It’s October 24, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, The Scoop New York discovered that Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] is concealing extermination data from New Yorkers, making it impossible for the people who bankroll ACC to know how many homeless cats and dogs are arbitrarily killed in their names.

The data purge comes after The Scoop New York tracked and reported a sustained increase in ACC killings since Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office in January. City Council Member Julie Menin, who took the helm as council speaker at the beginning of the year, has also willfully ignored the dirty business going down at the city kill pound.

After nearly 10 months in office, Mamdani has yet to publicly acknowledge his responsibility for his city’s homeless companion animals.

Watch the video for the lowdown on the city’s latest assault on its most vulnerable denizens and the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

P.S.: Apologies for the degraded picture quality. Substack was not in the mood today to produce an HD version.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• With the City of Buffalo Animal Shelter reportedly filled to capacity and plans for a new building still nowhere in sight, Mayor Sean Ryan — who campaigned on improving conditions for homeless companion animals — seemingly has no intention to protect those currently endangered by what Ryan himself described as his “kill facility.”

• NYPD is looking for Chanel, a 10-year-old Yorkie snatched from her yard by two people in a Subaru near 130 Street and 14th Avenue in College Point, Queens.

• As expected, the New York City Council voted to close the curtain on the city’s horse carriage trade. The vote was 40-7, with two absentions.

• Related: The New York Post says Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin will “develop a transition team of advocates and experts to find new homes” for retired carriage industry horses. City Hall legitimately helping companion animals minus the usual underhanded fuckery? Stranger things have happened. Probably.

• NYC Council Member Gale Brewer — fake Friend Of The Animals and IRL buddy to city kill-pound sadists — thought it would be cute to post a photo of a mouse caught in her office so she could announce that her staff took it to Wild Bird Fund “for their use as appropriate.” Birds of a feather etc.

• Nice work, Mr. Mayor! Now do the cloistered, ossified, NYer-hating NYC ACC board of directors.

• Related: Mamdani’s NYC ACC, which under direction from the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene routinely insists it has all the resources it needs, is nonetheless leaning on the generosity of private citizens for basics such as “toys, blankets, beds and treats” for dogs in the city’s alleged care.

• Locals say Lollypop Farm, which is responsible for cruelty law enforcement in Rochester, took over a month to act on the reported abuse of a dog who was finally removed from the alleged abuser’s custody after a recording of the dog’s cries was posted on social media. No arrests were immediately made.

• Another week, another county — Yates this time — adopting its own abuser registry in lieu of action by Governor Hochul and state legislators.

• Columbia-Greene Humane Society is the latest victim of state lawmakers’ failure to provide shelters with funding to care for animals — in this instance up to 64 cats — seized during cruelty investigations.

• Finally: A new facility in Colonie will train dogs to help veterans and first responders with PTSD because dogs are magic.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy taxpayer-funded cruelty toward homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, physical and financial — of the New Yorkers who care about them.

Achtung! Through the last day of fall The Scoop New York is offering a 20 percent discount on all annual subscriptions. Subscribers get the usual perks, including access to all TSNY content, commenting privileges, stickers, and a USA-made, NY-printed, 100% cotton “I [Scoop] NY” t-shirt for readers who contribute at the Shopcat/Watchdog tier.

Most of all, your generosity will help The Scoop New York save companion animal lives. As we enter our fourth year of publication, we have exciting plans for broadening no-kill movement coverage in 2027. Your support is crucial to helping us achieve a true no-kill New York from Buffalo to Brooklyn. Tap the subscription sale ad, scan the QR code or tap this link to help us investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Thank you.

Paid subscriptions and donations to The Scoop New York are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s October 17, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined City Council Speaker Julie Menin in calling for the end of the city’s horse carriage industry, marking what looks to be the final chapter in a saga that began some 16 years ago, though it seems closer to a century.

Mamdani was apparently compelled to act after a carriage crash killed a tourist earlier this year, though the move puts the mayor at odds with the Transport Workers Union, which represents carriage operators and has dropped a ton of coin in opposition to a ban.

The council vote, scheduled for next Thursday, looks like a fait accompli.

Its own self-interest aside, TWU rightly contends that there’s nothing in the proposed legislation to guarantee what the bill terms the “humane disposition” of retired horses.

The union might also point out that the politicians now promising horsey heaven on earth are the same ones who endorse without qualification the perpetual wholesale slaughter of healthy and adoptable companion animals at the New York City kill pound.

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The lead sponsor of the carriage ban bill is Lower Manhattan rep Christopher Marte. In July, Marte co-authored an op-ed that claimed the retired horses would be given a better life.

“Romanch’s Law, formerly Ryder’s Law, would responsibly phase out horse-drawn carriages, relocate horses to accredited sanctuaries and rescue homes where they can finally live as horses should,” the piece read.

Marte’s co-author was Harvey Epstein, the co-chair of the council’s so-called “animal welfare caucus” who refuses to explain how his purported Love For The Animals jibes with his repeated refusal to do literally anything at all about the cruelty and abuse that today and every day is inflicted upon homeless cats and dogs at the whims of Animal Care Centers of New York City.

As The Scoop New York reported in March, upon the announcement of the caucus:

TSNY queried Menin and Epstein as to whether the caucus will address the ACC kill quota; the oft-repeated goddamn lie that ACC doesn’t kill healthy animals; everyday ACC medical torture killings, specifically spay-neuter-kill; the routine violation of ACC’s open admission contract with the city; and the stagnant, recalcitrant, malicious, cowardly do-nothing ACC board.

Wouldn’t you know: Menin’s office acknowledged the query, then dodged it, passing it off to Epstein’s office, which never replied.

Among the co-sponsors of Marte’s bill is a who’s who of ACC carnage-deniers, with standouts including Gale Brewer, Joann Ariola, Lynn Schulman and, of course, Harvey Epstein.

To be fair, all 51 council members are equally complicit in ignoring ACC depravity. The council members name-checked above get singled out in this space because they tend to crow the loudest concerning their supposed Love For The Animals bona fides. Squeaky liar gets the grief.

Here’s what Marte’s bill as currently posted on the council site says about the fate of retired horses:

A licensed horse shall not be [sold or] disposed of except in a humane manner. A licensed horse may not be sold or otherwise transferred to a person for purposes of slaughter, resale for slaughter, or holding or transport for slaughter, or for use in a horse drawn cab business. No later than June 1, 2027, every owner of a licensed horse shall certify to the department in a form and manner prescribed by the commissioner that such horse will not be sold or otherwise transferred for purposes of slaughter, resale for slaughter, or holding or transport for slaughter, or for use in a horse drawn cab business, or any inhumane purpose as designated by the commissioner. The commissioner shall make such certification form available no later than March 1, 2027.

And [link and emphasis ours]:

The department, in coordination with the mayor’s office of animal welfare, shall inform owners of licensed horses of their obligation to dispose of such horses in a humane manner and as required by this section. Such outreach shall include the provision of information regarding individuals and organizations that have certified to the commissioner, in a form and manner to be prescribed by the commissioner, that such individuals or organizations are capable of receiving or acquiring such horses in a humane manner for humane purposes and in accordance with this section.

Said department responsible for overseeing the “disposal” of the horses would be the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene — DOH being known to IRL advocates as the immovable object that has for three decades resisted calls to clean up ACC’s gory act, and which thinks the city’s countless unhoused cats and the beleaguered New Yorkers DOH leaves to care for them are doing just fine without the department’s help.

As for “disposing” of the horses in a “humane manner,” I give you the tens of thousands of adoptable cats and dogs “humanely euthanized” by NYC since 1995, when DOH assumed responsibility for then-new ACC.

As you can see from the above data covering the last decade alone, DOH practically oozes indifference toward the well-being of companion animals. Ditto for laws ostensibly meant to protect those animals, for that matter (that TSNY exclusive coming soon, still).

As far as companion animals are concerned — emphasis every New Yorker with eyes that see — NYC DOH does not distinguish between slaughter and discretionary “euthanasia.” Why should New Yorkers believe horses entrusted to the agency’s care would be different?

I asked Marte’s office if the council member could offer New Yorkers reassurance that retired carriage industry horses would, in fact, be protected from elective “humane euthanasia,” despite the squishy verbiage of his bill:

The concern is that the bill language is vague on the definition of “humane” and may allow for retired horses to be euthanized, rather than transferred to animal sanctuaries or equivalent facilities, as there is no commitment that the city itself will “facilitate ... humane disposition.”

Marte duly ignored the query. Further evidence, superfluous as it may be, that New York City Council members will always choose humane-washed grandstanding over putting the city’s money where their capping traps are.

Doesn’t matter. Mamdani and Menin have gamed out to their satisfaction how to safely exploit the issue for their own gain. The big-money pro-kill resource-hoarding non-profit investor class is hallelujah-chorusing, champing at the bit for aura monetization. Absent some unforeseen disruption, this thing is happening.

“According to the actual text of the bill, the DOH head, who already oversees the mass murder of thousands of dogs, cats and other healthy animals at the city kill pound, could and probably would oversee the mass execution of the horses under the Orwellian language of ‘humane euthanasia,’” one longtime city no-kill advocate told The Scoop New York. “This is our worst nightmare realized. This bill must be amended before it is voted on next Thursday!”

To pass it on, find your council member contact info here.

NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show

This week, following ACC’s most recent puppy/kitten killing spree, the Death Row Show covers how the podcast got its handle.

Also: ACC’s leash-biting obsession, sanity cocktails, MIA officials (starring Richard Ball and Zohran Mamdani), and more.

Run the clips for a preview.

Forwarded this email? Subscribe to The Scoop New York to see our next episode live, or via the full recording sent to your inbox.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• NYC’s free pet food pilot program will kick off across the boros Monday and Gothamist has a list of all 22 pantry locations.

• Shelters across New York reported $63 million in current capital needs to bring them into compliance with new state facility standards — which exceeds all such funding Albany lawmakers have allocated to shelters over the last eight years.

• Related: “Niagara County legislators secure $5,000 to help Niagara SPCA meet new state standards”

• Surprise! New York is failing to protect horses bred for racing from foreign slaughterhouses.

• Monroe County will soon have an animal abuser registry, a popular idea these days seemingly everywhere but Albany, which has failed to implement a state registry.

• An Erie County man pled guilty to shooting his German shepherd in the head and under state law could be eligible for a lighter sentence than he might otherwise face since he failed to kill the victim, who is recovering in a new home.

• Adoption fees for big dogs (over 44 pounds) are 50 percent off through October at SPCA Serving Erie County.

• New York’s Bravest saved a gorgeous solid-black kitten from a Bensonhurst storm drain and unfortunately for the rest of us she is already spoken for.

• Bodega cat fever is spreading to other NYC businesses as entrepreneurs get wise to the marketing possibilities.

• Finally: Godspeed to Jane and her Upper West Side senior dog menagerie.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

Also: ACC’s leash-biting obsession, sanity cocktails, MIA officials (starring Richard Ball and Zohran Mamdani), and more.

Check out the clips below for a preview.

Forwarded this email? Subscribe to The Scoop New York to catch podcast episodes live and have full recordings sent to your inbox. Sign on for an annual subscription today for 20 percent off!

If you don’t see it on The Scoop New York, you won’t see it.

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The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy taxpayer-funded cruelty toward homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, physical and financial — of the New Yorkers who care about them.

Achtung! Through the last day of fall The Scoop New York is offering a 20 percent discount on all annual subscriptions. Subscribers get the usual perks, including access to all TSNY content, commenting privileges, stickers, and a USA-made, NY-printed “I [Scoop] NY” t-shirt for readers who contribute at the Shopcat/Watchdog tier.

Most of all, your generosity will help The Scoop New York save companion animal lives. As we enter our fourth year of publication, we have exciting plans for broadening no-kill movement coverage in 2027. Your support is crucial to helping us achieve a true no-kill New York from Buffalo to Brooklyn. Tap the subscription sale ad, scan the QR code or tap this link to help us investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Thank you.

Paid subscriptions and donations to The Scoop New York are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s October 11, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

I have struggled for days with how to best relate the story of Bello, a 4-year-old terrier mix who in June arrived at Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] as a stray with signs of severe abuse.

In September, The Scoop New York exclusively reported that ACC — with tacit if not explicit approval from Corinne Schiff and other kill-pound supervisors at the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [also sic] — has a policy of returning abused dogs to their owners rather than notifying law enforcement of potential cruelty, though animal abandonment and cruelty to animals are crimes in the state of New York, as ACC counsel David Karopkin is or should be aware.

