens because they had a cold, despite empty cages. In Eugene, Oregon, activists noted a high percentage of empty cages at their local shelter in the summer of 2006 due to killing that shelter management blamed on pet overpopulation and lack of a cat licensing law. The Lane County Animal Regulation Authority kept all but a half dozen cat cages empty at the height of the busy season, even though it killed approximately 70 percent of cats during the last year, many of them ostensibly for “lack of space.” According to local activists, doing so makes it easier for staff to clean. In Philadelphia before a new leadership team took over later that year, I counted over seventy empty cat cages in February of 2005 on a day they were killing “for space.” These are not isolated examples. They are epidemic–and endemic–to animal control.

Empty cages mean less cleaning, less feeding, less work. Some shelter directors simply don’t care and do it for that reason. Others do it because they falsely believe that no one will adopt the animals anyway. Still others kill because they believe the cages will get full. And others–such as Tompkins County before my arrival–require a certain number of animals to be killed in the morning to make room for the new animals they expect that day–animals who might or might not come, animals who might come after those animals killed could have been adopted, lost animals who might be reclaimed, thereby opening up space without the need to kill, animals who instead could have been transferred to rescue groups or placed into foster care.

There are many reasons why shelters kill animals at this point in time, but pet overpopulation is not one of them. In the case of a small percentage of animals, the animals may be hopelessly sick or injured, or the dogs are so vicious that placing them would put adoptive families at risk. (This killing is also being challenged by sanctuaries and hospice care groups, a movement that is also growing in scale and scope and which all compassionate people must embrace). Aside from this relatively small number of cases (only seven percent of the animals in Tompkins County), shelters also kill for less merciful reasons.

They kill because they make the animals sick through sloppy cleaning and poor handling. They kill because they do not want to care for sick animals. They kill because they do not effectively use the Internet and the media to promote their pets. They kill because they think volunteers are more trouble than they are worth, even though those volunteers would help eliminate the “need” for killing. They kill because they don’t want a foster care program. They kill because they are only open for adoption when people are at work and families have their children in school. They kill because they discourage visitors with their poor customer service. They kill because they do not help people overcome problems that can reduce impounds. They kill because they refuse to work with rescue groups. They kill because they haven’t embraced TNR [Trap, Neuter, Release] for feral cats. They kill because they won’t socialize feral kittens. They kill because they don’t walk the dogs which makes the dogs so highly stressed that they become “cage crazy.” They kill them for being “cage crazy.” They kill because their shoddy tests allow them to claim that animals are “unadoptable.” They kill because their draconian laws empower them to kill.

Some kill because they are steeped in a culture of defeatism, or because they are under the thumb of regressive health or police department oversight. But they still kill. They never say, “we kill because we have accepted killing in lieu of having to put in place foster care, pet retention, volunteer TNR, public relations, and other programs.” In short, they kill because they have failed to do what is necessary to stop killing.

What allows them to continue killing without total condemnation for doing so is the religion of pet overpopulation. It is the political cover that prevents even the animal rescuers and advocates from demanding an immediate end to the whole bloody mess. And, at its core, it is an unsupportable myth. The syllogism goes as follows: shelters kill a lot of animals; shelters adopt out few of them; therefore, there are more animals than homes. Hence, there is pet overpopulation. It is as faulty a syllogism and as untrue a proposition as exists in sheltering today. But people believe it, and because they do, local governments under-fund their shelters, appoint and retain incompetent employees in animal control, and give shelter directors the carte blanche they need to kill because the problem is portrayed as insurmountable.

This also begs the question of why pet stores and commercial breeding operations (sometimes referred to as “puppy mills” or “kitten mills”) are still in business. Hobby breed enthusiasts notwithstanding (since these groups often support No Kill and assist in animal rescue), pet stores and puppy/kitten mills are motivated by profit, and they would not go into the business if homes weren’t available. In addition, the more animals dying in a given community) which traditionalists claim means lack of homes), the greater number of pet stores that sell dogs and cats (which show homes readily available). Generally, pet stores succeed when a shelter is not meeting market demand or competing effectively, and because animal lovers do not want to go into a shelter that kills the vast majority of the animals as this is usually accompanied with under-performing staff, poor customer servie, and dirty and unwelcoming facilities.

- Excerpt from Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America by Nathan J. Winograd

In all of 2006, PeTA only rescued 12 …. TWELVE… pets. One pet per month.

