ASPCA chief's tenure marked by unconscionable policies

 Ed Sayres once told the USA Today that
 killing is the moral equivalent of not
 killing:  “There is no room for No Kill as
 morally superior.”

To prevent those kinds of tragedies from being repeated, the New York State Legislature is considering “Oreo’s Law”—named after the first dog Sayres killed—which would make it illegal for pounds and shelters across the state to kill animals when another non-profit is willing to save that animal. The proposed law would save thousands of dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, and other companion animals currently being killed in New York, and would do so at no cost to taxpayers. But Sayres is determined to derail the legislation, a course of conduct which will condemn thousands of animals to a needless death.

  Oreo in a photograph reputed to have been taken
  minutes before she was put to death as "aggressive
  to people."

In order to do that, the ASPCA is not only fear-mongering and disparaging smaller, less powerful non-profit animal protection organizations by arguing that they are staffed by animal abusers in disguise, he is also threatening the lives of animals in California by denigrating the law upon which Oreo’s Law is based on. The right of rescue access has been the law in California for a decade and is credited with not only saving thousands of animals every year, but creating a vibrant network of grassroots non-profit organizations that has improved the lives of animals across the state. Sayres has indicated he intends to produce a “study” which will show the California law is dangerous, despite his own previous study while director of the San Francisco SPCA that proved it not only saved lives, but saved hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in San Francisco alone.

At the same time, Sayres also announced that he will pursue another “study” to ensure that Oreo’s Law is defeated. That study will interview carefully screened rescue groups to come to the predetermined conclusion that empowering smaller non-profit organizations with access to animals being threatened with being killed throughout New York State is not needed.

  Rafael Lopez' dog was abused and killed by the
  ASPCA while getting treatment at their hospital
  according to allegations in his lawsuit. The ASPCA
  is also alleged to have covered up the abuse.

While Sayres defends his unethical position on Oreo’s Law by claiming that non-profit organizations less powerful and less wealthy than the ASPCA are little more than animal abusers, his claim is not only unconscionable on its face, it is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black: Recent revelations show that the ASPCA is the non-profit organization with a record of abusing animals. Shortly after the killing of Oreo and Max, the ASPCA was accused in a Federal lawsuit of abusing animals and subsequently covering it up, putting other animals at risk of abuse. According to the allegations in the complaint, staff at the ASPCA animal hospital kicked a dog repeatedly, resulting in the dog’s death. There are also claims this is not the first time ASPCA personnel abused animals.

And there is more, as Sayres appears intent on steering a course toward greater harm and greater killing of animals in other parts of the nation as well.

The ASPCA’s “Agent Orange” Campaign

You don’t hear much about the ASPCA’s “Mission: Orange” programs anymore, and that is a good thing according to No Kill advocates and shelter reformers. Introduced several years ago and launched to much self-congratulatory fanfare, Sayres promised donors that it would help create No Kill communities across the country, with Austin, Texas, being the first of many. It was a resounding failure. Nicknamed “Agent Orange” by local animal lovers because it was geared to carpet bombing their own efforts to save lives, the program backed regressive shelter directors, tried to sabotage grassroots shelter reform efforts, and did little to end the killing. In fact, leaked memos from the ASPCA’s representative in Austin showed that the ASPCA identified “No Kill advocates” as a threat to the “Mission: Orange” initiative, and that the program would back a shelter director responsible for killing over 100,000 animals, despite banks and banks of empty cages, during her tenure.

Not surprisingly, killing actually increased 11% during the first year of the campaign. An animal had less of a chance of coming out of the shelter alive in Austin, TX under “Mission: Orange” than it did just one year before. In its second year, the only decline in killing was the result of progressive non-profit organizations like Austin Pets Alive taking the animals off of death row at the ASPCA-backed pound, which refused to implement common sense alternatives to killing with any degree of rigor and once again continued to kill animals despite hundreds of empty cages. Over 100,000 animals have been put to death since the current director took over the pound in Austin, Texas. That’s over 12,000 each year, 1,000 each month, 34 each day, 1 every 12 minutes the shelter has been open to the public. Despite this, Sayres continued to support her, both publicly and privately, calling her “a very effective leader.”

Now, in its third year, the program is officially dead. (Tampa, Florida and Philadelphia were also named as Tier One “Mission: Orange” cities, and like Austin, the efforts disintegrated due to mismanagement and open hostility to those wanting grassroots involvement, accountability, and the ouster of kill-oriented shelter directors.)

