07/18/2024
To Kill or Not to Kill- That’s Not Really the Question
Rachel Smith
Animal Protection Officer II, Chair of the Animal Welfare Investigations Project Advisory Board, Member of the International Society for Animal Forensic Sciences
July 16, 2024
I recently read an article titled The Myth About No-Kill Shelters and the author, Jessica Kooistra, so perfectly wrote, “Why does an animal shelter resort to euthanasia? It could be space, it could be an outbreak of disease, it could be the animal in their care is beyond help, and it could even be that they offer this service to the general public who can’t afford to make an appointment at the local vet.
“Vilifying an organization, that only exists because of the negligence of its general public, and is forced to make hard decisions to remain available to said public, is one of the most disturbing things about working in animal welfare.
“On one hand the public demands the shelter exists, on the other they demand it is run the way they believe to be correct. A shelter should be available to take in absolutely all unwanted animals in the community, while simultaneously finding them all a happy ending. These unrealistic expectations have found their way onto social media platforms where voices grow loud, and pressure is put on the organization which attempts to appease this loud public. Often to unhealthy levels.
“Rescue organizations who proudly boast to be ‘no-kill’ only exist because they can choose which animals to take in, and how many. The ones they turn away often end up at the local pound anyway. So, are they truly ‘no-kill’?”
It felt as if these few paragraphs were ripped straight out of my heart and slapped so articulately on paper in a way that I couldn’t have spoken better myself. While reflecting on this, an ominous, major event was brewing in the small town of Danville, Virginia.
The Best Friends Animal Society (BFAS), known for being the leader and largest proponent of the “no-kill” movement, spearheaded and targeted the Danville Area Humane Society (DAHS) and its director, Paulette Dean, because of their high euthanasia rates. What initially started out as an innocent offer to help transfer some DAHS cats to an unknown location in New York quickly dissolved into a nightmare ‘Danville Deserves Better’ campaign after Dean declined BFAS’s offer. BFAS’s plan was to infiltrate, infect, and infest DAHS to reduce their function as an open-admission shelter to a limited-admission shelter in order to boost their live release rate to more closely adhere to Best Friends’ completely arbitrary golden save rate number of 90%.
According to Dean, a Best Friends representatives targeted and threatened her by saying, “Make no mistake. We will not forget and we will do what we need to do,” and, “Paulette Dean needs to remember that Best Friends has more money to fight her than she has to fight Best Friends.” Because of this campaign, the reputation of DAHS, Dean, and her employees faced online and in-person threats so much so that the shelter had to temporarily shut down out of safety concerns to the staff. In all fairness, one of Best Friends' representatives later released a statement saying, “…there is no place for threats or violence in the animal welfare movement and such behaviors have never been tolerated.” But the dye has been cast, a line has been crossed, and the true mission of Best Friends has been revealed that they will go to any length to infiltrate, infect, and infest these organizations and communities to implant a hidden agenda to further their goal.
When it comes to the no-kill movement, we need to get a few facts straight: there is no such thing as a kill shelter or a no-kill shelter; there is only open-admission and limited-admission with the latter applying to Best Friends. In an editorial written by Bobby Allen Roach, Star-Tribune editor, he quotes Dean regarding Best Friends’ unwanted intrusion into DAHS’s operations saying, “The only way a shelter can be ‘no-kill’ is to turn away animals. If people would thoughtfully investigate what that means, we believe they would realize that leads to very sad and even cruel consequences for animals. There is no magical place for animals to go if a shelter turns them away.”
Speaking from nearly a decade of experience in animal welfare, I can attest Dean’s statement to be true. Open-admission shelters are vital organizations within a community that serve the public and their animals. From free/low cost vaccinations/microchips/spay/neuter to investigating animal cruelty, from handing out community engagement resources to fostering survivors of domestic violence, open-admission shelters provide a wide array of resources to the public and their animals. But most importantly open-admission shelters accept all animals regardless of circumstance, condition, or volume and all free of charge- something that Best Friends cannot say they do.
Were Best Friends to become open-admission they would quickly experience the same massive overflow that all open-admission shelters are struggling with today. When Best Friends or other limited-admission shelters turn away the sick, the injured, the abandoned, and the homeless because they don’t want their numbers to be negatively affected, the fact remains that those animals still need a place to go. And as Dean pointed out, there is no magical place and they don’t just magically disappear. The refusal of Best Friends and limited-admission shelters to admit these animals who need a place to go often results in cruel consequences. They are dumped in the very same parking lot of that facility or tied out in the woods or left in a park without shelter and without medical care. If they’re lucky enough to be found, those animals then are admitted to facilities that are truly there to help- that’s right: the open-admission shelters.
The second misleading fact that needs to be straightened out: Best Friends euthanizes animals too. Best Friends’ harmful ‘Save them all’ slogan is a gigantic contradiction. It is impossible to save every animal because there will always be animals that must be euthanized due to an incurable disease, are injured beyond saving or can’t receive effective pain management, are too aggressive to be released to the public or socialize with other animals, or are too behaviorally unsound for rehabilitation or training. It is also a fact that the 90% save rate benchmark is an arbitrary number made up by, pushed, and reinforced by Best Friends with no historical statistical backing as a measure of “success.” While the majority of us professionally involved in animal welfare are aware of these facts, the vast majority of the general public is not so when they think of a ‘no-kill’ shelter, they literally think that any animal that goes through those doors is completely safe from euthanasia. This vilifies the role of open-admission shelters and their staff and Best Friends knows it. Despite hearing the same sentiment time and time and time again by open-admission shelters around the country that their no-kill language push is detrimental, Best Friends refuses to change their language and is happy to allow the persecution of open-admission shelters and their staff facing these euthanasia decisions.
This never-ending circle of infiltrate, indoctrinate, and control the nation’s open-admission shelters and the public is leaving longstanding damage to the animal welfare and sheltering world. To gaslight the general public with a constant onslaught of misinformation and skew save rate data is beyond reproach and unethical. They coined the famous ‘Save them all’ statement which has wreaked irreparable harm on the very organizations that exist to accept the animals that they do not and will not.
This holier-than-thou agenda is driven by the one thing that Best Friends holds most dear and it isn’t the lives or well-being of animals: it’s numbers. As Dean puts it so well, “The animals aren’t numbers; they are living creatures who don’t deserve to suffer and die a lingering death because we closed our shelter doors.” And until Best Friends takes a good, long, hard reflective look in the mirror and realizes that numbers aren’t the most important aspect to animal welfare, we cannot unite to perfect a more humane world.
DAHS’s mission statement reads, “Our purpose is to promote the welfare and humane treatment of all animals: Mammals, fowl, reptiles, and fish; to prevent cruelty and promote kindness, respect, and reverence for all forms of life; and to this end, provide for the rescue and temporary maintenance of lost, strayed, abandoned animals; find responsible, loving homes for as many as possible; investigate acts of cruelty, abandonment, and neglect; strive to decrease pet overpopulation through spay/neuter programs; disseminate the principles of humaneness through educational programs and through these efforts contribute to the creation of a truly humane society.” That is both the letter and spirit of humane animal welfare.
So the question isn’t to kill (euthanize) or not to kill (euthanize) but instead the question is: when do we value the life and most humane outcome for each being over the number they represent?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kill-kill-thats-really-question-rachel-smith-8wyuc/
Copyright © 2024 PETA's Open Admission Shelter News and Info, All rights reserved.
Send a message to learn more
