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Editor, News-Register:
The Marshall County Animal Shelter's decision to eliminate essential safeguards -- such as background and veterinary checks -- puts animals at grave risk.
This change was apparently made at the behest of Best Friends Animal Society (BFAS), a multimillion-dollar Utah-based group that pressures shelters nationwide to adopt reckless policies aimed at meeting arbitrary "no-kill" targets.
In Indianapolis, a BFAS partner shelter fired two employees for trying to prevent convicted abusers from adopting animals. The facility had started conducting criminal background checks after adopters hanged, stabbed, and tortured a dog named Deron to death just days after adopting him.
But BFAS urged the shelter to stop screening adopters, and management agreed. According to a former employee, "They argued that going to any home, no matter who it's with ... is better than being in the shelter." The employee resumed background checks after discovering that a dog named Champagne had been adopted by a couple with five prior cruelty or abandonment violations. But when shelter management found out, they fired her.
Rushing animals out of shelters, into unvetted situations, doesn't save them--it betrays them. The humane way to address animal homelessness is by preventing more births, through passing and enforcing comprehensive spay/neuter legislation and offering low- and no-cost sterilization services.
Teresa Chagrin
Animal Care and Control Issues Manager,
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Norfolk, Virginia