Realizing that the city pound has made little headway toward No Kill, the Austin City Council recently took matters into its own hands and unanimously passed its own No Kill plan, despite opposition from the ASPCA-backed leadership of the pound. The City Council-enacted plan includes “an immediate moratorium on killing any animal (except for humane reasons or aggression validated by a behaviorist) when there are cages or kennels available.” Since the moratorium was enacted, more than a hundred fewer animals have been killed compared to the same period as last year. New evidence, however, suggests the ASPCA-backed director is attempting to sabotage the effort.

There is mounting evidence that the ASPCA-backed city pound is violating its duty to the health and well-being of cats entrusted to their care by refusing to prove needed veterinary care to sick or injured cats who are deemed “fractious” or “feral.” In addition, because animals are not vaccinated on intake, they are becoming sick at the shelter and then not being provided remedial care. In almost all cases, shelter animals should be vaccinated immediately upon intake. A delay of even a day or two will significantly compromise a vaccine’s ability to provide protection. In some cases, the chance of the vaccine preventing disease may be 90% or better if given the day before exposure, but will drop to less than 1% if given the day after exposure. When asked about the lack of medical care for these cats, the director of the pound told the Animal Advisory Commission that it is illegal to treat animals without examining them, and since the cats are too "fractious," they cannot be examined. This claim is a fabrication.

There is nothing in what is commonly referred to the Texas Veterinary Practice Act that would prevent care being given to these animals. In fact, the Act specifically allows for visual observation as a means of “possess[ing] sufficient knowledge of the animal to initiate at least a general or preliminary diagnosis of the animal's medical condition.”

According to Dr. Michael Moyer, V.M.D, the Director of Shelter Animal Medicine and Associate Adjunct Professor of Shelter Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine,

Indeed, there are circumstances wherein a tactile exam is imprudent, and the safer mere observation of the animal is all that can be reasonably performed (many zoo species, captive cervids, aggressive or otherwise dangerous animals). In my professional opinion, fractious cats without life-threatening illness may be better managed by observation and best available treatment for the presumptive disease (for example, upper respiratory infections, very common in catteries). Some palliative or curative treatment, when available, must be offered to any sick animal in a shelter. It is not appropriate to withhold treatment from fractious animals, though there may be limits to what medications can be safely deployed with said animals.

Generally speaking, in order to minimize or prevent human injury, any animal that is deemed feral (and noted as such in the medical records) does not require an actual physical examination prior to anesthesia or the initiation of treatment for illness or injury. At Washoe County Regional Animal Services and the Nevada Humane Society, for example, all animals are considered to be under the care and control of that facility and easily treated common diseases such as upper respiratory infections (URI) in cats are always closely monitored and/or therapy begun to eliminate or reduce pain and suffering during the stray period.

According to Dr. Diana J. Lucree, D.V.M., Chief Veterinarian at the Nevada Humane Society,

The signs of URI are easily noted from outside the feral cat's enclosure. Often sneezing is heard during daily cleaning and feeding and closer inspection might reveal the presence of ocular and/or nasal discharge. Sometimes a decrease in appetite accompanies the outward signs. If the cat has not been eating or drinking, dehydration can occur which will cause the cat to become lethargic. The first strategy is to try an Orbax tablet in a small sample of canned food once a day. If the feral is not eating but is still too active to handle, oral liquid antibiotics (e.g. Clavamox or re-formulated Doxycycline) can be sprayed onto the tongue and lining of the mouth as the cat is hissing. If there is still no response, the cat can be contained in a squeeze cage and injected with antibiotics. We have even managed to give subcutaneous fluids to feral cats this way. If the cat has a very serious case of URI, it can often be handled initially for injectable treatments until [the cat] begins to feel better.

She concludes by saying that “there is no reason to delay or deny lifesaving treatment to a cat simply because the cat is feral [or fractious].” And the results show it: Washoe County is now one of the safest communities for homeless animals in the United States (saving 90% of all dogs and cats), despite a per capita intake rate that is over twice the national average, a community hard hit by the recent economic recession, and in a state with the second highest unemployment rate in the nation, which Austin has largely avoided.

None of this is new information in the field of animal welfare; this should have been standard practice even before the enactment of the moratorium. In addition, given the close relationship between pound leadership and the ASPCA, there is no reason this information should not have been readily available to the agency. Because of this, local and national shelter reformers are concerned that this may be part of a deliberate attempt to sabotage the No Kill plan by intentionally denying medical treatment to animals and then blaming their illnesses on No Kill, saying it is akin to warehousing. At least one witness has allegedly seen the ASPCA representative videotaping at the shelter in recent days before news of the conduct broke publicly.

