Judy Stone Comments About “Euthanasia”

Judy Stone, founder of the Animal Advocates Society in Canada, posted a comment to my Oprah post that appears to have gotten lost in the ethers.

Without further ado . . .

For as long as Animal Advocates has been documenting the killing of animals by pounds and humane societies, these major players in the "pest-pet" disposal industry have used the decent, kindly word "euthanize" for the truthful and revealing word "kill". Some of the other pet disposal industry’s Orwellian Newspeak words are adoption, tests, welfare, and shelter.

How can killing timid beings be euthanasia? Or beings with colds? Or frightened beings? Or beings just not wanted by anyone quickly enough? It’s not euthanasia – it’s killing the unsellable. It’s disposal by killing.

How can handing over a being to anyone who pays the money, without any concern for its fate, without any home checks or follow-up calls to offer assistance if problems arise, be properly be called an adoption? It’s not – it’s a sale. It’s disposal by selling.

How can testing cats and dogs for aggression, and then killing the failures, be animal protection? It’s not – it’s public protection. It’s disposal by testing.

How can a place that keeps being in cells and cages, ignoring their needs, and killing some of them, be called a shelter? It’s not a shelter or sheltering – it’s cheap holding for disposal, either by selling or killing.

How can any of that be animal welfare?

Those words are what the industry uses to hide what it really does: Disposal of "pest-pets" unwanted for a variety of reasons: old age, illness, behaviour, public nuisances, public protection. That is what the disposers are paid for. It is no different than rat or raccoon or rabbit pest control, except those companies do not pretend to be doing animal welfare because those companies do not kill companion animals or solicit donations from animal-lovers.

There was a time when municipal pounds and humane society pounds called the killing of unwanted or possibly dangerous dogs "humane destruction". It’s questionable whether gas boxes and uncalibrated electrothanators were humane, but at least "destruction" was accurate.

That honesty barely exists anymore. Some humane society pounds with cells and cages, no home checks, no rehabilitation, little or no money spent on illness, have always called themselves "shelters". And then, about ten years ago, when the public took more interest in what was happening in pounds, even plain old municipal pounds, with mandates to protect the public from dogs and dispose of unwanted stray dogs that hadn’t changed in 200 years, began to call themselves animal welfare shelters, substituting "euthanasia" for the more honest "destruction". Some decent pounds adopted as much animal welfare as they were given funding for, and some lied more about the reasons for killing and the numbers killed.

It’s not a surprise that the pest-pet disposal industry changed its face to keep up with public expectations. That is what businesses do. What is surprising is the number of real animal welfarists who so obligingly and gullibly keep repeating the industry’s P.R. words for them. It seems that even Oprah, a word-person, may have unconsciously absorbed the the industry’s twisted P.R. language. Oprah knows better than most the power of language. When we repeat dishonest words we help to entrench what we say we hate. When we use honest words, it opens our minds to honest ideas and honest actions.

Please post on Oprah’s site, asking her to use honest words, reminding her that honest language is one of the simplest, yet greatest, things she can do for animals. All the world watches Oprah: Just think of the paradigm shift animal welfare could take if Oprah taught people to stop using the industry’s words to hide what they do.

When the public is no longer fooled by the industry’s words, real change is possible; in fact, it is a certainty.

You can e-mail Oprah here. There are also message boards, and if you’re a member or have the time and the inclination to figure out how all that works and chime in–have at it!