Write your own letter in opposition to the “stealth” bill the ASPCA created to derail CAARA

Shelter Reform has previously praised Assembly Micah Kellner’s Companion Animal Access and Rescue Act (CAARA) bill. To that effect, we encouraged our readers to send messages to our Albany legislators to make CAARA become law.

Then over the weekend, we learned that the ASPCA was rushing a rival bill to a vote on Wednesday, February 15^th. We call the ASPCA bill a “stealth” bill as it is engineered to mislead the public into thinking it will be just greeeeeeeeeeeeat for shelter animals.

The ASPCA bill is most timely. It’s the ASPCA’s Valentine gift to managers of our State’s kill shelters.

The ASPCA is behind this stealth bill for two reasons.

First, it is the ASPCA’s payback to rescue groups, advocacy groups, animal lovers, and politicians (such as Assemblyperson Micah Kellner) who criticized the ASPCA for their euthanasia of a dog named “Oreo.”

Second, it’s a “thank-you” to kill shelter managers for their support regarding Oreo. The ASPCA bill shields animal shelters from the high standard of animal care that CAARA would require.

We have reprinted below Shelter Reform’s letter to Assemblyperson Amy Paulin – whom the ASPCA convinced to sponsor the stealth bill.

We also have posted below a letter from an ACC Volunteer … who must remain anonymous … or else the ACC will expel him/he for daring to contact his/her elected representatives. (If CAARA were the law, the ACC could not retaliate against its employees, rescuers or volunteers for whistleblowing.) The volunteer’s letter supports (from a volunteer’s informed perspective) Nathan Winograd’s criticism of the ASPCA stealth bill.

NOTE: Writing a personal email to the Assembly members who are to vote on the ASPCA Stealth bill (aka Bill No. A05449A or the “Shelter Access” bill) is the most effective way for New Yorkers to get their attention. Just cut and paste the following email addresses onto the ”To” line of your own message to the members of the NYS Assembly’s Agriculture Committee:

The committee is set to vote on the bill this Wednesday, February 15th.

EMAIL FROM SHELTER REFORM TO ASSEMBLYPERSON AMY PAULIN

To: Amy Paulin <PaulinA@assembly.state.ny.us>
Cc: Edward Sayres <ESayres@aspca.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2012 9:47 PM
Subject: Your Bill No. A05449A: Please allow CAARA to be the law

SHELTER REFORM ACTION COMMITTEE

www.shelterreform.org

info@shelterreform.org

February 12, 2012

Dear Honorable Assemblyperson Paulin,

Shelter Reform Action Committee (www.shelterreform.org) respectfully opposes your bill No. A05449A.

For the past 17 years, SRAC has advocated for the reform of New York City’s infamous Animal Care & Control (ACC) system.

Assemblyperson Micah Kellner has sponsored “The Companion Animal Access and Rescue Act” (CAARA) bill. CAARA has the support of a broad array of animal lovers, rescue groups and animal advocacy groups (including Best Friends, No Kill Nation, and Shelter Reform). CAARA was fashioned not only to amend existing State law by allowing 501(c)(3) rescue groups to pull from shelters, but also to impose basic standards of care on every animal shelter.

CAARA’s requirements are specific: shelters must ensure that their animals receive fresh food and water, enrichment and socialization, clean cages and kennels, regular daily exercise, appropriate cage space to house the animal, prompt, ongoing and professional veterinary care, freedom from pain, freedom from contagious diseases, and the ability to leave the shelter “in reasonable condition.”

If CAARA were to become the law, ACC Management (controlled by NYC’s Department of Health) would immediately be held accountable for the neglect, disease, and suffering that has existed at the ACC over the years.

And real reform at the ACC could be achieved.

We understand your bill was devised by a group of kill shelters with the support and guidance of the ASPCA.

Your bill effectively shifts CAARA’s specific standards of shelter care – almost verbatim – onto rescue groups,* leaving shelters with vague requirements.

We understand why a shelter like the ACC would support your bill. For the past 17 years, the ACC has jammed animals into overcrowded shelters, guaranteed that every shelter dog and cat will fall ill from one or more diseases that permeate the ACC buildings, kept dogs and cats confined to filthy cages for days at a stretch, failed to provide fresh food and water on a timely basis, provided substandard veterinary care (when vet care was actually provided), failed to properly and timely give appropriate medications to shelter animals, killed animals “by mistake,” allowed uncertified employees to do the killing, allowed uncertified/unqualified employees to “test” animals’ temperament, etc.