In addition, this is exactly the course of conduct taken in other communities, such as King County Animal Care & Control near Seattle, Washington, by shelter leadership hostile to their Council’s directive to end the killing of healthy and treatable animals.

In response, the No Kill Advocacy Center asked the City Council to step in put an immediate stop to the practice of withholding treatment to sick cats, claiming it is tantamount to animal cruelty by the very agency tasked with enforcement of such laws. If a resident of Austin had a sick animal and failed to provide prompt and necessary veterinary care, they would be subject to arrest and prosecution. Tasked with the very enforcement of these laws, the local shelter should not be permitted to violate them and cause animals to needlessly suffer.

The ASPCA’s Blame Game in San Francisco

In San Francisco, the ASPCA’s involvement—and more specifically, that of Sayres’—is also having a negative impact on the well-being and lives of sheltered animals. Over the last year, a San Francisco Commission began the process of reviewing legislation to focus local shelters toward greater rates of lifesaving. The effort was directed at extending the safety net to the last of the savable animals still being killed in San Francisco’s animal control shelter—sick and injured but treatable animals, Pit Bulls, feral cats, older animals. And it was an achievement easily in reach given that San Francisco has the lowest per capita intake rate of any municipality in the nation. As a result, there was a growing consensus that the city could have easily achieved this 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 (roughly 1,700 last year alone). Shelter reformers were hopeful when several commissioners announced support for the program. But after lobbying by the ASPCA and others, commissioners dropped their support. The proposal is now virtually dead.

In his successful campaign to derail the effort, Sayres dispatched ASPCA representatives who demanded the right of the shelters to continue to kill animals, calling No Kill “radical” and arguing against its enactment as official city policy. Despite personal knowledge of the City and an understanding that it is an achievement easily within reach, Sayres—who used to run the San Francisco SPCA—told the Commission to maintain the status quo: a continuation of killing.

Ironically, when Sayres was hired as President of the San Francisco SPCA, he inherited an agency that was the crown jewel of the No Kill movement. San Francisco was the then-safest community in the U.S. for homeless animals and the first to end the killing of healthy dogs and cats, backed by the SF/SPCA which leveraged its progressive policies and a companion animal-loving community to a war chest with assets in excess of $40,000,000 and an annual surplus of revenue to expenses as high as $3,000,000 a year. It would not last under Sayres.

Within a short period of time, those surpluses were turned into million dollar deficits and deterioration in the San Francisco safety net for the city’s neediest homeless animals. Not only did Sayres spend a significant amount of money on esoteric conferences that included workshops on communicating with dead pets, insects as messengers of the “soul,” and other similar topics, he also curtailed the lifesaving programs responsible for the San Francisco SPCA’s meteoric decline in killing prior to his arrival. In their place, he led a campaign to build an unneeded $30 million fee-for-service veterinary hospital responsible for million dollar structural deficits, turning away those unable to afford the high priced care, and an abandonment of the No Kill mission. As a result, the San Francisco SPCA underwent its first “forced” lay-offs of staff and cutting of critical programs due to budget problems in 135-years. Thanks to a reversal in course and policies begun under Sayres, it is now in a financial free fall.

To distance himself from culpability in destroying the progress toward a No Kill San Francisco and demanding a continuation of policies that allow killing, Sayres’ leadership team is now claiming that the killing in San Francisco is the fault of animal lovers and shelter reformers who want to see the killing end. In a cryptically written article, the ASPCA’s Emily Weiss writes that because animal lovers want to see San Francisco save more lives, the SPCA in San Francisco has to save less. According to Weiss,

Recently I visited a community that is struggling in a very real way with the goal of no euthanasia getting in the way of saving lives.  This community was proactive in focusing the field toward the importance of decreasing euthanasia—and, at that time, the focus of a goal to decrease euthanasia was a great stride toward developing a humane community.

The major nonprofit shelters in this community teamed with the local animal control organization and agreed to work toward no euthanasia of animals who met particular criteria of adoptability.  They successfully rallied the community around this goal and began reporting great success.