However, since Bello arrived as a stray with no microchip, ACC’s only job was to provide him with necessary medical care — or arrange care with first-string veterinarians outside ACC — before placing him in a home where he would be rightly treasured for the rest of his natural life.

For that to happen, though, New York City would need a functional animal shelter staffed with dedicated professionals driven by compassion for the vulnerable once and would-be family pets in their care, and not a snake pit teeming with self-loathing losers who more than anything derive pleasure from projecting their deep-seated frustrations with their pitiful pointless lives onto whatever easy targets happen to present themselves.

In the real world, then, as far as the bullies who call the shots at NYC ACC were concerned, Bello had two strikes against him.

For one, he was ill, having arrived at ACC with “significant suspected head/facial trauma,” which caused issues with his eyes, head movement and balance. If there’s anything the bullies love more than abusing a scared animal, it’s abusing a scared sick one.

Strike two was that, for virtually every normal nose-breathing biped who encountered charmer Bello, it was love at first sight. And if there’s anything the bullies love more than abusing a scared, sick animal, it’s abusing a scared, sick animal whose elective killing would serve to terrorize the private citizens in ACC’s orbit. That is, the same people ACC depends upon to do much if not most of the work ACC actually gets done, often for no remuneration, be they “shelter” volunteers, networkers, rescues, or the countless fine folk around the globe who donate to those overworked rescues from their own pockets.

Unfortunately for Bello and those who loved him, the bullies don’t need a strike three.

ACC watchers waited and worried as kill-pound sadists declared Bello “at risk” of extermination, because they are supernaturally lazy, because killing is less work than their actual jobs, and because Bello’s discretionary extermination — bonus! — would emotionally brutalize those outside the kill pound desperately trying to save his life from those paid to save his life.

Sure enough, on Thursday, head ACC DVM Robin Brennen’s team of cane-kicking deviants poisoned poor, abused, hopeful Bello until dead. Because they felt like it, and because Lynn Schulman, Harvey Epstein, Julie Menin and Zohran Mamdani — and other pols who sleazily exploit New Yorkers’ genuine affection for companion animals to get votes, then ignore those animals and constituents until the next election cycle — weren’t about to stop them.

“They killed Bello,” one of ACC’s human victims told me. “I’m shaking and crying. I think everyone is.”

Below are more comments from others traumatized watching Bello suffer and die at the hands of absentee Mayor Mamdani’s kill pound, in their own words.

The euthanasia of Bello is another example of missing animal welfare laws in New York City! He was definitely and clearly seen by his black eye a case of animal abuse but it wasn’t charged or investigated!

While under the care of NYC ACC Bello began to exhibit signs of neurological damage. This was noted but Bello was not given a neurological exam and assessment by a qualified vet. This worsened and Bello was put on the to-be-killed list. I believe Bello should have had a real exam almost immediately and certainly as soon as problems became visible.

Many advocates across the country posted/reposted on social media trying to find a foster and I believe we would have.

Today a sweet wonderful dog named Bello was euthanized. Bello arrived with head trauma and extensive facial bruising. Despite being abused staff and volunteers described Bello as being affectionate and sweet.

I am absolutely heartbroken that Bello did not get the chance to experience even a week of being in a loving home being told “You are a good dog.” I know I am not alone.

The Scoop New York asked ACC and DOH to explain why they killed an abused dog, rather than secure treatment and notify law enforcement of a potential cruelty case. We asked for the DOH/ACC policy on abused animals, and how many such cases are reported to law enforcement.

We asked, from a moral standpoint, how DOH and ACC rationalize putting potentially abused dogs to death, rather than seeing that they are treated and placed, which is ACC’s on-paper job.

New York City’s kill-pound cowards had nothing to say for themselves.

NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show

This week, the Death Row Show asks: How many ACC dog handlers with how many leashes does it take to get a 45-pound dog into a kennel?

Also: How dogs are set up to fail ACC “behavior” tests; joyfulness, fear, and other capital offenses; spay-neuter-kill minus spay-neuter; and more.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• State officials responsible for the safety of horses bred for racing are in 2026 grappling with the existence of fire.

• A Central Park cyclist died after colliding with an off-leash dog, who was reportedly not injured.

• The East Village is looking for Ruco, an 18-year-old pet parakeet who may have exited an open apartment window after his caretaker died.

• Here’s what to do if you or your pet encounter one of the vaccine packets NYC DOH is distributing to prevent raccoon rabies infections.

• Veterinary care continues to be prohibitively expensive and isn’t getting any cheaper.

• Suffolk County SPCA and Strong Island Animal Rescue are looking for the person(s) who dumped a baby crocodile in Holtsville.

• An Erie County couple was permanently banned from having animals after pleading guilty to starving two dogs, one of them fatally. One defendant was sentenced to six months in jail; both got five years probation.

• Finally: The New Yorker went way long on the history of NYC’s horse carriage industry and the ongoing public campaign to end it.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

Also: How dogs are set up to fail ACC “behavior” tests; joyfulness, fear, and other capital offenses; spay-neuter-kill minus spay-neuter; and more.

Check out the clips below for a preview.

Share

It’s October 3, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week’s Poop is a crossover, featuring the latest New York companion animal news as well as the latest NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show podcast.

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As the title of this week’s episode suggests, we’re again plumbing the coldest depths of the human psyche at absentee Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s family pet kill pound.

Before we go any further: I advise listening to this week’s show at 1.25 speed, at least. Unless you happen to be sleep-deprived, in which case my somnambulant, throaty delivery — caused by what I do not know — might be just the thing.

Our first preview clip covers Cosmo, a dog ACC for whatever reason hid from networkers and the public prior to yesterday.

As of this writing offered to New Hope affiliates with a $1,000 stipend, Cosmo was admitted with three other dogs, all found with their deceased owner in the Bronx, all separated from one another by the “care center.”

As discussed on the show, and clipped below, poor Sirius was exterminated by ACC on September 27.

Sibling Atlas — a year-old puppy — is currently on DOH ACC death row.

Also this week: Hannibal Lecter pups, alien abductions and more.

If you were forwarded this post, subscribe to The Scoop New York to catch the next show live on Wednesday at noon, with the complete video delivered to your inbox.

The Weekly Poop will return to its regular format next week. Meantime, scroll for headlines as well as the latest from NYC ACC KILLS.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• Good news: Rochester Animal Services is hosting a pet food pantry. Bad news: Rather than fund the project via the city budget, Rochester is double-taxing residents who make donations to pay for it.

• Long Beach, in Nassau County, has renewed its contract with rescue Posh Pets to handle cat and dog placements for another five years.

• The Saratoga County district attorney and sheriff are co-hosting an October 24 adoption event for Saratoga County Animal Shelter, which is reported to be “at capacity.”

• A New York City rescue for rabbits and guinea pigs has opened a café in East Harlem for fans and potential adopters.

• Chautauqua County Humane Society has paused intakes due to an influx of sick and potentially-sick cats and dogs who had to be quarantined.

• Apparently unslaked by the agency’s brutal killing of Rocky, for good measure the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation had to go exterminate Bullwinkle too.

• A 207-mile animal-testing protest march from Albany to Wayne County wraps today with a vigil outside Marshall BioResources, whose unspeakable cruelty is sanctioned by Albany.

• A former ASPCA director says big-money animal welfare non-profits are more concerned with banking hundreds of millions of dollars than helping animals. Yep.

• Finally (and sadly): Manhattan Plaza Health Club, a Hell’s Kitchen climbing gym that welcomed members’ cats, is no more.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy publicly-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Published by TSNY, NYC ACC KILLS enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s September 26, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, the Albany Times Union reported on a partnership between the paper’s local sheriff’s office and a prominent rescue that pairs traumatized dogs with residents of a homeless shelter operated by the county jail.

Established with financial assistance from the state government, the program looks to address shortcomings in rescue dog care that would be far less severe if Governor Kathy Hochul and Albany lawmakers took seriously their responsibility for New York’s endangered companion animals.

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The centerpiece of the Law Enforcement Aiding Animals Shelter (LEASH) initiative is a new kennel on the Albany County jail campus, in Colonie, that will house up to 15 dogs at a time. The kennel population will be limited to dogs from Mohawk Hudson Humane Society who require shelter during the course of hoarding and abuse investigations.

The dogs will not be available for adoption during their time at the kennel. Rather, occupants of a residential unit located at the jail — unused cell space repurposed for people in need of housing — will be trained by MHHS to administer routine care, as well as behavior lessons and other enrichment, until the dogs are ready for adoption.

“It’s a job you look forward to going to,” program employee Chet DeLeo told the Times Union.

From the story:

The kennel … is funded by a $500,000 grant from the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, explained Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple at its grand opening Tuesday. The hope is to alleviate stress on shelters as law enforcement investigates seemingly more and more abuse and hoarding cases, he said.

“Every municipality around us has overcrowding issues,” he said.

Indeed, Mohawk Hudson Humane — a private non-profit that serves the area in the absence of public shelters — made news in 2022 when, due to capacity constraints, it canceled 16 of 21 sheltering contracts with municipalities that lacked facilities for housing homeless dogs, despite state law mandating that cities provide shelter for them. The requirement applies to dogs only, as the state has no such provision for the care of homeless cats.

MHHS subsequently caught heat from public officials whose cities lost their contracts. But such complaints are ultimately with electeds, from the local level to the state legislature and the governor’s office, who decade after decade have failed to fiscally prioritize the care of homeless companion animals, putting under-funded public shelters and private non-profits — which depend on the largesse of everyday New Yorkers — on the hook for their inaction.

The predicament faced by shelters and rescues alike was arguably made more tenuous by the adoption of the Companion Animal Care Standards Act.

Signed into law by Hochul in 2022, CACSA mandates that shelters and rescues comply with boilerplate sheltering guidelines to remain licensed. For many of those orgs, compliance necessitates pricey capital improvements.

Though facilities had three years to prepare, rather than assess individual shelter and rescue needs beforehand and allocate adequate funding accordingly, Albany requires facilities that can’t afford major upgrades to apply for state grants, such as the one the state agriculture department — which is responsible for CACSA enforcement — greenlit for the Albany County LEASH program. Those not fortunate enough to win the grant lottery, meanwhile, are apt to find themselves left in the lurch.

Even when presented with a relatively easy opportunity to help beleaguered rescues and shelters, Hochul and state lawmakers can’t be bothered to follow through. For years, both houses of the legislature — helmed by Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie — have declined to pass a measure to create an Animal Offense Assistance Fund. The fund would offer continual support to shelters and rescues for costs associated with housing and rehabilitating animals seized by law enforcement, i.e. the same services to be handled by LEASH.

Coincidentally — or not — the assistance fund bill was prompted at least in part by a hoarding case that cost Mohawk Hudson Humane hundreds of thousands of dollars. A 2023 television news story reported that victims of neglect and abuse accounted for more than 70 percent of the 300-plus animals housed by MHHS at the time.

The assistance fund as proposed would not impact the state budget, as the bill calls for a dedicated court fee surcharge to cover the cost. That lawmakers and Governor Hochul have thus far chosen not to act on what ought to be a legislative layup is another symptom of Albany’s longstanding casual indifference toward the state’s raging homeless animal crisis.

As always, then, it’s left to struggling shelters and rescues to sink or swim. For every feel-good stop-gap like the LEASH program, there are multiple stories of facilities fighting to survive, begging for New Yorkers’ help and hoping for a lifeline from Albany that might never come. Because Kathy Hochul and state legislators prefer it that way.

NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show

On this week’s Death Row Show podcast: ACC's recent extermination of seven dogs in a single day, what it means to kill family pets for a living, lax ACC oversight on the part of the state agriculture department, and more.

If you were forwarded The Weekly Poop, subscribe to The Scoop New York to catch the next show live on Wednesday at noon, with the complete video delivered to your inbox.

Subscribe now

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• “What we have right now in New York State is the ‘Wild West’ of animal care laws and that’s led to one terrible tragedy after another,” says Clifton Park state Senator Jim Tedisco. Hard agree.

• The Mamdani administration believes itself above answering to the New York City Council, and by extension ~8,000,000 New Yorkers, concerning the potential destruction of public records by influencers City Hall may or may not be paying to promote the mayor’s agenda.

• Bodega Cats of New York is accepting applications from NYC rescues that could use a website built at no charge.

• Police in Clifton, in St. Lawrence County, are looking for help identifying the person or persons who abandoned two malnourished dogs on a city sidewalk earlier this month.

• And Nassau County authorities are asking the public for info on a “neglected male canine … discovered in a crate, with no food or water … tethered to a fence by a rope around his neck.”

