Broken Trust

The large animal organizations and the public money.

It is said that in America, anything the imagination can conjure up can be attained with persistence. In a society where we boast of freedom and clearly recognize the importance of our leadership in the world, one must be increasingly disillusioned by the simple things in life that prevent us from moving ahead even further. We can successfully put roving monitors on mars,, cure diseases in short order, win wars in 100 days or less and have the marketing prowess to alter human life around the globe.

The suffering of animals is a deep and quiet thing; and yet, millions of people hear, and care and hope to answer this call. More than 3,000 non profits dedicated to the same have logged an estimated 40 Billion man hours in the past 20 years all while Americans are donating billions of their dollars to animal welfare organizations who promise that they are relieving animal suffering.

But are they? Or, is the trust being placed in them by their donors, being betrayed?

The overpopulation of dogs and cats is the major source of the suffering and death of 8 million animals a year in America. This is a problem for which the cause is well known, the consequences of not solving it are well known, and the tools for solving it are within reach. And yet, little headway is being made. It is one of the simplest problems to correct.

We hear a lot about increasing adoptions, and this is important; but where is the effort to prevent the overpopulation in the first place? The ASPCA, for example, doesn't even take in strays, so their adoption program, while valuable, is not addressing the problem in a significant way. They inaugurated their "no-kill" policy in order to appeal to more donors. That doesn't mean that animals are not being killed