And for the past several years, the ACC has relied overwhelmingly on rescue groups to “adopt” its animals. Your bill ensures that rescue groups will continue to be burdened with the emotional and financial costs of nursing ACC animals back to health … after the ACC has made those animals good and sick.

New York State needs a law requiring animal shelters to live up to what their name implies: a place that affords protection and safety. CAARA would guarantee that quality of care.

We cannot fathom why the ASPCA has given its imprimatur to this bill, but it obviously is not for the benefit of shelter animals.

Unfortunately, you have agreed to sponsor a bill that will ensure the continued suffering of animals at the ACC as well as shield animal shelters throughout the state from any real accountability for the care of their animals.

Please, Assemblyperson Paulin, withdraw your bill. Put your support behind CAARA to become the standard-of-care law for animal shelters throughout New York State.

SHELTER REFORM ACTION COMMITTEE

*/ It’s not as though CAARA would allow just any rescue groups to pull from a shelter. They must be bona fide 501(c)3 charities, in existence for at least a year, with no known criminal or animal abuser association, and have an established relationship with a veterinarian. Finally, the animal shelter reserves the right to investigate any charges of malfeasance by a rescue group.

Email from an ACC Volunteer to the NYS Assemby’s Agriculture Committee

From: [ANONYMOUS ACC VOLUNTEER]
Date: Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 1:08 PM
Subject: Please reject A05449.
To: various NYS Assemblymembers

I am writing to you today to ask you to please vote “no” on Assembly Bill 05449A this Wednesday, February 15th. Animal lovers all across the state are watching this vote, and we feel that 5449 sanctions what has become an exploitative relationship between impounding organizations and rescue groups. There is enough benign language in this bill that seems rooted in common sense and humane principles on first reading, so an uninformed legislator may be tempted to view it as a mere codification of best practices, but I beg you to look closer to identify some dangerously elastic language, which contains real potential to be abused to the detriment of companion animals.

The most obvious example of murky and problematic phrasing is that 5449 gives officers and veterinarians on the payroll of an impounding organization the authority or partial authority to euthanize an animal who they deem to be suffering from “psychological pain”(section 5). Since there is no definition and no concurrent model of evaluation for this phrase, we have to assume that the determination rests on observation and (minimal) corroboration. How would a reasonable person expect psychological pain to manifest in a shelter animal? How would your beloved pet, if you have one, act during his or her first night in a shelter? I know mine would be an absolute basket case. Would a dog drooling and trembling be suffering from psychological pain? Would a panicked cat backed up in the corner of his or her cage be suffering? Should these animals be killed shortly after intake in response?

I have been a volunteer at New York City’s Animal Care and Control for over four years, and I have personally seen hundreds of animals at the intake desk who had to be dragged in by multiple employees because the shock and trauma of the shelter—the unceasing noise, the chaos, the heartbreak of abandonment—was too much to bear, and I have seen these same animals walk out the door days later with a new family, trotting proudly as if their incarceration was nothing more than a mildly unpleasant dream. These were not “charity cases” and they were not saved by crazy hoarding “extremists”, as the ASPCA evidently wants you to view all small rescue groups. They were adopted, by families who wanted them, and they earned their second chance by their own resilience and the emergence of their essentially sociable nature. 5449A gives open admission shelters, chronically filled to capacity and often plagued by inadequate adopter traffic, a way to “manage” intakes by euthanizing terrified animals at their discretion before these animals ever get a chance to calm down.

I know it sounds histrionic to suggest that this bill would encourage the premature killing of adoptable animals. I’m sure it is difficult for you to believe that people who dedicate their lives to working with animals would want to kill them rather than give them the benefit of the doubt, because it seems as if only callous or abusive people would put a friendly animal to death. A bit of directed empathy, however, reveals that abusing euthanasia as a form of population control is far from callous or indifferent and is not at all uncommon. Many of the employees who work in these shelters suffer under the seemingly Sisyphean task of caring for a steady and unrelenting stream of unwanted animals that far exceed their individual capacity, day in and day out. They are steeped in the ideology that pet overpopulation will never let up, that there are 25 animals entering for every ten that leave, and they are taught that diverting resources to the “most adoptable” is the most humane way to address an otherwise impossible issue. This mindset, while not invalid, looks for reasons to write an animal off, looks for reasons to cull the herd. Because the problem would seem unmanageable otherwise. Because adopting out animals is difficult in a culture that views shelter pets as damaged goods. Because you just can’t give every animal a fair shake when you see nothing but open mouths everywhere you turn.

