Comments on: Pain or death: euthanasia again

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:44:53 +0000

The blog author misunderstands the case against the THS management. The THS management is accused of chronically understaffing their facility; not providing proper veterinary care; negligent assignment of incompetent staff without training nor supervision; failing to feed, water, exercise and provide proper sanitation; failure to alleviate suffering with pain medications; failing to euthanize chronically ill animals with no chance of recovery or being adopted. By doing so any reasonable person could not have failed to forsee the neglect and cruelty towards animals.
As an example, take the kitten nurseries. In late 2008 the THS instructed the kitten feeder co-ordinator to turn down volunteers; fired him; the kitten-feeder trainer was fired; volunteers and staff were fired; there was either a shortage or lack of kitten food and lack of vets and supplies; sick animals were not quarantined from healthy animals. The result, which anyone would have anticipated, the least of whom are the management of a Humane Society, is that kittens died from starvation, dehydration, rampant disease. In other words, there was no one to clean them, no one to feed them, no one to vet them, no food, no supplies for feeding and cleaning.
The THS has staged the terms of the debate as an insoluble philosophical debate when it is a simple matter of animal neglect. The statistics they put forward are unaudited, their extraoridarily low “euthanasia rate” is an unrecognized metric. I believe what will come out in the criminal case is that the THS stats are not only heavily manipulated, but a case of criminal fraud, that they solicited money based on stats that are made up. The stats I have, briefly, show that the euthanasia numbers are correct, but that the admission numbers are closer to 3,000 cats and dogs per year, not 10,000.

By: Molly

Molly — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:49:20 +0000

It sure was handy for Trow that his convictions dovetailed perfectly with getting to publish and promote, endlessly, THS’ extraordinarily low euthanasia stats.

So animals can suffer horribly for weeks or months, but hey, the pamphlets begging for donations sure have a great Fig. 1!

By: Edward Prutschi

Edward Prutschi — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:15:38 +0000

While it’s premature to jump to conclusions in either direction, my preliminary view based on the information publically available is that the OSPCA is pushing a prosecution based on an ethical / philosophical difference rather than on a genuine criminal act.

The question of when, or even whether, to euthanize a sick animal is one over which reasonable people can differ. Making a choice with which the OSPCA disagrees, is not in and of itself a criminal act.

The Code requires deliberate wilful harming of the animals to sustain a conviction and that appears to be very doubtful in the circumstances of this case.