Practically all No Kill organisations (groups who are actually meeting No Kill goals and advocating for improvements across the board) are AGAINST mandatory desexing laws.
For one reason and one reason only – because in execution, they fail in their aims and drive up shelter kill rates.
Every single data-based study of mandatory spay/neuter laws has demonstrated that such laws do not increase spay-neuter compliance rates, nor do they reduce shelter intake, nor are they cost-effective, nor do they save lives. In fact, the opposite is true: in community after community that has passed a mandatory spay/neuter law, shelter killing and intake actually increase because in poor communities, families who cannot afford the money or time to have their pets surgically altered are forced to surrender their pets (or the pets are seized). These pets are quickly replaced in the communities with additional unaltered animals, creating an enhanced cycle of killing. These laws do not work, have never worked in any community, and will not work.
There is universal opposition to mandatory spay/neuter laws among national animal-welfare organizations who have spent time to empirically study such laws’ effects. Indeed, given the frequent hostility between national animal-welfare organizations, the universal opposition to mandatory spay/neuter laws is telling.
The No Kill and animal welfare organisations against such laws include:
– American Veterinary Medical Association
– both the American College of Theriogenologists and the Society for Theriogenology (which are the two groups of veterinarian specialists in spaying and neutering
– National Animal Interest Alliance
– Locally, Australian Veterinary Association
– Ten years of mandatory desexing fails to decrease cat numbers (ACT) – Saving Pets
– What are mandatory desexing advocates lobbying for really? – Saving Pets (Article #1 | Article #2)
– Dogged blog; Mandatory spay/neuter: Sacrificing animal lives to ideology
– KC Dog Blog – Mandatory Spay Neuter
– Fix Austin – With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies (or, on Mandatory Spay-Neuter Laws)
– Mike Fry – Mandatory spay/neuter laws require little debate
– “Ten years and 60,000 spay/neuter surgeries did not end shelter killing in Austin. Learn what did stop sheltering killing in this article by Dr. Ellen Jefferson, Executive Director of Austin Pets Alive “– Using Data to Make Austin a No-Kill City
– There is nothing “progressive” about mandatory spay/neuter – Christie Keith
– Save Our Dogs – Mandatory Spay/Neuter Laws—A Failure Everywhere
– “Peter Marsh (Replacing Myth with Math) is adamantly opposed to mandatory spay/neuter laws, which he sees as driving people out of the pet-licensing system, thus cutting off a funding source and encouraging the surrender of pets by families who can afford neither a fine nor a retail-priced surgery for their pet.” – Best Friends Animal Society
– Is compulsory desexing ethical? – Saving Pets
While laws fail, that’s not to say desexing programs aren’t important. They are.
But for any desexing program to be effective, it needs to be TARGETED to pets who wouldn’t otherwise be desexed.
This isn’t as simple as offering it to ‘poor people’ or ‘pensioners’ – although studies have shown the risk factors for these pets definitely go up – however, the majority of these groups DO desex their animals.
Desexing pets who would have been desexed anyway is simply wasting resources.
This is why laws tend to fail. They generalise and make blanket assumptions. ‘Enforcement’ tends to be the most expensive, unsustainable and wasteful way to achieve any aim.
An effective desexing program must also be targeting those animals populations who actually enter and are at risk of death in animal shelters.
We must critically examine which animals are dying in our local shelters. Largely, the animals most at risk are untame cats. If a program is serious about reducing shelter intakes and killing, it must emphasise desexing unowned and semi-owned cats. Any program which excludes this pet population is doomed to fail.
In addition, any effective desexing program;
If it were as simple as ‘passing a law’, then we would have literally thousands of empty shelters by now. But we don’t. And it’s because to achieve the aim of a humane community, we must inspire and engage the community to behave how we need them to, not simply waggle our finger at them.
Some people promoting mandatory desexing are doing so because they really, really, really want to help pets and simply haven’t looked at any data. Others are deliberately continuing to push the notion that these kinds of laws can be successful – but no one else in the world has implemented them in just the right fashion – simply because they want it to be true and/or are committed to the lie.
Either ignorant, or deceitful. But either way, they are 100% incorrect.
