AR-News: (MI - US) Animals being sold from County Animal Control Shelter to researchers

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Animal anxiety

One year later, new board works to resolve county animal issues

By JONATHAN MALAVOLTI

The State News

Cheeto, left, and Woody are two dogs currently housed at the Ingham County Animal Control Shelter. One year ago, the county decided to stop selling animals to an intermediary, who then sold the animals for research. Instead, the animals are sold directly to researchers.


Mason - A concerned look lingered on the face of Kristal Garcia as she stood nervously waiting at the counter of the Ingham County Animal Control Shelter.She was there hoping her boyfriend's dog, Gypsy, had been found and that it wasn't too late to retrieve her.

The Lansing resident was in luck that day. Though she had to pay $160 to reclaim the animal, she said it would have been euthanized, or killed, the next day.

"I don't want them to put it asleep," Garcia said. "It's kind of like a child, you wouldn't want to put them down, it's still a living animal."

Last summer, Garcia could have been kept waiting at the counter as another scenario unfolded - Gypsy could have been sold to a "Class B" dealer - a person or group who purchases animals from pounds and shelters and then resells them to researchers.

On June 12 of last year, the Ingham County Board of Commissioners voted to eliminate the sale of animals from the county shelter to "Class B" dealers and to create an advisory board to oversee the shelter. The weeks prior were full of protests and outcry from the community.

While the Ingham County Courthouse in Mason is no longer surrounded by demonstrators wielding signs, passing out pamphlets and dressing up in cat costumes, the issue of selling animals from the shelter is still a hot one.

Now the activists are encouraging more changes from the board.

"It was a step in the right direction, but the shelter should stop selling animals altogether," said Crystal Miller-Spiegel, American Anti-Vivisection Society senior policy analyst. "They still sell animals to universities, where they can be used in research, testing and teaching experiments - not a very humane way to end one's life."

The nonprofit group aims to end animal experimentation. 

Miller-Spiegel and local groups such as the Friends of Ingham County Animal Shelter, or FICAS, are pushing for the complete elimination of the sale of animals to researchers, not just the "Class B" dealers. They would rather see the shelter increase its efforts to find animals a home or at least "end their lives with dignity," Miller-Spiegel said.

"On a positive note, there are a lot less of the county's pets going to research," FICAS president and secretary Holly Stroebel said.

"If a pet's time comes and the search for an adoptive home or rescue situation has been exhausted, the citizens of Ingham County can, at the very least, rest assured that animal will have a dignified and painless end," Stroebel said.

Dealers believe they should be allowed back into the equation, but a resolution adopted by the county board on a 12-3 vote last summer has stopped them and cost them hundreds of dollars in business.

"It's sad that they'll kill these animals before they want them to help somebody," said Janice Hodgins, co-owner and operator of Hodgins Kennels.

Howell-based Hodgins Kennels is one of at least three "Class B" dealers in Michigan, and one of the two who formerly dealt with Ingham County, the other being R&R Research in Howard City, located about 35 minutes north of Grand Rapids.

"Research is important. It benefits animals as much as it does humans," Hodgins said.

Animals were purchased for $10 by dealers such as Hodgins from the county shelter usually after a month had passed and no one had claimed them or the shelter began to get overcrowded. Dealers would then improve the health of the animal. In possession of the dealers, the animals might still be put down, but former owners could still claim them while the dealer prepared it for sale to a researcher such as MSU.

"Our veterinarian would come out once a week, and the animals are in better shape after they leave here," Hodgins said.

Hodgins said the community is misinformed about the dealers' role and misled by activists.

"I think people just don't understand how important it is," Hodgins said.

"They hear all these gory details that make no sense. They care so much for the animal -�you would think they would want research for the animals -�you can't really reason with those people. And they're not going to be happy until they put a stop to it completely."

While Hodgins Kennels deals with Eaton and Jackson County shelters - though the latter is now also in jeopardy - they claim society is at a loss because the more pound animals available to researchers, the better.

Jean A. Gaymer and Karen Hudson, who work with the MSU University Laboratory Animal Resources, agree and are concerned about the availability of animals, especially from pounds.

"One of the most important things about using animals from pounds is that it gives us a variety of ages and types of animals, so that whatever applies to the specific research project, (researchers) are able to get," said Gaymer, acting director and clinical veterinarian at the laboratory.

"A 'Class A' dealer -�a purpose-bred dealer�- can't get old animals and those kinds of things make a big difference."

The animals are used in research for the fields of cardio-vascular, orthopedic, blood-typing and cancer.

Gaymer said MSU conducts research "90 percent of the time with rats and mice," but it also deals with dogs, cats, frogs, fish, voles, birds, pigs, rabbits and various reptiles. She said cats, dogs and primates only are used in about 1 percent of research.

According to the Michigan Society for Medical Research, 500,000 animals are killed in pounds and shelters annually statewide. These animals would cost researchers 90 percent less than ones purchased through the "Class A" dealers. 

The dogs and cats, which are taken from pounds and end up with researchers, account for less than 2 percent of the more than 10 million animals left in pounds each year in Michigan, according to the medical research society, amounting to about 138,000 dogs and 50,000 cats.

Gaymer said she understood the emotional attachment people have to animals, but not why they wouldn't want to donate them to research.

"Those animals are going to be killed and not benefit anyone," she said.

Hodgins, also the assistant director for business and public information at the University of Laboratory Animal Resources, said it's tough to convey a positive message to the community about scientific research because the activist groups have a much larger budget to spend on materials and staff - mainly through donations.

"One of those groups: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), I believe their budget was $18 million last year," Hodgins said.

PETA spent $18,442,816 in 2003, according to their annual review.

Numerical and financial issues aren't the main concern of those at the center of last year's storm - the shelter itself. Only 47 animals were sold to researchers and "Class B" dealers from the Ingham County Animal Control Shelter in 2002, while 364 were adopted.

Shelter Deputy Director Steve Hummel said there was "a slight increase" in animals euthanized at the shelter since last year's decision.

"It was really a kind of insignificant thing, it was really more political than anything," Hummel said.

Problems facing the shelter include the lack of a volunteer coordinator, which Hummel said wasn't approved by the county at the start of the year.

Dale Bodiford, a kennel supervisor at the shelter, said while he believed sales seemed to have gone up this year, relations and communication between volunteers and regular staff members are poor.

Working to resolve this issue is the Ingham County Animal Control Shelter Advisory Board, headed up by County Commissioner Lisa Dedden, who said she's never seen the community get behind an issue like the one last summer.

"What we've done so far, is establish work groups on specific issues and we started moving ahead fairly slowly, but I think we've made very good progress given that we haven't been in existence too long," Dedden said of the eight person board, which began meeting in December.

The biggest thing the board has been working toward in it's initial six months of duration is finances.

"So far, we put in one application to get the county animal department in the running for some grant funding," Dedden said.

Other issues the board is working on include increasing successful adoption, addressing and dealing with community complaint, improving the health of the shelter animals and finding a new director who will be replacing the retiring Roger Fleming.

Dedden said she thinks the public, especially people involved closely with this issue last summer, is happy with the animal shelter and it's dealings now.

"I think once we resolved the 'Class B' dealer issue and got this board in place, people have felt there is sufficient attention being paid now to these various concerns."