• After pledging to “reinforce the application” of cruelty laws, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney filed misdemeanor charges against a Wheatley Heights man when the man’s dog was allegedly found confined to a basement cell riddled with fleas and without adequate food and water, according to News 12 and court records reviewed by TSNY.

• In post-Kaporos news, from Humane Long Island: “Hero Dog Tanuki Seeks Forever Home After Saving Abandoned Chickens.”

• Finally: What’s left of the CDC issued a warning to several states, including New York, about a marked increase in rabies cases.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

Also: Complicity in ACC lawlessness on the part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the City Council and New York state government, the gift of CIRDC, “Final Destination” for pets and more.

Check out the clips below for a preview.

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy publicly-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Published by TSNY, NYC ACC KILLS enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s September 19, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] handed a malnourished dog with multiple untreated physical injuries back to the person who surrendered her in that condition, with no apparent inquiry into how her wounds were sustained and, according to ACC records, without providing or securing recovery-dependent medical care recommended by ACC itself.

This week’s example is only the latest instance of ACC returning dogs to owners who either surrendered them under questionable circumstances or were known to pose a threat to the dog they were legally responsible for.

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Koko [263346], a 33-pound mixed breed whose age is estimated to be between 2 and 4 years, was admitted to ACC on August 24.

The owner, who surrendered Koko along with two other dogs, reportedly indicated Koko was bred at the owner’s home. The owner did not supply ACC with Koko’s medical records, assuming any existed.

On intake, Koko was described as “underweight” and, according to publicly-available ACC notes, presented with “severe facial swelling,” which her owner claimed was precipitated three days earlier when she was attacked at a dog park by “a larger dog [who] grabbed Koko by the head/face, biting, holding on, and shaking.”

ACC found that Koko also suffered from a “significant hard palate defect/injury” that exposed her nasal cavity and the roots of her teeth.

ACC notes recommended a surgical consultation “ASAP” for the palate wounds, both for treatment and to determine whether the palate injuries were caused by the purported dog attack or by “other trauma,” via an “electrical cord,” a “penetrating foreign body,” or other means.

At some point after Koko was admitted to ACC, she was reportedly attacked by another dog whom ACC failed to handle properly. The dog who attacked Koko, Mac [263476], was also a bite victim, her face covered in both new and old wounds. ACC exterminated Mac on September 17.

Koko’s notes give no indication that ACC followed up on the surgical consult she needed in any way. Instead, the notes say, personnel monitored Koko’s condition, while administering antibiotic and anti-inflammatory medications, until September 2, when ACC added Koko to its so-called “at-risk” list — “for medical reasons.”

In other words, ACC wanted to kill Koko because of injuries ACC was not treating, nor securing qualified outside assistance to treat.

On September 13 ACC put Koko on “kill command” — the last step preceding an ACC elective killing.

On September 16, ACC returned Koko to the person who bred her and who, rather than take her to a veterinarian, left her at the city pound, underweight, after she suffered multiple severe injuries of undetermined origin.

As the following recent examples attest, Koko is not the first dog ACC purposely returned to an unstable if not clearly dangerous environment.

• Ben [252447], 1 year old; and Benjamin [252514], 6 months old: Ben and Benjamin were found tied together on the street on April 20, 2026. Benjamin had a deformity to a hind leg, which ACC amputated. ACC allowed the owner to reclaim both dogs on May 9, though both had rescues waiting and though abandoning an animal is a crime in the state of New York.

• Mustard [225961], 1 year old: Mustard was admitted to ACC twice. The first time, on April 30, 2025, he was found loose in a park with his owner, who police said was intoxicated. Mustard reappeared at ACC on April 29, 2026, after his owner was arrested and Mustard was left at home unattended, along with two cats and two turtles, for three weeks.

• King H [227499], 5 years old: King H was also at ACC on two separate occasions. In October 2025, he was surrendered by NYPD after “the owner and the victim [the owner’s partner] were having a dispute” and “the owner sent the dog to attack the victim,” resulting in a bite wound that did not require medical attention. In July 2026, King H was brought back to ACC as a stray. ACC allowed King H’s owner to reclaim him a second time, again despite potential criminal abandonment.

The Scoop New York sent queries concerning Koko to the city health department, which nominally oversees the city kill pound for absentee Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as well as the ACC communications office and chief ACC veterinarian Robin Brennen.

We asked if Koko received the surgical consult ACC said she required “ASAP,” and, if so, what they learned. We asked about Koko’s medical care during the two-week period after ACC declared Koko “at-risk” — when ACC stopped posting her records — and the day ACC released Koko to her owner. We asked, since her owner has no apparent record of providing Koko with vet care, how ACC can confirm she receives the medical attention she needs.

Given that Koko was underweight, and had multiple serious wounds that her owner allowed to go untreated — including wounds potentially resulting from abuse — we asked why Koko wasn’t flagged for cruelty.

Finally, we asked if ACC has a protocol for animals admitted with signs of abuse, how often potential cruelty cases are investigated, and why ACC releases animals to their owners despite indications of abuse in the home.

Per usual, neither NYC DOH nor NYC DOH ACC had anything to say for themselves.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• Count Wyoming County among those putting Albany lawmakers to shame by establishing its own abuser registry in lieu of a state one.

• Related: Another reminder that New York’s “animal-loving” legislators should get to work regulating grooming and boarding businesses, stat.

• Related: Saratoga County Judge James R. Davis tossed the cruelty case against the owner of a now-shuttered Halfmoon boarding business who prosecutors said was responsible for the heat death of a dog and “alleged mistreatment of other animals” in her care.

• Related: Looks like a legal remedy may be needed to stop Mark Zuckerberg from profiting off shady Facebook pet sales, which the platform claims it doesn’t allow but in practice totally does.

• Town of Huntington Animal Shelter is shut to walk-in visitors as the facility makes “upgrades required by new state regulations.” (Though it will be business as usual at the cat shelter next door.)

• “Southampton Animal Shelter Clinic Closed to Public After Abrupt Split With Veterinarian Co-Founder”

• Kudos to Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly for successfully appealing felony cruelty charges against Peter Galantino, a grown-ass man who kicked a couple’s Yorkie to death after the couple called him out for not curbing his own dog.

• Kudos also to NYPD’s 78th Precinct, in Park Slope, for returning bodega cat Jabal to his human after he was allegedly stolen off the street. And this week’s kudos hat trick (a Weekly Poop first!) goes to said human Imad Innab for his kicker quote: “I'm going to try not to just leave him outside, make sure he's inside, not outside.”

• NYC Second Chance Rescue is accepting applications for Owl, a year-old American Staffordshire mix the org is nursing back to health (Imagine!) after she was found by a good Samaritan on a Brooklyn sidewalk “so profoundly starved she could barely lift her head.”

• Putnam County SPCA is looking for tips on who abandoned a German shepherd bound with electrical tape in Brewster.

• In still more wanton abuse news: It’s tempting to say new Belmont Park renovations are lipstick on a pig except pigs have integrity.

• Look out for rabid raccoons in Bay Shore and Babylon.

• Finally: Did somebody say “Circle Line dog cruise”?

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy publicly-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Published by TSNY, NYC ACC KILLS enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s September 13, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, we’re examining the outcomes of three New York animal cruelty cases, with differing circumstances and jurisdictions, that were disposed in much the same way: a plea deal with a misdemeanor conviction — despite, in two examples, a felony top charge — and no intervention or community service component meant to help reduce the likelihood of re-offending.

While the cases were chosen at random, it’s apparent that, though district attorneys and SPCAs with enforcement powers have implored state lawmakers to make it easier to separate animal abusers from their victims, prosecutors often don’t use the tools they have.

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Each defendant in the three sample cases was arrested in 2024 for offenses committed that year. All three cases were adjudicated in 2026. The adjournment hearing for one defendant, in Nassau County, appeared on Friday’s docket. Court proceedings for the other two cases, in Erie County and Manhattan, concluded earlier this year.

Though each perpetrator was determined to have caused pain, suffering and, in some instances, death to defenseless companion animals, and though two were charged with felony cruelty, none received jail time. Nor do court records indicate the defendants were compelled to participate in animal abuser rehabilitation programs in lieu of a prison sentence.

According to court records, none of the convicted abusers in these cases were permanently prohibited from possessing domesticated animals.

Erie County

Joshua Taylor, also known as Moriah Taylor, 39, was charged with felony aggravated cruelty for smothering two kittens to death with a pillowcase at Taylor’s apartment in Hamburg in January 2024.

Aggravated cruelty to animals is a class E felony, New York’s least severe felony category. Penalties for aggravated cruelty range from two years in prison to no penalty at all.

Ultimately, Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane allowed Taylor to plead to one count of misdemeanor cruelty. Taylor was sentenced to a 1-year conditional discharge, $250 in fees and court costs, and a 3-year ban on adopting or owning a domesticated animal. All of which combined is about as close to scot-free as you can get.

New York County (Manhattan)

Joseph Kauffmann, then 22, was arrested in Manhattan in April 2024, after he took his severely abused dog to the vet.

As AMNY reported:

[Kauffmann] allegedly hurled his 14-week-old Border Collie called Luca from his bed on March 27, 2024. That same day, he also reportedly burned the puppy in the bathtub with scalding water. The dog could not walk when Kauffmann brought him to BluePearl Pet Hospital.

Luca had two femur fractures, three rib fractures, and severe burns on his back, ear, forehead, eye, and muzzle …

Luca was reportedly treated at ASPCA Animal Hospital for nearly two months. The Scoop New York found no contemporary coverage of the case indicating what became of Luca afterward.

Like Taylor, Kauffmann was initially charged with felony cruelty. And as in Taylor’s case, the prosecutor — Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg this time — was satisfied with a misdemeanor cruelty plea.

Bragg’s deal got Kauffmann a 1-year conditional discharge, $250 in fees and court costs, and a 15-year animal ban.

Nassau County

Hoarding is one of the many harmful side effects of New York officials’ longstanding indifference toward homeless companion animals and refusal to acknowledge the government’s responsibility for them.

In October 2024, 76-year-old veterinarian Linda Pesek was arrested after authorities discovered 100 to 200 (accounts vary) animals, with many of them ill, in distress, or dead, at her home in Woodbury.

“Veterinarians take an oath to heal animals, not harm them,” John Di Leonardo, executive director of Humane Long Island, told Patch. “[H]owever, what we found inside Linda Pesek’s home was one of the most horrific cases of neglect I’ve ever encountered — nearly 100 animals trapped in filthy, toxic conditions, suffering from untreated infections, overgrown beaks, respiratory distress, and even confined alongside decomposing animals.”

Dennis Michael Lemke, Pesek’s attorney, said his client took in animals who were injured or otherwise needed care until she was “overwhelmed.”

Pesek pled guilty to one count of misdemeanor “overdriving, torturing and injuring animals,” and “failure to provide proper sustenance.” In March, Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly agreed to a sentence of 3-years’ probation, $250 in court costs and fees, and just under $5,000 in restitution to Nassau County SPCA. Pesek was prohibited from keeping animals for 10 years.

Albany

As The Scoop New York reported in August, years have passed since Albany lawmakers last adopted legislation to help companion animals in any significant way. For that matter, legislators have for years failed to help police and prosecutors prevent animal cruelty, just as they have decided against adopting bills meant to keep domestic abusers from terrorizing human victims by harming family pets.

State lawmakers killed no fewer than five such bills this year. Legislation to restore bail for felony aggravated animal cruelty, strengthen the aggravated animal cruelty statute, establish a civil process for law enforcement to remove animals from dangerous home environments, and more were left on the table in 2026.

It is common for legislators to neglect such bills for several years running. The question, as always, is how long New Yorkers will tolerate electeds who willfully refuse to enact or improve laws intended to protect companion animals, and officials who decline to vigorously enforce them.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• For $13 million you too can buy the governor of a prominent northeastern state.

• Zohran Mamdani, duplicitous hypocrite? Say it ain’t so.

• The state Gaming Commission is chuffed that five horses were sacrificed for human amusement at Saratoga this summer.

• NYC DOH is apparently covering NYC with a type of rat poison — deadly to wildlife as well as cats and dogs and children — that state legislators are trying (unsuccessfully, so far) to restrict to NYS-certified usage.

• Good Samaritans saved Willie Bee from the Willy-B; now Willie Bee [260234] needs someone to save him from the NYC kill pound.

• “Hoosick Falls breeder under investigation after puppies die from parvovirus”

• A group of attention-starved men is selling puppy-milled dogs in NYC “in broad daylight” and NYPD is not on it.