In that same time, they killed 2,981 companion animals of the 3,061 they took in. That’s an adoption rate that is LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT, and a kill rate that is OVER 97%. It also makes 2006 PeTA’s deadliest year yet. They killed 248 pets for every 1 they adopted.

This is a horrible update to PeTA’s continued pattern of companion animal slaughter, and the only way it could be worse is if PeTA got their hands on more dogs since almost every single dog they do get their hands on is killed.

Thanks to Steve over at DoggieNews for bringing this hot off the presses story to my attention.

Now, the Center for Consumer Freedom is an industry lobby group who is tasked with fighting back against PeTA (and others) for the harm they do smearing companies like KFC and Philip Morris. The eco-terrorist radical vegan PeTA sympathizers will complain that being a puppet for big business makes the CCF untrustworthy. Perhaps it does, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and PeTA is making a lot of enemies.

The report showing PeTA’s genocidal kill rate isn’t a CCF study or estimate, it’s a required and official report filed with the government by PeTA. Even worse, PeTA had to be forced to file the form and did so many months after the deadline.

In the wake of No Kill success around the country, there is no excuse for anyone, let alone a group who claims to fight for life of innocent animals, to execute over 97% of the animals they get their hands on. No one needs PeTA to get involved in the “shelter” business… they do this because they WANT to do it.

In all of 2006, PeTA only rescued 12 …. TWELVE… pets. One pet per month.

In that same time, they killed 2,981 companion animals of the 3,061 they took in. That’s an adoption rate that is LESS THAN HALF OF ONE PERCENT, and a kill rate that is OVER 97%. It also makes 2006 PeTA’s deadliest year yet. They killed 248 pets for every 1 they adopted.

This is a horrible update to PeTA’s continued pattern of companion animal slaughter, and the only way it could be worse is if PeTA got their hands on more dogs since almost every single dog they do get their hands on is killed.

Thanks to Steve over at DoggieNews for bringing this hot off the presses story to my attention.

Now, the Center for Consumer Freedom is an industry lobby group who is tasked with fighting back against PeTA (and others) for the harm they do smearing companies like KFC and Philip Morris. The eco-terrorist radical vegan PeTA sympathizers will complain that being a puppet for big business makes the CCF untrustworthy. Perhaps it does, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and PeTA is making a lot of enemies.

The report showing PeTA’s genocidal kill rate isn’t a CCF study or estimate, it’s a required and official report filed with the government by PeTA. Even worse, PeTA had to be forced to file the form and did so many months after the deadline.

In the wake of No Kill success around the country, there is no excuse for anyone, let alone a group who claims to fight for life of innocent animals, to execute over 97% of the animals they get their hands on. No one needs PeTA to get involved in the “shelter” business… they do this because they WANT to do it.

In accordance with the theory of Narcissism of Minor Differences, there is often as much or more fighting between groups and policies that an outsider would find hard to distinguish than there is between groups with opposing values. And certain items that the public would be indifferent to are critical sticking points within the community.

Even worse, there is often a huge discrepancy between the public perception of what a group does and stands for and what they actually do. Let’s start with the largest groups: HSUS, ASPCA, and PeTA.

The HSUS does not run or financially support a single shelter. It is an armchair Animal Rights group that gives plenty of advise to local shelters, law makers, and animal owners without running a single shelter of its own, yet taking credit for the hard work of others while sometimes standing in the way of that work. It collects a lot of money and hires a lot of lawyers to push its agenda. Existentially, it is a direct mail cash cow that reinvests 70 cents of every dollar back into sending old ladies post cards asking them to donate money to save doggies in shelters.

The HSUS has pursued an aggressive growth strategy since Pacelle took over as president and CEO of The HSUS in 2004. The combination with the Fund for Animals led to the creation of a campaigns department that focuses on four major areas – animal cruelty, fur, factory farming and abusive sport hunting practices. The HSUS has also created an in-house litigation team that has more than 40 active cases in state and federal courts. The group’s list of on-line animal advocates has also developed dramatically. The HSUS’ 2006 budget is $103 million, more than double the 1996 annual budget of $42 million. The organization employees more than 400 people, a 60 percent increase from 2000.

