Overpopulation in America's
Animal Shelters
America has an animal population problem.
This problem affects individuals, communities and society as a whole.
The public donates millions in tax dollars to the overpopulation problem every year to prevent millions more animal births.
Animal shelters in all communities receive money, such as tax dollars, to perform needed spay and neuter operations.
These spaying and neutering operations save millions of animal lives through means of prevention.
Millions of the stray animals not prevented find the road to a dark and grim future.
In all likelihood, these innocent animals could end up in abusive homes or on the streets where no one chooses to care for them.
Animals picked up as strays and then taken to animal shelters, in most cases, will move immediately to the operating table for sterilization. Unless the space available does not allow for it, in which case euthanizing the animal will soon follow. Americans, who often profess ignorance of this problem, may not realize how much they can help. The animal overpopulation problem will not resolve itself by exploiting euthanasia but rather through prevention, adoption and education.
Euthanasia, popularly known as physician-assisted suicide within the human population, involves a "painless" or "humane" procedure by lethal injection or Carbon Monoxide chamber for domestic animal.
The Humane Society of the United States insists that shelters use a specific drug, sodium pentobarbital, for lethal injection (The Humane Society of the United States, "The HSUS Statement on Euthanasia Methods for Dogs and Cats").
An anesthetic preceding the lethal injection, in most cases, will ensure a quick and painless death for the animal (The Humane Society of the United States, "The HSUS Statement on Euthanasia Methods for Dogs and Cats").
For nervous, dangerous, or excited animals, the shelter must use an anesthetic before injecting any lethal dose (The Humane Society of the United States, "The HSUS Statement on Euthanasia Methods for Dogs and Cats").
Carbon monoxide chambers, an alternative method to lethal injection, do not sufficiently "do the job," (The Humane Society of the United States, "The HSUS Statement on Euthanasia Methods for Dogs and Cats"). In a carbon monoxide chamber, animals inhale the deadly carbon monoxide gas until they can no longer breathe. Where shelters can obtain sodium pentobarbital, the use of a Carbon Monoxide chambers will not suffice. Only a few reasons for euthanizing an animal exist: illness, population, and/or temperament. In cases of serious illness, when the animal suffers immensely every day, consideration of euthanasia seems appropriate to end their pain.
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