• Someone(s) is/are fatally poisoning stray cats and “other pets” in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

• Twenty-one neglected dogs were seized from a Manorhaven storefront belonging to a woman who operates an apparently unregistered “rescue” and was recently arraigned in Pennsylvania for transporting scores of animals — one of whom died — in “inhumane conditions.”

• Finally: Godspeed, Lloyd and Lexi.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA recently announced one pet food recall:

• Fi supplements for dogs [salmonella]

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy publicly-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Published by TSNY, NYC ACC KILLS enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s September 6, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week at Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] was not much different from any other.

That’s a problem. Or, at least, it should be, if New York electeds and the bureaucrats they oversee did their jobs.

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Throughout its decades-long history, ACC has been insulated from the consequences of its own ham-fisted malfeasance by complicit city officials who ignore “shelter” carnage while cynically exploiting homeless companion animals to advance their political careers.

With no adult supervision to speak of, ACC personnel are free to rain terror upon the once and would-be family pets in their custody, who — despite new rules for shelters and rescues statewide — are still being crammed into pop-up crates; choked into unconsciousness while on walks; dosed and overdosed with human-grade sedatives; butchered during unnecessary and often dangerous medical procedures; and exterminated at the rate of one victim every three hours. Except when the pace of killings accelerates, that is, as it has since Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin assumed their current positions.

Article 26-C, also known as the Companion Animal Care Standards Act, was signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2022 but didn’t take effect until last December, to give facilities time to comply with requirements related to everything from cleanliness and ambient temperature to enrichment and housing. However, as reported exclusively by The Scoop New York, a three-year grace period and tens of millions of dollars wasn’t enough for ACC and its health department chaperones to bring the city pound into compliance in time for its initial state inspection, which occurred in May.

When inspectors from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets made a follow-up visit nine days after recording 19 ACC deficiencies out of 50 applicable requirements, they said the “shelter” had raised that D- to a perfect score.

Assuming that’s true — that, as far as the state is concerned, ACC is doing everything by the book — then the book itself is worth about as much as Andrew Cuomo’s COVID autohagiography.

If you’d like specifics on what ACC has been up to recently — the subterfuge, the obfuscating, the chokings, the druggings, the medical neglect, the kitten obliterating, the expedited dog exterminations, and whatever sick shit they did to “Proximity” — we’ve got you:

ICYMI, this week’s NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show covers the most recent Weekly Carnage (via NYC ACC KILLS).

As you watch and read up on some of the latest ACC assaults on fundamental decency — I say “some of” because the assaults are committed faster than we can keep up, and because they never stop — remember that every instance of abuse and cruelty is endorsed by city and state officials.

Some of those same officials rejected the Shelter Animal Rescue Act — which would require kill pounds to hand over to rescues animals they would otherwise destroy — in favor of CACSA, which specifies permissible shelter building materials but ignores the wholesale slaughter of healthy and adoptable cats and dogs.

Also:

• The ACC dosings and overdosings, the silent killings and spay-neuter killings, the solitary confinements and near-strangulations — remain A-OK under Article 26-C.

• Thanks to a convenient loophole, ACC and other facilities may continue to use pop-up crates freely.

• Since CACSA was championed by the New York State Animal Protection Federation — a kill-pound lobby group that has the ear of state electeds, including the governor — Article 26-C does not require kill pounds to disclose their body counts to the public.

The Scoop New York asked ACC, DOH, Mamdani’s office, the Department of Agriculture and Markets, and NYSAPF to comment on the issues covered in this column. There were no replies.

TSNY will have more on Article 26-C in the coming weeks and months. Meanwhile, if you’re with a shelter or rescue and have something to say about the new state regs, let us know.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• A Long Island couple has joined the call for Albany to regulate pet hotels and daycare facilities after their beloved German shepherd died mysteriously at The Pawdorf in Wantagh. While more civilized states have adopted such legislation, twin bills to govern New York facilities stalled this year thanks to — are you sitting down? — Donna Lupardo and Michelle Hinchey.

• To get Zohran Mamdani’s attention, be a lobbyist or a sycophant.

• Related: Eternally flat-footed NYC ACC is waiving dog adoption fees and issuing Chewy gift cards to relieve overcrowding they know to expect yet are never prepared for.

• Related: WABC filed an excellent story on two Brooklyn women doing City Hall’s job by caring for stray cats out of pocket: "The heaviness of rescue, it's unlike anything I've ever done."

• Related: Thank your deity of choice that abused and abandoned Owl was discovered by Bay Ridge good Samaritans who didn’t take her to the city “shelter” to be further victimized.

• A NYC Council bill would ban the practice of using live fish as prizes at events such as carnivals after one such fish was allegedly tortured by a group of teenage boys in Queens earlier this year.

• Horse racing in New York continues to be publicly-subsidized and very much above board.

• Related: “Horses bound for slaughter rescued in northern NY as trucker arrested”

• After a years-long search, Rochester Animal Services found a veterinarian willing to work for the city’s kill pound.

• Related: Rochester should soon have a new 24/7 emergency vet clinic.

• Related: Shelters constructed for a Rochester cat colony have repeatedly been destroyed by vandals. About a dozen cats went missing after the latest attack.

• Finally: “Custody battles for furry critters in New York begin to resemble similar fights over children”

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA recently announced two pet food recalls:

• Revival Animal Health Shelter’s Choice, Breeder’s Edge Feline Milk Replacers [“low levels of potassium, copper, folic acid, choline and/or pyridoxine (vitamin B6)”]

• Northwest Naturals Frozen Chicken Recipe (for cats) and Northwest Naturals Frozen Raw Diet for Dogs Chicken Recipe [“potential contamination with salmonella and/or listeria monocytogenes”]

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

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Also: DOH and ACC continue to flout a number of local and state laws, with the tacit blessing of the mayor, the City Council and Albany lawmakers.

Check out the clips below for a preview — and watch ‘til the end for new TSNY merch!

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The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy publicly-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Published by TSNY, NYC ACC KILLS enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s August 22, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, NYC ACC KILLS published the memoriam for adoptable cats and dogs slaughtered by Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] in May.

With data indicating that killings remained higher for the fifth consecutive month compared to 2025, the latest NAK memoriam is reality’s response to New York City Council members after they again touted their compassion and magnanimity fOR ThE aNIMaLs.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear if Zohran Mamdani is aware of ACC’s existence, much less if the people’s mayor knows or cares about atrocities committed on his watch and in his name as his constituents look on in horror, with many New Yorkers paying for the privilege.

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Roughly six months since its founding, the council’s so-called “animal welfare caucus” has succeeded in securing less than 1 hundredth of 1 percent of the massive city budget for spay-neuter and pet food pantry pilots — with no guarantee of future funding for any of it — while empowering pseudo-advocate schmoozers who are totes on board with ‘round the clock ACC carnage, and, as usual, shamelessly ignoring voices of dissent who have more than earned their place in line.

And so August 13 brought the non-event that was the caucus’ fall schedule reveal, a program so meager it had to be padded with NYC ACC mobile adoption events, which sporadic as they are were already a thing.

But wait, there’s less! Also on the 13th, the council celebrated the passage of its dogshit dog-shit campaign, which will likely do little to influence New Yorkers who aren’t already picking up after their pets and will definitely do nothing to improve conditions for the once and would-be pets at the city kill pound, who in May alone, among other abuses, were denied medication; denied medical care; disappeared for weeks before subsequent elective extermination; exterminated without being offered for foster or adoption; exterminated after being subjected to alteration surgery; and exterminated after being saddled with contemptuous, spiteful “names” like “Casserole” and “Coffee Grounds.”

There is less still, discussed on this week’s Death Row Show, clipped above, involving Mamdani’s first Mayor’s Management Report, which makes no mention of ACC — again, does he even know? — but duly updates New Yorkers on the city health department’s rabies prevention efforts, in keeping with DOH ideology that humans and animals should only interact with the aid of PPE or knife and fork.

ACCDRS is available to paid subscribers live on Wednesdays at 11:00 a.m. and on video delivered to inboxes. As always, NYC ACC KILLS is free to all.

Read it and weep.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• Saratoga County Animal Shelter — recently accused of abuse and neglect by former staff and volunteers — has shut to intakes due to capacity constraints.

• State cruelty laws continue to be so weak they are barely enforceable, thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul and legislators who have for years declined to adopt legislation to strengthen them.

• Related: New Yorkers are again calling on Albany to adopt a statewide abuser registry after a county-hopping former rescue owner convicted of cruelty allegedly violated the terms of her probation, which limit her contact with animals.

• Related: If NYPD or Queens DA Melinda Katz investigated the crime(s) that preceded the discovery of puppies Poppy and Petunia in a Flushing garbage bin with their mouths wired shut (both dogs are said to be safe now), coverage of the case doesn’t mention it.

• Related: A former NYPD officer was charged with felony cruelty after he allegedly shot and killed a 12-year-old dog who belonged to a local homeless man.

• Related: “Arrests announced in 5 separate Monroe County animal cruelty cases”

• Related: “Lollypop Farm looking for help identifying truck in kitten abuse investigation”

• Related: Animal cruelty remains 100 percent legal in New York when it’s sanctioned by the government.

• Negligence has again caused the horrific death of a police dog upstate.

• Finally, here are two stories that probably won’t torment you the next time you’re tossing and turning at 3:00 in the morning.

Food recalls

FDA recently announced one pet food recall:

• Fromm wet canned dog food [“potential metal contamination”]

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy publicly-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Published by TSNY, NYC ACC KILLS enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s August 14, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, we’re doing some housekeeping.

Every normal human person who has given Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] more than a passing glance knows the NYC “shelter” system kills adoptable animals for space. Every day.

They kill for other reasons, too, like personal spite, contempt for animals and New Yorkers alike, and just for the lulz.

And since it’s easier than rehoming — work that ACC personnel are neither all that interested in nor very good at — and since they lack the ability to plan for contingencies no matter how many years and millions of dollars they are granted to do so, and since there’s not a politician in the city or state about to lift a finger to stop them, ACC is sure to put to death one to two of every 10 cats and two to three of every 10 dogs who come in the door.

The Greatest City in The World™ has a low-rent rinky-dink kill pound with a kill quota. Count it on the clock.

To hear CEO Risa Weinstock tell it, though, ACC is killing cats and dogs “the public does not want.”

This video is circa 2013. In case you can’t make sense of the word salad Weinstock is attempting to serve to an audience that is not having it, here are some money quotes:

Why do animals get euthanized? They get sick. They get very sick. They are too sick for someone from the public who wants to adopt them. That’s why they’re on the list.

The unfortunate thing is the public does not want certain animals.

There’s a certain number of animals that our shelters can hold. We have a capacity issue. We do not have the resources or the space to keep animals forever. That’s a sad reality of the shelter world.

So a cat or dog who gets very sick is a death row candidate because they got very sick. Notice Weinstock doesn’t mention that nine times out of 10 animals get sick at ACC because ACC is as sanitary as a porta-potty on Lollapalooza day three, and always has been.

Excuses and lies notwithstanding, as of 2013, according to Risa Weinstock, NYC DOH ACC was killing for space.

But wait! Here’s ACC designated liar Katy Hansen speaking to Chelsea News for an impressively thorough story published in 2022:

ACC spokesperson Katy Hansen told Straus News that Weinstock’s statement in the video is outdated, reflecting a time when their intake was higher. Hansen states that currently “[the ACC] do not euthanize for space but only in cases where behavior or medical conditions preclude an animal getting placed,” and that they now have “over a 90% placement rate” for their animals.

Hansen tells too many howlers in that short graf to address them all here, so for our purposes the lie to remember is that as of 2022 ACC “[did] ‘not euthanize for space.’”

We’re also gonna set the playback to max speed for that time Hansen told a gullible and lazy QNS.com reporter there “is actually no such a thing as a no-kill shelter,” for a story that ran under what might be the most vacuous headline in the history of print journalism. That’s the TL;DR, though if you haven’t already, you should really check that headline. See?

So in 2013 killing for space was a “sad reality.” Nine years later ACC killed “only in cases where behavior or medical conditions preclude an animal getting placed.” That remains the company line today.

Aside: Left unsaid is the fact that the City Council, DOH and ACC agreed to fairy-dust the word “healthy” to mean animals "who do not require medical, behavioral, or foster care to make them ready for adoption." That’s its own story, arriving imminently.

The claim that ACC doesn’t kill healthy animals is easily disproved, even if you play along with DOH/ACC’s own hilariously corrupt fake definition.

