Compulsory desexing campaigners aren’t put off by a little bit of failure, no sir-ee. They’re not happy until they’ve failed expansively, expensively and completely. And no matter at what cost to pets…
What could nearly $2 million dollars do for cat welfare in a single city?
Advocates often gloss over the true cost of their shiny new laws. Enforcement is the most labour intensive and expensive method to bring about any change. It is also notoriously ineffective.
News today that a relatively simple law like cat registration, cost Brisbane City Council $1.8 million to implement. Or more than $100 per cat registered under the scheme.
With no tangible difference made to shelter reclaim rates (which still sat at around 2%), the government has now scrapped the program statewide.
There are cat programs that work to reduce and eliminate shelter killing
No matter how well intentioned, this hasn’t proven to be one of them. And millions of dollars statewide has been diverted from life saving programs, to an unenforceable government admin program, at great cost to cats.
Also in the news in Queensland – despite not being able to present a single successful low or no kill community using ‘compulsory desexing’ as a tool to government, and with government determining her idea to be ‘not effective’ and ‘impractical’, single-minded animal campaigner Amy Walker is determined to pass her pet-killing law;
A Buderim animal shelter volunteer, who petitioned for compulsory de-sexing of all dogs and cats, has vowed to continue her campaign, despite Parliament rejecting her plea.
The State Government rejected the petition on Friday, with Minister for Agriculture John McVeigh saying the decision would have to be made by local government.
Ms Walker said although she expected the petition to be rejected, she would continue to push for the law to be introduced by 2018.
“One day it will happen and I will continue to campaign until it does,” she said.
“I am hoping it won’t take five years, but I honestly believe that’s how long it is going to take for these people to see some sense.”
By ‘sense’ she means ‘ignores evidence in favour of finger waggling’… and by ‘these people’, she means the Queensland Government, the Australian Veterinary Association, practically every No Kill organisation and shelter around the globe, and anyone with even the slightest ability towards critical reasoning skills… but’s that’s ok, as she (unsurprisingly) has the support of the RSPCA;
Spokesman Michael Beatty said desexing should be compulsory before sale.
“Registered breeders should be made to de-sex their animals at eight weeks,” Mr Beatty said.
Remember folks, the RSPCA were the ones who called for the previously mentioned ‘compulsory registration’ of cats, back in 2008 – directly wasting millions of dollars on a program which was doomed to fail from the get go. Compulsory registration was supposed to act like a ‘gateway drug’ to passing compulsory desexing legislation – but the entire plan has crashed and burned after just 3 years of implementation.
How many times can we say it? Listening to pet-keeping zealots, rather than looking at successful programs saving lives, is an expensive trip down failure lane. While they are now changing the parameters on what constitutes ‘mandatory desexing’, it doesn’t make the efforts any more successful, but is simply is repackaging the same failed thinking.
We know how to stop the widespread culling of cats. We know how to stop dogs and cats dying in shelters. Using any other tool – especially when it is unproven, or worse disproven, is little more than a keeping a few animal people’s egos happy at the direct expense of pets.
