I just returned from Montcalm County, Michigan. While the Humane Society of the United States assures people that everyone in animal sheltering has “a passion for and are dedicated to the mutual goal of saving animals’ lives” and PETA says blaming shelters for killing is like blaming hospitals for sickness, animal advocates in Greenville, MI know better.
They have spent years fighting against their shelter’s use of the gas barrel and against the selling of shelter animals to medical research. (By 6 to 3 vote, the County this month voted to end the practice of pound seizure). On top of this, a recent report from an Ad Hoc committee appointed by the County Commissioners has found the shelter doesn’t even provide animals clean water to drink, burns the animals with bleach by not removing them during the cleaning process, fails to accurately document adoptions and other “outcomes,” improperly evaluates animal behavior (temperament testing) by “roughing up” the animal, and kills them inhumanely and by untrained personnel.
During public comment at an April meeting, a former Montcalm County animal control officer testified that when the “Class B Dealer” came to pick up the animals to sell them for research, he would say, “Who’s going to college?” He’d then toss dogs into the back of a covered pickup truck and throw cats in after them, in the same space, in the same truck. The officer then stated: “The ones we gassed were the lucky ones.”
In 2007, the shelter took in 1,161 cats.
It killed 1,060 of them.
It then gave 67 to the Class B Dealer to sell into animal research.
Only 34 were adopted.
This is YOUR American animal shelter. The one that blames YOU for the killing.