Animal welfare commission debates no kill policy

Dogs and cats in San Francisco shelters move closer to a lifesaving
guarantee under a proposal being considered by a city commission.

The Commission of Animal Control and Welfare has finished taking testimony from a wide range of organizations on whether to mandate a No Kill policy in San Francisco by enacting shelter oversight legislation that would require all San Francisco shelters to commit to ending the killing of savable animals in shelters. It would be the first of its kind in the nation.

Representatives of animal protection groups from around the country were invited to testify as part of the Commission’s “exploration of a policy that would ensure that no adoptable animal (including those that need medical and behavioral intervention but would be adoptable after that) is [killed] in San Francisco shelters.” Testifying in favor of the proposal included the No Kill Advocacy Center, Best Friends Animal Society, Fix San Francisco, and a host of local rescue groups and animal lovers.

The effort is directed at saving the last 10 percent of savable animals still being killed in San Francisco’s animal control shelter—Pit Bulls, feral cats, older animals, sick and injured but treatable animals—and it is an achievement easily in reach given that San Francisco has the lowest per capita intake rate of any municipality in the nation (five times less than that of Reno, Nevada, four times less than Los Angeles, and half the national average) because of a twenty-plus year history of high volume, low-cost spay/neuter. If it chooses, it can easily achieve this worthy goal, even while importing thousands of out of county young and small dogs and cats to meet adoption demand, as the San Francisco SPCA is currently doing.

Ultimately, the question facing San Francisco is not will it or won’t it pass such a law? The real question is, will it do it now or will it do it later? In the end, laws of this nature are inevitable: not just in San Francisco, but in every community; and not just for sheltering, but in every social justice movement. All movements seek to codify expected norms of behavior into law. That is why we have—and embrace—voting rights acts, environmental protection laws, and laws against discrimination based on gender, race, and sexual orientation. Ultimately, such laws are essential to ensure fair and equal treatment and to prevent abuses which can come when those in power are given too much discretion—a discretion which has been abused by shelter directors to unnecessarily kill almost four million animals every year.

The proposal would prescribe how shelters must operate, removing the discretion that allows shelter directors to ignore what is in the best interests of animals and needlessly kill them. And because it would codify the programs and services responsible for dramatic lifesaving success in communities which have already voluntarily implemented them, its success would prove exactly what is needed in order to create No Kill. For example, before killing an animal, the law would require the shelter to certify that:

1. There are no empty cages, kennels, or other living environments in the shelter;
2. The animal cannot share a cage or kennel with another animal;
3. A foster home is not available;
4. Rescue groups have been notified and are not willing to accept the animal;
5. The animal is not a feral cat subject to sterilization and release; and,
6. The director of the agency certifies he or she has no other alternative.

The Commission received testimony that,

this law provides a course of action so reasonable that there should be no controversy whatsoever. Not only because the public would be shocked to know that such basic and important steps are not commonplace for every animal in every shelter already, but that a law is needed to force shelters to take these simple, ethical steps.

As a result, animal lovers are asking some tough questions:

Will the San Francisco Animal Welfare Commission take what may now seem to some like a bold leap, but which history will judge to be such an obvious necessity as to leave us astounded by the hesitancy? Will they set aside their hesitation—and in the case of the San Francisco SPCA and San Francisco Animal Control representatives on the Commission, their personal loyalties—and look at the issue for what it is: granting animals the protections they need and deserve, and by doing so, help the city of San Francisco once more attain its reputation as the crown jewel of the No Kill movement? Or will the Commission delay action while other communities continue to move confidently forward? Will they wait to act until public dissatisfaction at the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of animals every year in San Francisco grows even greater? Will they wait until the fight becomes more bitter and divisive as San Francisco animal lovers watch other cities throughout the nation continue to achieve and then supersede San Francisco’s lifesaving? Will they wait to act until San Francisco is no longer hailed as the progressive city where no healthy animals are killed, but lamented as a regressive city where they are still killing animals who can and should be saved?

If history is any guide, they may be in for a long fight.

For further reading:

To learn more about the effort to reform San Francisco shelters, click here.
To learn more about the No Kill movement, click here.
To learn more about the Commission of Animal Control & Welfare, click here.