Donors, supporters, and those with an animal welfare focus rallied behind this goal—and this lead to some significant issues around increasing the live release rate.  Many of the animals in the community did not fit the model of the easy or moderate animal to adopt or shelter.  These might have been dogs or cats with moderate aggression, significant undersocialization, illness, or any variety of issues that require a shift in resources and focus.  If the nonprofit animal shelters took these animals in and were not able to successfully rehabilitate them, then the goal—which, remember, is a no euthanasia goal—would be hurt.  The safest thing for the nonprofits to do to avoid losing donors and attracting protesters was to not risk rehab.  Not risking rehab means that those animals are not transferred to the facility with the resources to best support them.

In other words, the ASPCA is arguing that if an animal lover wants the shelter to save more lives, don’t ask them too—because if you do, you’ll be responsible for their decision not to; an illogical contradiction. It is the willful failure of the San Francisco SPCA and the city pound to provide a safety net for the city’s neediest homeless animals that has No Kill advocates up in arms. To blame them for the killing they are working to bring to an end is nonsensical and outrageous.

It was Sayres, her superior at the ASPCA, who abandoned the goal of saving sick, injured, and traumatized animals at the San Francisco SPCA, choosing to divert resources to “New Age” conferences about telepathic communication with dead pets and an expensive and unneeded new hospital, a financial boondoggle. The decision to curtail the programs and services which make No Kill possible began under Sayres to pay for these, and continued with his hand-picked successor. Prior to Sayres’ tenure there, during the very first year of the No Kill initiative, the deaths of treatable dogs and cats in San Francisco’s city pound was cut by more than half. In the end, Weis’ Orwellian diatribe against the No Kill advocates in San Francisco working to create a safety net for the city’s neediest animals is pure killing apologia from the very agency which denigrated and attacked San Francisco when it was spearheading the No Kill movement over a decade ago.

Hungry Dogs Killed in New York City Despite Almost $128,000,000 a Year in Revenues

Unfortunately, the situation appears just as dire in his own backyard thanks to actions and inactions by Sayres and the ASPCA that cause animals to face needless harm. Hopes for a No Kill New York City may have faded more with the announcement that former ASPCA employee Julie Banks has been named to the top spot at the city pound. The concerns stem from Banks’ tenure in Maricopa County Animal Control under Ed Boks, its former director.*

During the Boks-Banks tenure, Maricopa County described itself as a national model for Animal Care & Control. Banks was not only part of executive team running the agency and making policy decisions, but she was responsible for selling it publicly, both locally and nationally, as its chief public information officer. Despite claiming to be “near No Kill,” the agency managed to reduce killing only about 10% over the Boks-Banks tenure together, declines exceeded by communities without a No Kill ambition. In the end, Maricopa still killed half of all animals, nearly 30,000 per year, never doing any better than the national average. But you wouldn’t know that from the public relations propaganda put out by Banks and her team at the time, which dishonestly claimed they were making tremendous progress and leading the agency toward a No Kill Maricopa County. Indeed, Maricopa County is nowhere near No Kill even today.

In addition, an audit by the Maricopa County Office of Management & Budget discovered a nearly $600,000 structural deficit including no controls over money, expenditures on programs that were not approved, questions about lavish spending, and other financial irregularities during the Boks-Banks’ tenure. And while Banks was there, the agency was put into quasi-receivership to the point that the shelter was not allowed to make purchases (including leashes for the dogs) without OMB approval. Animal lovers were said to be walking dogs with ropes.**

Nonetheless, Sayres praised the appointment of Banks to run New York City’s pound system, raising concerns that the problems which have scandalized city shelters in recent weeks will not be addressed either transparently or, if at all, with any degree of rigor. At the city shelter she has been named to take over, dogs have been threatened with being killed for being hungry, the shelter continues to kill healthy and adoptable animals despite misinformation put out by the Alliance to the contrary, it threatens to kill animals every single day, and staff have warned that if the public doesn’t buy food for the animals in their custody, they will run out of food needed to feed the animals. This is an agency in the same community as the ASPCA, the wealthiest humane society in the nation—which had revenues of $127,871,245 in 2008 alone.

A Devastating Verdict

The tenure of Edwin Sayres as President of the ASPCA is a tragic betrayal of New York City’s neediest animals, the animal protection community’s desire to save animals currently being killed throughout the State, and the lost potential to move this movement aggressively toward the achievement of a No Kill nation. The leader of the nation’s wealthiest SPCA has not only proven himself to be disinterested—and hostile—to the achievable goal of ending the killing of healthy and treatable animals in shelters, he has proven himself to be a stalwart defender of the status quo. The people and animals of New York and across this caring and compassionate nation deserve better.

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