Good policy would support these shelters by encouraging community outreach and collaboration, to lessen the burden and shift it to a growing pool of 501(c)(3) groups who are only too happy to help. It would support the animals who are dependent on municipal shelters by encouraging transparency and facilitating true partnerships based on the mutual fulfillment of obligations . Instead, 5449 reinforces a dysfunctional, top-down structure of moral authority that, frankly, few impound facilities have come close to earning. Impound organizations who are invested in controlling dissent can “circle the wagons” and threaten potential whistle blowers by exploiting the language of 5449, section 6 to justify the exclusion of rescue groups without any accompanying procedures to ensure the validity of claims, and no redress for groups who are falsely accused. Bill 05449A presents touchstones of responsible stewardship that rescue groups would have to adhere to in order to be eligible to have animals transferred for adoption. None of these standards are particularly objectionable—in fact, together they make up a pretty basic standard of care. But, based on my experience with AC&C in New York City, municipal shelters don’t have anywhere near the labor capacity to fulfill this function with the diligence required for propriety, and wouldn’t pass their own inspection process by a very large margin. Who regulates the regulators here? Does anyone think that a beleaguered open admission shelter with a shoestring budget and 40,000 animals a year can afford to divert labor to visiting the foster homes of rescue groups? No; what this bill does is give under performing shelters license to ostracize for purely subjective and even vindictive reasons, and the ever-present threat of expulsion silences rescuers who witness inhumane and abusive conditions and ultimately drives down the incentive to improve shelter conditions. This enabling attitude effectively perpetuates the pet overpopulation problem by characterizing municipal shelters as infallible and beyond reproach, capable of dictating standards of care for others even while they hypocritically fall short of those standards themselves.

Is this fair? Is this the way New York State treats its partners? Is this how New York State treats its homeless companion animals?

Rescue groups may need a regulatory body to ensure a standard of care, but the process of evaluation demands unceasing adherence to a specific and disinterested process to ensure equitable administration and validity. It is worth underscoring that rescue organizations save municipalities money by accepting the financial obligations of animal care, and they offer a second chance to thousands of animals who go on to provide joy and companionship to grateful New York families, including mine. Many of them offer services municipal shelters cannot or will not provide, such as humane education, spay/neuter outreach, and resources for responsible animal ownership. They are the most valuable partners in the fight against pet overpopulation, and they are largely responsible for New York’s laudable progress in reducing euthanasia rates across the state. They have earned a place at the table as equals, and not as unruly children whose professional integrity needs to be policed by an ineffectual and unprepared body with a clear and undeniable conflict of interest. Please do not be swayed by the claims of large animal rescue organizations like the ASPCA, who depend on the control of animal welfare groups to support the widespread public belief that they rescue more animals than anyone else. Their donor base rests on a mythology of scale that is exaggerated, to say the least, and greater shelter access represents a threat to their primacy and the displacement of their donor dollars. Please vote in the spirit of impartiality and deliberation, and reject bill 5449 on the basis of unclear language and a lack of universal definitions. The animals cannot afford to have their lives left up to interpretation, particularly when the negotiators are so unfit.

Sincerely,

2 Responses to Write your own letter in opposition to the “stealth” bill the ASPCA created to derail CAARA

Sheila Bush says:

February 14, 2012 at 10:40 AM

Since personally getting involved with animal rescue about a year ago, I’ve been appalled, shocked, and heartbroken by the things I’ve seen at the ASPCA and the ACC. If you too could personally witness the real treatment of many of these animals (as opposed to the stories they CHOOSE to share with you), I’m certain you would not support this bill. Please don’t help the ASPCA pass a bill that will benefit them while hurting the beings the profess to care about. Please.

A Grateful New Yorker says:

February 16, 2012 at 1:27 PM

Kudos to Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, Chairman of the NYS Assembly Codes Committee for putting the brakes on this bill. I concur with his assessment that this issue warrants far more thought and study before before a shelter bill is presented to the legislature.