As one advocate I spoke with for this column told me: “The fact is they kill dogs still listed as adoptable the day they kill them. So if they’re not killing them for space, why are they killing them?”

But let’s give ‘em that too. Sure, Council Member Epstein, everyone knows a dog who needs a foster is too sick for any outcome but the death chamber. You’re the north star here, after all!

To recap, even if you buy into the fiction that ACC only exterminates the “sick” and otherwise “unwanted,” conclusive evidence of Risa’s sad reality is still there for all to see. And since I’ve got company coming from the city for the weekend and need to get to the airport, let’s get to it.

Here are two screen grabs, courtesy New York City and NYC DOH ACC itself. Follow the red rectangles:

Not much ambiguity there. No mention of health or behavior or any other slapdash reason for applying the needle.

“To avoid having to make difficult euthanasia decisions based solely on space constraints” is what you’d call a smoking gun, if ACC bigs weren’t so inept as to advertise it on their own website.

And that’s it. Except:

Sadly, there was no reply. Morbidly entertaining as it might have been,

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized and murdered by the government, but not both.

• Dear Julie Menin and Harvey Epstein: Can you explain why you think it’s OK for NYC DOH to deny its responsibility for the city’s enormous street cat population, yet dog poop is a top priority?

• Related: NYC DOH/ACC’s failure to do much of anything at all about stray cats poses health risks to other animals as well as the New Yorkers DOH is supposed to be concerned about.

• Related: The line between NYC DOH’s purposeful dereliction of duty and stories like this one is short and direct.

• A Bronx man got two years in jail and a 10-year ban (10 years? Really?) on having animals after pleading guilty to torturing and killing a cat inside his apartment.

• “New York woman arrested after nearly 1,000 neglected rats found in home with child”

• Buffalonians are pitching ideas for a long-awaited new animal shelter.

• Southampton Animal Shelter plans to expand with a new building.

• State gaming Commissioner Peter Moschetti is shocked! shocked! by the lack of fire preparedness at the horse-racing facilities he’s been responsible for since 2014.

• Related: New York’s horse-racing racket industry continues to be 100 percent completely totally above-board.

• NYS Department of Environmental Conservation: Good at decapitating family pets; not so good at, uh, environmental conservation.

• A book about NYC bodega cats is in the works.

• “Woman Spends $17,000 to Turn Her [Rochester] Basement into a Sanctuary for Her Disabled Cats”

• Finally, it was another busy week for Long Island animal rescuer John Debacker.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA recently announced one pet food recall:

• Oma’s Pride Canine Food [salmonella]

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

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The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy publicly-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Published by TSNY, NYC ACC KILLS enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

This story is free to all readers for a limited time. A paid subscription to The Scoop New York unlocks every story, including the complete archive. Advocate- and Shopcat/Watchdog-tier subs also come with TSNY merch and other perks, like live access to the new NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show. Subscribe today for $5 a month, or less with a yearly subscription.

It took three months to find the body.

In February, 31-year-old Anaiya Harris was sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation after she admitted to sealing her dog inside a closet before she vacated a Utica apartment in March of 2025.

By the time the landlord checked Harris’ former home, in June, the dog had long since succumbed to hunger and thirst.

While Harris was directly responsible, the torture-killing of her dog may have been prevented but for inaction by the New York State Legislature, and one lawmaker in particular.

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For three consecutive years — 2023, 2024 and 2025 — the New York Senate passed a bill to require landlords to inspect vacated properties within three days. The bill was intended to prevent precisely what happened to Harris’ dog, which is a not-uncommon occurrence, though it’s more often due to life-altering emergencies, or tenants lacking the financial resources to care for a pet, than a deliberate act of deadly cruelty.

Had Governor Kathy Hochul signed the 2024 version of the bill into law without sabotaging it — which, to be sure, is never a given — it would have taken effect several months before Harris left her dog to die. But like many other legislative attempts to protect New York companion animals, the 2024 vacated properties bill stalled in the Assembly agriculture committee — just as it did in 2023 and 2025.

Presiding over the Assembly ag committee as the bill languished like an emaciated abandoned pet: chair Donna Lupardo of Binghamton.

Since, legislatively speaking, New York considers cats, dogs and other household pets on par with animals farmed for food, most companion animal bills are routed through the agriculture committees of both houses. Along with her ag chair counterpart in the Senate, Michelle Hinchey of Kingston, Lupardo is perhaps most infamous for killing the Shelter Animal Rescue Act, which would require kill “shelters” to make animals available to rescues, rather than exterminate them.

SARA is revenue-neutral, meaning it would cost taxpayers nothing. So why would a state lawmaker — especially one who considers herself an advocate for animals — shoot down legislation to save countless companion animal lives at no cost to constituents?

As The Scoop New York reported in March:

SARA was opposed by the New York State Animal Protection Federation — a lobbying group for kill pound personnel — along with other high-profile pro-kill orgs including ASPCA and Humane Society of the United States. Since Lupardo and Hinchey take their orders from the powerful, like the governor and virtually every other New York politician, tens of thousands of cats and dogs who would be alive today were instead burned to ash, with thousands more joining them in perpetuity for the foreseeable future.

More broadly, while state senators try to advance at least enough animal-friendly legislation to pad an annual press release, of dozens of bills tracked by The Scoop New York since 2024, the Assembly has passed just one — to prevent insurance companies from discriminating against renters with pets — which Hochul then vetoed.

Other than the insurance bill, lawmakers haven’t sent a significant piece of companion animal welfare legislation to the governor’s desk since 2022. As shown in the legislation tracker below, of 23 active bills followed by The Scoop New York this year, the Senate passed nine. For the second consecutive year, under the leadership of purported dog-lover Carl Heastie, New York Assembly members failed to pass a single one.

There is some good news for the state’s homeless companion animals and the New Yorkers who care about them: after 20 years in the Assembly, Lupardo opted against seeking another term this year.

The bad news: one of Lupardo’s soon-to-be former colleagues is making a solid case to succeed her as chief Assembly obstructionist.

In office since President Bill Clinton’s first term, Bronx rep Jeffrey Dinowitz chairs the Assembly codes committee, where no fewer than eight animal-friendly bills met their end this year. Legislation to prohibit people from tethering dogs in inhumane conditions, multiple bills to make cruelty law enforcement easier for police and SPCAs, and — after it finally cleared Lupardo’s committee — the vacated properties bill all stalled this year because Dinowitz chose not to shepherd them toward the governor’s desk.

In late July, The Scoop New York asked Dinowitz’s office why his committee fails to move so many animal welfare bills. There was no reply.

Scroll past the chart for the description and current status of each bill tracked by The Scoop New York in 2026. Barring a special session before the year is out, the New York State Legislature will reconvene in January.

S.1742 (Monica Martinez)/A.11276 (Paula Kay): Elevates charge for inappropriate sheltering of a dog from a civil violation to a misdemeanor.
Current status: Died in the Senate codes committee, chaired by Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn); died in the Assembly agriculture committee, chaired by Donna Lupardo (D-Binghamton)

S.7532B (Pete Harckham)/A.10750A (Chris Burdick): The RAPTORS Act restricts the use of rodenticides linked to wildlife deaths and companion animal poisonings.
Current status: Died in the Senate rules committee and the Assembly environmental conservation committee, chaired by Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Deborah Glick (D-Manhattan), respectively. In office since the first Bush administration, Glick has announced she will not run for reelection when her term ends this year.

S.9981 (Michelle Hinchey)/A.10815 (Keith Powers): Exempts “certain pet food” from sales taxes.
Current status: Stalled in the Senate budget revenue committee and the Assembly ways and means committee, chaired by Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn) and J. Gary Pretlow (D-Mt. Vernon), respectively

S.9231 (Jessica Scarcella-Spanton)/A.6722 (Kay): Restores bail for felony aggravated animal cruelty. This bill is supported by reps from both major parties, as well as law enforcement and animal advocates.
Current status: Failed in Senate and Assembly codes committees, chaired by Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) and Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx), respectively

S.197 (Martinez)/A.3050 (Jen Lunsford): “Tucker’s Law” would increase the maximum penalty for aggravated cruelty to animals from two years to four, as prescribed for other class E felonies. Tucker’s Law passed the Senate last year, but died in Donna Lupardo’s Assembly agriculture committee.
Current status: Passed Senate; died in the Assembly rules committee, chaired by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx)

S.703 (Liz Krueger)/A.2019 (Linda Rosenthal): Strengthens the aggravated animal cruelty statute by removing the word “serious” from “serious physical injury” in state code, which currently applies only in cases when a perpetrator causes permanent physical injury to the victim. The Senate passed the bill last year; the Assembly version died in the codes committee, chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz.
Current status: Passed Senate; died in the Assembly codes committee, chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz

S.3158 (James Skoufis)/A.1816 (Rosenthal): Establishes animal fighting as a “designated criminal act” in state code, with more serious penalties for some related offenses. The Senate passed this bill in 2024 and 2025, but the Assembly failed to move it either session.
Current status: Passed Senate; died in the Assembly codes committee, chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz

S.3073 (Michael Gianaris)/A.2555 (John McDonald): Establishes a civil, as opposed to criminal, process for law enforcement to initiate animal forfeiture, as in cases when mental or physical illness affects the ability to care for an animal. Though the bill is endorsed by law enforcement, it failed in both houses in 2024. The Senate passed it in 2025; the Assembly did not.
Current status: Passed Senate; died in the Assembly agriculture committee, chaired by Donna Lupardo

S.8228 (Martinez)/A.1609 (Lunsford): Designates animal shelters with SPCAs as “qualified agencies,” allowing access to centralized law enforcement data and making it easier to track people who commit acts of cruelty.
Current status: For the second consecutive year, this bill died in the Senate and Assembly codes committees, chaired by Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) and Jeffrey Dinowitz, respectively

S.2603 (Joseph Addabbo)/A.3297 (McDonald): Enhances penalties for harming companion animals with a deadly weapon or “dangerous instrument” with intent to cause serious physical injury. Donna Lupardo and Michelle Hinchey killed this bill last year.
Current status: Failed in Senate and Assembly agriculture committees, chaired by Michelle Hinchey and Donna Lupardo, respectively

S.3026 (Gianaris)/A.8551 (Landon Dais): Bans devocalization surgeries on cats and dogs with exceptions for medical necessity. This bill cleared the Senate but was killed by the Assembly in 2024 and 2025.
Current status: Passed Senate; though it was added to the floor calendar, Carl Heastie’s Assembly failed to pass the devocalization ban for the third consecutive year

S.09399 (Martinez)/A.06602 (Lunsford): Establishes the crime of endangering the welfare of a companion animal or farm [sic] animal in the first and second degree, with charges up to and including a class E felony, the state’s least severe felony category. Law enforcement says the bill would facilitate earlier intervention in cases of suspected abuse and neglect. No Senate version of this bill was introduced last year; the Assembly version died in Donna Lupardo’s agriculture committee.
Current status: Failed in Senate and Assembly agriculture committees, chaired by Michelle Hinchey and Donna Lupardo, respectively

S.1664 (Harckham)/A.1196 (Rosenthal): Gives SPCA cruelty investigators access to live scan fingerprinting tech, allowing them to make arrests independently of other law enforcement. State senators passed this bill in 2024 and 2025 but it died in Jeffrey Dinowitz’s Assembly codes committee.
Current status: Passed Senate; died in Assembly codes committee, chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz

S.6573 (Hinchey)/A.1698 (David Weprin): Requires municipal employees to attempt to identify and notify the owners of a deceased dog or cat recovered on public roads.
Current status: Passed Senate; added to Assembly floor calendar, but Speaker Carl Heastie failed to move it

A.791 (Manny De Los Santos)/No Senate number: Introduced by Democratic Assembly Member Manny De Los Santos of Upper Manhattan, this bill would allow workers to receive paid sick leave for pet care. As in 2025, there was no action on the bill in the Assembly after January. Also like last year, the Senate did not introduce a twin bill.
Current status: Died in Assembly labor committee, chaired by Harry B. Bronson (D-Rochester); no Senate version introduced

S.7011 (Scarcella-Spanton)/A.7388 (Jake Blumencranz): “Peanut’s Law” would make it more difficult for state agencies to seize and immediately kill animals from animal sanctuaries.
Current status: Failed in Senate and Assembly environmental conservation committees, chaired by Peter Harckham and Deborah Glick, respectively

S.6380 (Jabari Brisport)/A.165 (Rosenthal): Enacts civil penalties for tethering dogs outside in inhumane conditions, including severe weather. Donna Lupardo and Michelle Hinchey killed this bill last year.
Current status: Died in Senate agriculture committee, chaired by Michelle Hinchey; died in Assembly codes committee, chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz

