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Pound Seizure: The Shame of Shelters

Pound Seizure Defined
Pound seizure means that animals who arrive in a pound or shelter and who are not claimed by former or new guardians within five days, are required by law to be turned over on demand to laboratories for experimentation. (1)

The ultimate fate of these animals is inevitably death. But before they die, the animals may suffer horribly at vivisectors' hands. One example is at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, where a PETA undercover investigator witnessed dogs seized from the local pound being used in hideously painful scabies experiments. In the experiments, dogs were infected with scabies, a skin disease caused by microscopic mites that spread over their entire bodies, causing intense, prolonged itching, open wounds, and, eventually, death. One dog named Genesee was infected so severely, she turned circles constantly, unable to rest because of the intense itching. She cried out when handled, wouldn't eat or drink, and lost her balance; her anguished howls could be heard through closed doors. She finally died, without veterinary treatment, because that would have "interfered" with the experiment. WSU was later charged with violating the Animal Welfare Act and fined $20,000; but the local pound continues to release animals to the university.

Pound seizure is illegal in England, Denmark, Sweden, and Holland. In the United States there is no federal law regarding pound seizure, but 14 states forbid it: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Hawaii.(2) Most other states have no law on the matter and leave it up to county or town governments to decide, but five states require pound seizure of government-run facilities. These states are: Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah. There have been several anti-pound seizure bills before Congress, but none has been enacted.

Pound Seizure Problems
Animal protection organizations object strongly to pound seizure and for good reason. Animals who were once well-loved companions suffer the double blow of confinement to a laboratory cage and the loss of their human friends. Families experience the anguish of knowing that a lost animal or one they have given up may have been killed in a painful experiment. In communities that allow or enforce pound seizure, people often choose to abandon animals they cannot keep on the street or in a field, rather than send them to a laboratory via the local shelter, thus adding to the problem of homeless strays. In Los Angeles, the number of animals brought into shelters increased steadily after the repeal of pound seizure ordinances.(3) Some shelters have been known to quickly sell their healthiest and most adoptable wards to a laboratory, rather than give them free to a new home, in order to make money on the deal.

Although many experimenters praise pound seizure as providing cheap and easy access to an unlimited supply of vivisection material, some scientists feel that such "random source" animals, of mixed breeds and unknown histories, are misleading subjects for most experiments. They prefer to purchase, even at higher cost, "purpose-bred" animals (those raised from birth to be used in laboratories), even if it means using fewer of them. The official policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is not to use animals from pounds or shelters, although it does not always determine the original source of animals it buys from dealers, according to the Humane Society of the United States. The NIH has estimated that, of the 201,931 dogs experimented on in the United States in l984, only about 55,000 were "purpose bred."(4)

Random Sources, Random Results
Because of their unknown histories, animals from random sources yield questionable results in experiments. And because they are relatively cheap and easy to come by, pound seizure allows experimenters to continue to use animals rather than switch to humane alternatives. Initially, purpose-bred animals cost more, but animals from random or unknown sources must go through an expensive period of "conditioning" before becoming part of an experiment. These animals also have a higher mortality rate in laboratories than purpose-bred animals, perhaps because the latter have not been sensitized to human love and then betrayed.

What You Can Do
If you live in one of the five states that mandate pound seizure, read up as much as possible on the subject. Talk to those in charge at local shelters and pounds to see what they have done or are doing. Find out if any town or state officials are interested in this issue and if any are working to repeal pound seizure laws, either locally or nationally. Start a petition, find occasions to talk or debate the issue in private and in public, and organize a letter-writing campaign. Try to arrange a public viewing of the PETA video depicting a dog lab at a medical school. Contact animal rights organizations for more suggestions.

If you live in one of the states or provinces that leave the decision up to local authorities, you can work for a ban in your community if it permits pound seizure, or campaign for a state law. If you live in a state that already forbids pound seizure, you can guard that law against efforts to change it and work for federal legislation against pound seizure. Because of interstate traffic in animals, animal companions in every state will be at risk until there is a federal law against pound seizure.

References

1. "USDA Announces Amendment to the Animal Welfare Act," Country Folks of Pennsylvania, Aug. 9, 1993.
2. The Humane Society of the United States, "Pound Seizure State Law Update," August l989.
3. John F. Kullberg, former President, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Letter to The Wall Street Journal, July 13, 1987.
4. "Facts and Figures," The AV Magazine, June l987, p. 10.