The HSUS’ growth reflects the growing popularity and strength of the animal protection movement. With the commitment and support of its robust membership, HSUS has spearheaded successful efforts to pass more than 60 state laws this year, won several cases to protect wildlife and enforce laws banning trapping and cockfighting, and helped pass legislation in Congress to protect pets in disasters and close a tax scam by trophy hunters.

The HSUS is a special interest lobby organization. It is the largest anti-Hunting/Fishing/Trapping lobby. They oppose keeping Reptiles as pets. They are in no way affiliated with your local Humane Society.

What is The HSUS’s role in relation to local animal shelters?

By long-standing tradition, local humane societies remain independent entities, each with its own policies, governance, and priorities. In the 1950s, the founders of The HSUS recognized that animal welfare professionals at these societies were consumed with the day-to-day tasks of community animal care and control. No organization gave a national voice and coast-to-coast muscle in the fight against cruelty and the celebration of the human-animal bond. The founding mission of The HSUS was to support the work of local societies by speaking with just such a voice.

So, the HSUS essentially collects money on behalf of the people who do the hard work in thousands of shelters without sending them a dime of it.

If The HSUS does not oversee my local animal shelter, what does it do?

For more than a half-century, The HSUS has stood as the nation’s most important advocate for local humane societies. Across the country and around the world, we serve local animal shelters and other groups by offering a wealth of publications, training opportunities (such as our annual Animal Care Expo, a trade show and workshop conference specifically designed for animal care and control professionals), and advice and assistance from our team of expert staff. We also publish recommended guidelines for shelter operations, shelter management, and animal control and cruelty.

Um, ok, they talk a lot and collect a lot of money. They are “experts” yet they don’t run any shelters… so where exactly does all that experience come from? The shelter system in this country has a horrible adoption rate (typically 30-40%) so if these “experts” are not actively running shelters, their expertise must come from a history of doing a poor job of adopting out pets.

HSUS might be seen as a more moderate Animal Rights group than PeTA, but the two share several ties:

The HSUS employs several former PeTA employees, and Ingrid Newkirk, president and founder of PeTA has allies within the HSUS directors. One of Newkirk’s allies would be Wayne Pacelle, [former] vice president for media and government affairs [and now President of the HSUS]. Pacelle was hired by the HSUS directly from Cleveland Amory’s Fund for Animals. Amory is also interestingly the mentor of PeTA co-founder Alex Pacheco. Newkirk used the help of Amory in 1987 when she seized corporate and financial control of the anti-research New England Anti-Vivisection Society and its multi-million dollar bank account, the first of her moves to consolidate the animal movement under her influence.

Other former PeTA employees and associates who are now employed at HSUS include the chief computer programmer, the head of its national and international investigations who by the way, also oversees its lucrative Wildlife Lands Trust, two key HSUS investigators and many other people throughout the HSUS corporate structure, including its lab animal section, which handles the medical research issue.

The following analogy puts HSUS and PeTA in perspective as far as their radical Animal Rights platform is concerned:

The difference between PeTA and the HSUS is like the difference between a mugger and a con man – they both steal your money but they have different tactics, and a different timetable. PeTA is a mugger that tries to force its agenda quickly through propoganda and violence, while the HSUS is a con man who is slowly infiltrating government and society looking for a long term realization of the same goals.

As Gina Spadafori notes on the Pet Connection blog, HSUS isn’t an entirely wayward and evil organization:

I have known many HSUS staffers and former staffers for more than 20 years, and have long admired the work they’ve done. Like Bob Baker, the brave and indefatigable investigator (no longer with the HSUS) who has spent his life exposing puppy mills. Or Eric Sakach (still with the HSUS) , who knows more about the dog-fighting underground than anyone alive. Or Dr. Randall Lockwood (now with the ASPCA), the nation’s top authority on dog bites. The HSUS has, for better and for worse, shaped how many of shelters operate, improving standards of care and professionalism, and helping to bring in innovative programs (like behavior counseling) to many of them.
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HSUS has proven to be very flexible, especially once they realize those issues that are sure-fire money-raisers, or, more specifically, sure-fire enemy-makers that will slow the fund-raising efforts. And unlike PETA, I have no doubt HSUS can and will shift again. (Nothing is wrong with a charity fund-raising, by the way. It’s what you do with the money that counts. And how you represent your group while raising the money.)

Apparently, what the HSUS does with all of that money (or at least 70% of it) is campaign to get more money.

Check back soon for coverage of the ASPCA and PeTA.