S.1784 (Hinchey)/A.5505 (Lupardo): Requires landlords to inspect properties for abandoned animals within three days of a property being vacated. The Senate passed this bill in 2025. Donna Lupardo was the primary Assembly sponsor, but she killed her own bill, along with an untold number of pets who have since suffered tortuous deaths in vacant homes.
Current status: Passed Senate; died in Assembly codes committee, chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz

S.252 (Martinez)/A.1804 (Rosenthal): Expands the extant ban on the sale or possession of certain “wild animals” to include “marsupials, sloths, anteaters, hyenas, bearcats, and zebras, among others.” The Senate passed this bill last year, but the Assembly version died in the environmental conservation committee, chaired by Deborah Glick.
Current status: Passed Senate; died in Deborah Glick’s Assembly environmental conservation committee

S.6733 (Anthony Palumbo)/A.8038 (Edward Ra): Creates the Animal Offense Assistance Fund to provide continued support to animal shelters for expenses related to housing and rehabilitating animals seized by law enforcement, to be funded via court fee surcharges for specific convictions. In 2025 this bill died in the Senate and Assembly codes committees, chaired by Zellnor Myrie and Jeffrey Dinowitz, respectively.
Current status: Died in Senate agriculture committee, chaired by Michelle Hinchey; died in Assembly codes committee, chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz

S.8084A (Harckham)/A.10119A (Sarah Clark): Establishes a statewide animal abuser registry for felony and misdemeanor animal crime convictions, and requires background checks against the registry for pet store and animal shelter licenses. Roughly half of New York’s 62 counties have abuser registries of their own. A statewide registry, which has support from Republican and Democratic legislators, would make it harder for convicted abusers to obtain animals outside of the county where they live. The Senate version of this bill died in Michelle Hinchey’s agriculture committee in 2025; no Assembly version was introduced last year.
Current status: Failed in Senate and Assembly agriculture committees, chaired by Michelle Hinchey and Donna Lupardo, respectively

A.00665 (Rosenthal)/No Senate number: Similar to the proposed animal abuser registry, this bill would create a database of statewide convictions for animal cruelty and related crimes, accessible to “all law enforcement entities, district attorneys, duly incorporated humane societies, societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, dog or cat protective associations and animal control officers.”
Current status: This bill died in Donna Lupardo’s Assembly agriculture committee in 2025 and 2026; no Senate version was introduced in either year

S.04613 (Alexis Weik)/A.05815 (Rosenthal): Allows for orders of protection for companion animals by authorizing judges to compel abusers to relinquish or refrain from any contact with a pet.
Current status: This bill died in the Senate children and families committee and Assembly judiciary committee, chaired by Jabari Brisport (D-Brooklyn) and Charles D. Lavine (D-Glen Cove), respectively, in 2025 and 2026

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The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy taxpayer-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s August 8, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, we’re finally getting around to discussing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (finally) choosing a director for the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare.

If you’re just joining us, MOAW was a con job foisted upon New Yorkers by former mayor Bill de Blasio in collaboration with former City Council member Justin Brannan.

In 2019, the City Council passed a package of animal-welfare bills, the crown jewel of which was a measure to finally remove Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] from the clutches of its neglectful step-parents at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [also sic].

Or so New Yorkers were led to believe.

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Assuming the role since occupied by Harvey Epstein, Brannan marketed himself as the conscience of the council in matters related to the well-being of animals, from the once and would-be family pets at ACC to the slaughtered ducks trucked to faux-fancy city dining establishments from upstate foie gras torture farms. As such, Brannan was lead sponsor of a bill to establish a city department of animal welfare, which would shift responsibility for homeless cats and dogs to folk who unlike Corinne Schiff et al. do not experience an all-consuming urge to snap on the latex at first sight of any living creature that motivates on more than two legs.

Or so New Yorkers were led to believe.

Meanwhile on the corporeal plane, Brannan — like Epstein — was a self-satisfied, self-dealing hypocrite who plotted to secretly swap the animal welfare department for an animal welfare office. Which: Imagine being promised tickets to the World Cup final and ending up with a Ted Lasso tote bag instead. Though to be fair a tote bag at least serves a purpose.

Said the Shelter Reform Action Committee the day after the bill’s passage: “Substituting ‘office’ for ‘department’ doomed what would have been a game changer for NYC animals.”

And how. Not only was there no subsequent improvement to conditions for companion animals in the city’s care (still the case seven years later and counting), city electeds — Justin Brannan in particular — abominably praised themselves as beatific mission-accomplished visionaries in order to sell their sordid backroom deal to credulous media know-nothings who of course spread the lie far and wide.

A year later, MOAW was revealed for what it was and what it remains — a dusty disused desk in the mayor’s office. A distasteful joke that has neither produced nor accomplished anything of consequence to this day.

Fittingly, Eric Adams’ MOAW director was a former ACC flack who hid from reporters lobbing such hard-bitten barbs as “What do you do on a typical day?” before moving on unnoticed after roughly three years in the position.

Then came Zohran “Govern Audaciously” Mamdani, who, when it occurred to his staff they might as well get to it six or seven months in, audaciously picked up right where Adams left off.

Shortly after Mamdani took office earlier this year, Allie Taylor and Will Zweigart, leaders of the city non-profit Voters For Animal Rights and Brooklyn rescue Flatbush Cats, respectively, launched a public campaign to push Mamdani to fund pet food pantries and low-cost veterinary services — spay-neuter, especially — among squishier asks like “enforce existing laws” and “[r]equire transparent, quarterly public reporting” from DOH.

And the #1 priority of the #1 Taylor-Zweigart Agenda item? “Appoint new leadership at the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare.”

You see where this is going.

The run-up to the ascendence of the Taylor-Zweigart Agenda seems to have begun in earnest in 2024, when according to publicly-available tax records VFAR “organized” City Council Member Lynn Schulman’s farce of a public hearing, which was ostensibly about providing relief to the New Yorkers who packed the chamber to testify for eight hours on the various ways DOH and ACC are punishing them for the crime of caring for the city’s hundreds of thousands of free-roaming homeless cats — an enormous responsibility that any given 5-year-old could tell you should fall to DOH and ACC but instead has for decades weighed on the backs of city taxpayers thanks to do-nothing seat-warmers like Lynn Schulman.

But that’s not how it went down. As council health chair, Schulman is tasked with DOH/ACC oversight. Yet she had the gall to speak the words “ACC does the best that it can” out loud to a room packed with people drawn there after years — decades — of being failed by DOH/ACC’s alleged “best,” which is after all what necessitated the hearing in the first place.

We’re now a month away from the two-year anniversary of Schulman’s hearing — the last she has convened related to companion animal welfare. Will Zweigart’s rescue clinic has since been allocated $1M from the city to support spay-neuter, with an additional $250,000 “spread out among additional animal-care centers and nonprofits,” according to the Post. The most recent city budget, which accounts for $750,000 of that $1.25M, also includes $750,000 in funding for a one-year pet food pantry pilot.

All told, then — not counting millions upon millions pissed away at DOH’s ACC — by our count the mayor and City Council have devoted $2M to companion animals since September 2024. The city’s most recent budget tops out at $125.8 billion. Two million is .0015 percent of $125.8 billion. You might call that a drop in the bucket, had the city ponied up enough to buy one.

Two years after the hearing, there are no apparent plans for a sustained city spay-neuter program, despite Schulman’s implied pledge to develop legislation based on rescuer hearing testimony.

Will Zweigart is a huge fan of the full-hearted, grindstone-nosed guys and gals at the city kill pound, and is not shy about professing his affection. The Taylor-Zweigart Agenda, posted on the Flatbush Cats site, features a horse shit happy talk quote from MOAW founding father Justin Brannan.

In addition to helping Schulman orchestrate her 2024 show-hearing, Allie Taylor — Zweigart’s friend and recurring podcast co-host — and VFAR endorsed the two-term Queens council member in 2021 and 2025.

VFAR also endorsed the aforementioned Harvey Epstein in races for state Assembly and New York City Council.

It may not surprise you to hear that the interest group founded by Mamdani’s new MOAW director endorsed his run for mayor, both in the primary and the general election.

You see where this is going.

Behind the scenes at VFAR we have “advisor” Libby Post, the kill-pound lobbyist who leads the trollishly-handled New York State Animal Protection Federation. NYSAPF, which coincidentally makes campaign contributions, has the ear of state legislators including Donna Lupardo and Michelle Hinchey, whose Assembly and Senate committees hold sway over most animal-related state legislation. Post and her buds at ASPCA and The Humane Society of the United States succeeded in convincing Albany lawmakers to kill the Shelter Animal Rescue Act, which would require New York animal shelters to offer endangered animals to rescues, rather than exterminate them.

VFAR has endorsed Hinchey. If the org has ever endorsed Lupardo, who is finally retiring after years of racking up pet carcasses, we could find no record of it.

A former VFAR board member, Joyce Friedman, simultaneously held a management position at NYC ACC. Coincidentally (ahem), Friedman also briefly worked for Flatbush Cats, according to her LinkedIn page.

As you can see, being an “animal advocate” who also endorses the continual slaughter of family pets opens a lot of doors. Call it the New York Pro-Kill Advocates Club. Membership has its privileges.

Back in February The Scoop New York asked Mamdani’s press shop if the mayor was vetting MOAW director candidates, after one of the many access media outlets covering the Taylor-Zweigart Agenda mentioned the vacancy (otherwise who would even know?). We also asked about Mamdani’s position on an animal welfare department, and whether the mayor was hip to the depravity on display 24/7/365 at the kill pound he had recently assumed responsibility for.

Wouldn’t you know, Mayor Transparency ignored us.

Toward the end of July, after Taylor’s appointment was announced, we queried Mamdani again, in search of an attendant press release and/or a contact email address. Crickets.

After divining Taylor’s city email addy (it’s aftaylor@cityhall.nyc.gov, btw), TSNY sent this:

To her credit, Taylor replied, advising us to forward our questions to Mamdani’s press office, which again pretended not to hear. (Transparency!)

Undeterred, we sent a follow-up, this time CC’ing Mamdani senior flack Dora Pekec (dpekec@cityhall.nyc.gov). We asked how many people were vetted for the MOAW job, and whether there was a connection between Taylor’s selection and all that lobbying of the mayor in the press to fill the position.

More transparent crickets.

This is not the first TSNY story on Mamdani’s animal welfare office. It’s far from the last. In month eight the mayor of New York City has yet to publicly acknowledge the existence of NYC ACC, and has purposely blown off questions concerning same in the year-plus since he began campaigning for the job. You don’t have to cover New York politics for 20 years to assume at this point that, despite the people’s mayor schtick, Mamdani has already outed himself as another opportunistic pol shamelessly exploiting New Yorkers and their love of companion animals to advance his career, no different from the likes of Justin Brannan and Harvey Epstein.

Taylor made a lot of noise about prior MOAW shortcomings vs. what she claims to think it should be doing. If Mamdani doesn’t know this, his underlings do. We’ll see pretty soon if his MOAW lives up to its name, or if the New York Pro-Kill Advocates Club has succeeded in co-opting another position of power they have no business within sniffing distance of.

NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show

Here’s a clip from the premiere of the NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show, henceforth abbreviated in site copy as ACCDRS in the interest of space, time and personal sanity.

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Free subscribers: Upgrade to paid to catch our next installment in full, via emailed encore or live on the site Wednesday mornings at 11:00.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized and murdered by the government, but not both.

• The New York Pro-Kill Advocates Club all-stars at NYCLASS are dropping five figures (privileges!) on an ad buy praising NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin for saying she supports ending the city’s horse carriage industry.

• Staff and volunteers say Saratoga County Animal Shelter is neglecting and abusing animals — a cat kept in a “windowless room with no light” for four months; dogs confined 23.5+ hours a day — and the county is circling the wagons, which is not suspicious at all.

• The as-yet unbuilt Syracuse animal shelter — the city’s first (!) — is already too small.

• Animals continue to languish at Buffalo Animal Shelter as the city’s slog to find a new location carries on.

• Mid-Hudson Times did a short piece on teeny-tiny Town of Newburgh Animal Shelter.

• A new cat cafe in Greenwood Lake, in Orange County, will feature adoptable felines from Warwick Valley Humane Society.

• “An animal rescue in Oswego County needs help after taking in dozens of guinea pigs from a home in Utica.”

• After nearly 100 years in Albany, Whiskers Animal Benevolent League is moving to nearby Latham, at least in part, it seems, to meet new state shelter standards.

• State efforts to track rabies cases could be compromised by Donald Trump’s federal budget cuts and Secretary Brainworm’s demented CDC shit-assery.

• NY1 filed a nice feature on the new Ontario County abuser registry.

• “Jury finds man guilty of animal cruelty for first time in Staten Island history”

• Related and finally: The Richmond County DA wants Staten Islanders’ pet pics for its calendar promoting the office’s cruelty prosecution unit, which based on our penultimate headline needs all the help it can get.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy taxpayer-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s August 1, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

It’s been five weeks since The Scoop New York first queried state animal shelter inspectors about what they found during two May visits to Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic].

After multiple follow-ups, via email and phone, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, the agency responsible for regulating shelters and rescues, ultimately provided some answers.

Even so, there’s a significant amount of vital information New Yorkers still don’t have — and may never, due to the way new regulations for shelters and rescues were crafted, and how they came to be in the first place.

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The state agriculture department, as the name implies, is mostly concerned with issues related to farming and food production. According to his bio, like his forebears, department Commissioner Richard Ball, appointed by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2014, is a longtime farmer himself.

Since shelters and rescues also involve non-human animals, one supposes, they fall under the jurisdiction of NYSDAM, which handles shelter licensing and inspections. Makes more sense than assigning them to the state health department, at least.

As previously reported in this space, the NYSDAM ACC inspections came six months after new statewide shelter standards took effect. The new rules were passed by Albany lawmakers in 2022 as the Companion Animal Care Standards Act, a.k.a. Article 26-C.

After a three-year post-adoption grace period, the first year of “enforcement” — that is, the year of Our Dear Leader 2026 — is in actuality another freebie, with no penalties for non-compliance.

Good thing, too, since despite the 3.5-year runway and ACC’s annual budget of tens of millions of dollars, city health department deputy commissioner of not even pretending to give a shit Corinne Schiff failed to ensure the city kill pound was prepared. This is what happens when DOH devotes more effort to gaslighting and otherwise abusing New Yorkers than the job those New Yorkers pay them dearly to do.

So when NYSDAM personnel popped in on May 20, they found ACC deficient (the state’s term, though I could do no better) in 19 of 50 applicable areas. That’d be a D- to we layfolk.

Some screw-ups, like filthy kennels and a busted HVAC system, should be easy fixes. For reasonably competent nose-breathing bipeds, anyway. Others, like poor staff training and the inability to produce passable protocols for everything from enrichment to pain management to “humane euthanasia,” point to systemic negligence indicating the need for substantive (read: long-term) reform.

Except when NYSDAM returned nine days later, voilà, ACC had miraculously turned that D- to a perfect score. Uh-huh.

Spidey-sense tingling, on June 24 The Scoop New York sent NYSDAM a short list of questions. Innocuous ones, if all was on the up and up. Like which ACC facility or facilities was or were inspected; which deficiencies were found at which locations; and how, once issues were remedied, NYSDAM would ensure they stayed that way between inspections.

And the kicker:

After weeks of silence despite follow-up inquiries, on July 15, NYSDAM spokesperson Jola Szubielski told TSNY over email to expect a reply the following day. After that day came and went, on July 22, we resubmitted the original questions along with some additions.

For one, we asked where New Yorkers could find NYC shelter inspection reports, since they weren’t posted with other municipal shelters from around the state.

We also wanted to know if NYSDAM knew anything about, or had anything to do with, the reported ACC deadline for rescues to help remove dozens of dogs housed in now-prohibited (for shelters) pop-up crates — under the implied threat that, like thousands upon thousands of other ACC victims, those left behind would be exterminated.

Szubielski emailed again, on July 24, assuring responses were forthcoming. Friday morning, when this column was half finished, they arrived.

NYSDAM sent the following statement:

The Department takes animal health very seriously and is diligently working to educate shelter organizations about Article 26-C requirements, including conducting inspections under this new law. The Department does inspect the AAC [sic] locations under Article 26-C, which requires increased standards to be met to ensure the health and well-being of the animals in their care, and its most recent inspection of this facility found no critical or general deficiencies. If there are any concerns about the condition or welfare of an animal, we encourage the public to reach out to us with a complaint and we can help direct it to the right place.

NYC ACC inspection reports are posted here. Not with municipal shelter reports, but with rescues. Presumably this is because ACC is on paper an independent non-profit entity contracted by the city, though it functions — to the extent that it functions — under direction from a city agency that dictates its every twitch. Regardless, yours truly should have caught that, and didn’t. We’ll take the L on that one.

NYSDAM provided the following info on background, which while likely of no consequence to you, the reader, means it normally would have been relayed here in paraphrased form, sans bullet points, had time permitted.

As it is, tick-tock:

• All locations are inspected individually. The location that passed inspection is the Manhattan location.

• As of May 29, 2026, the Manhattan location is in compliance with Article 26-C, having corrected the items noted in the previous inspection.

• Under Article 26-C, all facilities must have isolation areas available. In addition, they must have emergency veterinary protocols and protocols for control of infectious and contagious diseases. These are all reviewed at inspections.

• Under Article 26-C, shelters or rescues assisting with an emergency response are permitted to use temporary housing for 45 days.

For those keeping score, then, though ACC is by far the largest shelter/rescue/kill pound in New York, the state’s shiny new regs apparently make no provision for continual monitoring of, say, disease spread, which in ACC facilities has long been as common as air itself. Check the receipts for some idea of the number of sick and suffering cats and dogs — the majority of them healthy when they entered the system — the good Dr. Brennen sees put to death rather than treated.

It is happening right now. Sure as you’re born.

Nor do we know how ACC coughed up multiple vet-approved protocols over the course of nine days. This is especially curious since ACC and DOH have for years ignored TSNY requests to produce protocols on subjects including how staff decides who lives and who dies — the aforementioned “humane euthanasia,” in bureaucratic nonsense-speak.

Not only do we not know where the protocols came from — Claude, anyone? — more important: what the hell guidelines was ACC following prior to May 20, 2026? Or did the dogs eat Risa’s notes right before exam time?

As to the deadline issued to networkers for the pop-up crate exodus, it more or less tracks with the 45-day “emergency response” “temporary housing” clause. Given that ACC is virtually always in the middle of one self-inflicted crisis or another, New Yorkers can expect that loophole to be stretched to the max, which would render it effectively meaningless.

There is much to unpack related to Article 26-C. Grace periods and loopholes. The fact that, four-year lead time or no, many shelters and rescues can’t afford to comply with Albany’s unfunded mandate for pricey capital and operational improvements, to the extent that desperate pleas for the public’s help, and stories of facilities threatened or forced to shut their doors forever, have over the past three years become routine. Then there’s the figurative shoe pleather required to extract basic information on CACSA inspections.

Taken together, the shortcomings and caveats almost make the new rules seem like window dressing. Or a Trojan horse, even.

Truth is, there’s more to Article 26-C, and how it came about, than the regulations themselves. A good bit more. It involves bad-faith meddling by obscenely flush “animal welfare” non-profits, power-hungry kill-pound lobbyists with keys to the capitol, and deadly deals consummated in the dark with self-interested state lawmakers.

That story, now percolating, is still weeks to months away.

That’s all right. Commissioner Ball is in no hurry.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• More from Albany: One of these things is not like the other.

• NYC exterminates an adoptable companion animal every three hours and do-nothing City Council “animal welfare” chair Harvey Epstein is out trying to “save” gym equipment.

• Criminals are openly hawking puppy mill puppies in Midtown as Zohran Mamdani’s NYPD openly refuses to enforce the law.

• The Schenectady County Sheriff’s Office is blaming police dog Leonidas’ heat death on faulty batteries and not the fact that the department’s dogs are not allowed indoors when it’s scorching hot outside.

• ICYMI [like yours truly did]: Buffalo Animal Shelter secured $412K in state grant funding and private donations for much-needed capital improvements; Mayor Sean Ryan, who ran on fixing the long-neglected municipal kill pound, says the city is still scouting locations for a new facility in the meantime.

• Are Syracuse leaders finally committing to a city shelter after “more than a decade” of kicking the can?

• Roslyn Heights in Nassau County has a new 24-hour veterinary hospital.

• Don’t (yet) know what’s going on with Herkimer County Humane Society but it sounds serious and not necessarily in a good way.

• Hudson Valley New York Senate rep Jim Tedisco is again calling on fellow lawmakers to adopt a state cruelty offender registry, after dozens of animals were seized from a residence in Schoharie County. Meanwhile, Susquehanna SPCA was quarantined after taking in “several” puppies with parvo from the site of the Schoharie County rescue.

• Related: Add Ontario and Monroe counties to the list of those tired of waiting for Albany to establish an abuser registry.

• Related: Marzipan and Nougat are said to be ready for adoption after recovering from injuries sustained when their previous owner, now awaiting trial, dragged them down a Queens street with his car.

• Related: An Erie County man got probation for stabbing a dog to death thanks to weak state cruelty laws and a plea deal authorized by District Attorney Michael Keane.

• Related: A domestic abuser in nearby Monroe County got a year in jail and a one-year prohibition on keeping companion animals for kicking his girlfriend’s cat to death, despite evidence of prolonged abuse.

• A jockey abusing a horse? Alert the media!

• Finally, Amsterdam News previewed a documentary about discrimination against people of color who work in shelters or are looking to adopt.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy taxpayer-funded cruelty to homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, financial and physical — of the New Yorkers who care for and about them.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s July 18, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] is in the throes of its annual summer meltdown, when everyday ACC malfeasance breaks containment and forces the agency to reckon with its chronic incompetence in front of G-d and everybody.

ACC meltdowns normally occur due to overcrowding, itself precipitated by decades of poor to non-existent planning on the part of the “shelter” and its overseers at the city health department, which after 31 years still — still — hasn’t (a) sited an animal control facility in each borough; (b) constructed a facility that actually meets staffing or capacity needs, or; (c) instituted a program to manage the homeless cat population of the richest city in the richest country in human history.

Meltdowns traditionally take the form of shutting the doors to public intakes, contrary to ACC’s remit as open admission, i.e. no animal turned away. Last year ACC was closed to intakes for a full third of the summer — a bleak spectacle that marked at least the second shutdown of 2025.

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While other news outlets parachuted in to make things worse by credulously regurgitating ACC lies and propaganda, same as always, The Scoop New York covered last summer’s shutdown shit show from start to finish. Far as we know it hasn’t happened since.

Also new: uniform state shelter standards, enforced — on paper, at least — by inspectors who have the authority to pull licenses.

Whatever the reason, this year the Greatest Kill Pound in the World is taking a different tack.

An ACC public appeal in a time of crisis is not new. Considered in isolation, there’s nothing wrong with it. You might even call it prudent. In isolation.

IYK, however, YK.

“At an open-intake, no-kill shelter that would be a heartfelt appeal,” one longtime ACC watcher and advocate told TSNY. “At NYC’s high-kill pound, it is a deadly threat.”

And how.

As it became evident earlier this month that [yet] a[nother] disaster was at hand, ACC set a deadline for dozens of animals, housed in now-illegal pop-up crates, to clear the system. They didn’t say those left behind would be exterminated and dumped like garbage, of course. They didn’t have to.

As mentioned in its Thursday press release, ACC is discounting adoption fees. In addition, rescues were offered $1,000 stipends to handle even more ACC overflow than they already take on.

Regardless, ACC designated liar Katy Hansen said yesterday there were more than 60 dogs still in pop-ups, “lining the hallways and in offices.”

Hansen didn’t mention the shower.

Baxter made it out alive, at least for now. Eleven other dogs this week — that we know of — weren’t as lucky. At least one of those 11, Mr. Rocky, went from crate to kill command and received no last-minute reprieve. Instead Katy Hansen and her oh-so compassionate colleagues poisoned him to death.

Guess Mr. Rocky didn’t land in a “lifesaving space.” Wherever those are.

As reported on NYC ACC KILLS yesterday, as of April exterminations at ACC remained higher than the number of killings through the first third of 2025 — 8 percent above last year, when the city pound snuffed out an average of one cat or dog every three hours.

Even as his kill pound flops and flails for all to see, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has yet to publicly acknowledge his responsibility to the city’s homeless companion animals. He doesn’t have to, since on this issue the mayor and City Council Speaker Julie Menin are in sync. Centrists and socialists hand in hand ‘round the ash heap. The One Thing They Agree On.

The Scoop New York queried the offices of Zohran Mamdani and Julie Menin regarding the NYC DOH ACC 2026 Summer Meltdown.

All together now: There were no replies.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• Speaker Menin is on board with ending the horse carriage trade, which makes council passage of “Romanch’s Law” all but certain. A potential snag, though, is Mayor Mamdani’s prioritization of a union endorsement above public (and equine) safety.

• Related: City & State has a timeline of NYC’s two-century “war on horses.”

• Related: The Saratoga Springs Public Library was bullied by dogfighting cockfighting horse-racing creeps into canceling a talk by a prominent industry critic, because “no free society can have strong points of view presented in a library, of all places.”

• The City Reporter has advice on dealing with our new wildfire-smoke-clouded reality, including tips for keeping pets safe.

• Leonidas the police dog died in a hot patrol car because dogs are not allowed inside the Schenectady County Sheriff’s Office.

• Rochester is essentially eliminating adoption fees for dogs through July 26 as Rochester Animal Services undergoes renovation work.

• Rescue Big Apple Cats saved Thai from her Upper Manhattan home [SEE IT] after both her humans died within days of one another and NYPD just … left her there. The rescue says Thai’s two dog siblings were “taken by animal control” and “found a foster home and potential adopters very quickly,” which sounds highly uncharacteristic of the NYC animal control operation we know.

• The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is making more New Yorkers ill.

• Finally: “If you hear meowing near a car or suspect an animal may be hiding in an engine compartment, avoid starting the vehicle right away.” Just please never ask me how I know.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy taxpayer-funded cruelty toward homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, physical and financial — of the New Yorkers who care about them.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s July 10, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s kill pound is threatening to execute the hostages.

Disclaimer: The info in today’s column, like much DOH/ACC coverage on The Scoop New York, is largely based on information from advocates on the front lines. This is because the advos and rescue networkers know the operation better than anyone. And because unless you as a journalist are satisfied by whatever pre-packaged happy talk statements New York City officials fling in your direction, those officials are not engaging you if they can help it, mealy-mouthed pants-soiling cowards that they are.

What we’re discussing today is a developing situation, which makes it even less likely those paid to answer to the public will actually do so. This is SOP for state officials as well, of course, as we will see.

Here is what we know.

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On May 20, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (NYSDAM) made what was apparently its first inspection of Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] since new state animal shelter standards took effect last December.

As previously reported in this space, the new regs were approved by Albany in 2022 as the Companion Animal Care Standards Act. Shelters and rescues large and small were given three years to come into compliance. Yet the largest, wealthiest of them all — under begrudging semi-supervision by the city health department — still managed to get caught flat-footed.

The 19 of 50 areas in which inspectors found ACC “deficient” included the failure to produce protocols for more than a dozen categories, namely:

According to NYSDAM, though, by the time department inspectors returned on May 29, ACC had achieved complete compliance.

When, among other questions, The Scoop New York asked NYSDAM exactly how ACC had accomplished in nine days what it couldn’t pull off in three years — if not the preceding three decades — there was no reply.

Another deficiency noted on the May 20 report and ostensibly corrected in time for the follow-up was inadequate housing. “More animals than housing units,” the initial report said.

Under the new rules, portable crates do not count as housing. Yet earlier this week, advocates alerted on social media that ACC was holding dozens of dogs — 70 was the number we were told — in pop-ups. Caught flat-footed yet again, ACC is currently scrambling, reducing adoption fees and offering $1,000 stipends to rescues that take dogs off the city’s hands.

Ominously, according to networkers, ACC announced a July 15 deadline for dogs in crates to clear the system. Given 31 years of perpetual adoptable cat and dog killings, it is more than reasonable to interpret a deadline as a threat to slaughter those left behind.

DOH and ACC flacks may as well have acknowledged as much when they declined to answer The Scoop New York’s request to confirm or deny. If history offers any indication — and in ACC’s case, it hasn’t failed yet — Dr. Brennen’s death squad is licking its collective chops.

“Networkers think that once the 15th arrives, they will simply shuffle the dogs around to decide which ones get killed,” one source told TSNY.

Why July 15? Might the deadline originate from NYSDAM? We know NYSDAM is aware of the pop-ups, because I told them. A second email query to NYSDAM was ignored, same as the first one. As of publication time a phone message left with the ag department press office this afternoon was not returned. See what I mean?

Below is a list of dogs believed at this writing to be illegally housed in crates at Zohran Mamdani’s high-kill kill pound. Check NYC ACC KILLS social media feeds for images and intel, or NYC ACC to foster or adopt — though good luck with the latter.

In addition to NYSDAM and Mamdani, queries concerning the latest life-and-death DOH/ACC crisis were blown off by DOH, ACC, City Council Speaker Julie Menin, and council “animal welfare caucus” chair Harvey Epstein.

Cowards gonna cower.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• Related: NYC is seeing record homelessness and rampant evictions as the almost comically shitheeled Trump administration again looks to make everything worse.

• Related: Zohran Mamdani incidentally helped an unknown but likely significant number of companion animals by engineering a promised rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments. We’ll take that as a rare W.

• Related: Mamdani and NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin devoted $1.5M of the city’s $125B budget to 1,700 spay-neuters (of an estimated 200K procedures needed annually) and a one-year pet food pantry pilot (all of which Menin could have funded personally without breaking a sweat).

• A majority of New Yorkers want the city to finally shut down the deadly and abusive horse carriage trade …

• … But Albany will make sure horses in New York continue to suffer and die for our amusement.

• Richmond County DA Michael McMahon will cover fees for animals adopted from NYC ACC’s Staten Island hellhole tomorrow.

• State Senator Christopher Ryan tossed some crumbs at Syracuse’s CNY SPCA and would you believe there’s a press release.

• Renovation work is underway at Rochester Animal Services, where residents are hoping to attract an Emancipet low-cost vet cllinic.

• “A Brooklyn pet store sold hundreds of commercially-bred dogs while trying to dodge a state puppy mill ban by falsely posing as a rescue center,” according to a suit filed by NYS Attorney General Letitia James.

• Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly wants jail time for a Rockville Centre oxygen-waster who kicked a dog to death in 2020 and managed to have his cruelty conviction temporarily tossed.

• Speaking of psychopaths, “The owner of a Dryden mobile home park has been arrested after investigators say he admitted to lacing dozens of cans of cat food with rat poison and said he would pay for ‘cat tails’.”

• A police dog died in a hot police car in Schenectady County.

• Finally: Sadly, it seems that, like way too many Americans, Taylor and Travis are blissfully unaware of the ASPCA long con.

Food recalls

FDA announced one recent pet food recall:

• Pedigree Can High Protein Chopped Chicken & Duck Flavor Wet Dog Food [“potential presence of sharp metal and plastic foreign material”]

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share

The Scoop New York is the only news outlet to consider newsworthy taxpayer-funded cruelty toward homeless companion animals, as well as decades of officials’ deliberate abuse — psychological, physical and financial — of the New Yorkers who care about them.

Tax-deductible donations and paid subscriptions make it possible for The Scoop New York to investigate and expose kill-pound corruption statewide. Tap or click here to donate or subscribe. Thank you.

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s June 27, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, we back up.

Let’s get to it.

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The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets last month conducted an inspection of Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic].

The visit came five six months after new statewide shelter standards took effect. The regs were approved by lawmakers in 2022 as the Companion Animal Care Standards Act. By not enforcing them until last December, the idea was to give shelters and rescues time to comply.

To the surprise of no one who’s paying attention, the three-year grace period was not enough for ACC and its DOH overseers to get it together.

Of 50 applicable requirements, ACC failed to meet 19. Meaning if the state assigned shelters a letter grade, absentee Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s kill pound would’ve scored a D- at best.

2026-05-20 ACC NYS INSPECTION

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It gets worse.

Of the 19 failure points, five were considered “critical” deficiencies. Let’s take it from the top.

As I reported for Gothamist in 2019, a 2013 probe by then-Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer found animals living in “deplorable conditions” at ACC. The same report said the ASPCA adoption center saw “a nearly 100 percent rate of infection” — preventable respiratory illnesses, for the most part — among cats and dogs received from ACC.

Another Stringer investigation, in 2015, uncovered ACC administering expired medications to animals in its care, and found vaccines stored in refrigerators alongside food, beverages and remains.

It’s unknown whether state inspectors know that sick animals are culled by ACC because they are sick, but it’s not a secret. To acknowledge that, however, the ag department would have to address the everyday mass exterminations of adoptable cats and dogs across the state.

Thanks to the same politicians who approved the new “shelter” standards, New York has no law against taxpayer-funded killings of healthy, adoptable animals for the sake of kill-pound staff convenience.

In New York, then, state legislators and bureaucrats who ding kill pounds for open trash cans would have no issue with a terrified whimpering dog being dragged past those receptacles knowing he is about to die.

It’s this brand of logic that gets you a traffic ticket for failing to yield to a child in a crosswalk but no criminal penalty whatsoever for the act of running over and killing the child to whom you failed to yield.

A whelping box, as I learned after looking it up, provides a safe enclosure for pregnant dogs to birth and nurse puppies. The joke is on Albany here. Why bother with such frippery when you can simply exterminate in utero? And if momma dies along with her babies, so much the better.

I’m lumping the last two critical deficiencies together because they are of a piece. An organization that kills perfectly healthy animals because it is easier than rehoming — an organization that kills adoptable animals for lulz — is indifferent toward animals. Contemptuous, even.

It’s why inspectors also cited ACC for:

• failure to keep the air conditioning in working order;

• failure to document (and thereby failure to mitigate) noise levels;

• failure to clean and disinfect kennels;

• failure to provide adequate housing space;

• failure to let cats and dogs out of their cages for a scant 15 to 20 minutes a day (which is all the state requires);

• failure to provide enrichment;

• failure to properly train staff; and

• failure to produce vet-approved protocols for more than a dozen categories — from sanitation to enrichment to “humane euthanasia.”

And here’s the kicker: On May 29, state ag department inspectors issued a follow-up report giving ACC perfect marks.

2026-05-29 ACC NYS INSPECTION

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So according to the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, ACC in nine days pulled off what it couldn’t do (or had no interest in doing) in three-and-a-half (if not 31) years.

This is the same department, mind, that gave City of Buffalo Animal Shelter a perfect rating two weeks before a TV news crew exposed conditions there so horrid the report was preceded by a viewer discretion advisory.

The Scoop New York queried ACC, DOH, Mayor Mamdani and the state agriculture department concerning the ACC inspections. We asked if inspections were conducted at all three ACC locations, or just one. We asked how animals crammed into inadequate ACC facilities were kept safe. We asked how the state would ensure ACC ends its decades-long practice of housing sick and healthy animals together. We asked how ACC managed to overhaul its operations to achieve total compliance in such a short time.

There were no replies.

Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

• You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.

• Romanch Mahajan, an 18-year-old visiting NYC from India, was killed in a horse carriage collision in Central Park.

• Related: Deniz, a 16-year-old horse press-ganged into carriage work, collapsed and died apparently after consuming a plant toxic to horses, for which carriage driver reps at the Transport Workers Union pretty much blamed Central Park. Because of course they did.

• Related: “A city-hired veterinarian uncovered concerning conditions inside Central Park’s stables, including cramped quarters, skin lesions and swollen limbs.” Also the park’s doing, surely.

• Related: The Saratoga Harness Track barn in which 17 horses died in a fire reportedly “was not equipped with sprinklers or other fire suppression devices.” Meanwhile, the New York State Gaming Commission warns not to confuse its limp perfunctory response with an “investigation.”

• Related: 13 Hands Equine Rescue in Dutchess County needs sponsors for 13 horses the rescue took in after the Brooklyn riding academy where they worked went out of business.

• If you think “Two new tick species descend on the Hudson Valley and Catskills” sounds scary, try “Rare Lyme disease bacteria found in New York ticks.”

• Lollypop Farm in Rochester says it is suspending discounted spay-neuter services for smaller orgs due to a shortage of veterinarians.

• Related: Rochester Animal Services is looking to foster and rehome dozens of dogs as the agency prepares for a much-needed renovation.

• Upstate shelters and rescues that lack $1B contracts say rules imposed by the aforementioned Companion Animal Care Standards Act will discourage fostering and force many orgs out of existence.

• Greenville said it had to shut down a dog park because people refused to clean up after their dogs.

• Finally: The adventures of an “itinerant cat tutor” and their ridiculously charming pupils.

From NYC ACC KILLS

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Food recalls

FDA announced one pet food recall this week:

• Breeder’s Edge, Shelter’s Choice / Revival Animal Health Canine Milk Replacer [variable levels of Vitamin D]

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

Share