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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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

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 May 23, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] continued to outpace 2025 in elective cat and dog killings through the first three months of the year.

As reported this week on NYC ACC KILLS, ACC carried out a total of 758 cat and dog exterminations through March, compared to a total of 672 in the first three months of 2025 — a 13 percent jump. Dog killings over those three months rose year-to-year from 388 to 435, a 12 percent increase. Elective cat killings spiked 14 percent, from 284 to 323.

Contrary to agency propaganda, minus a small percentage of animals admitted in severe, irremediable pain, virtually all cats and dogs killed by NYC ACC are healthy and adoptable when they enter the pound system.

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The Scoop New York again asked Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s press office for comment on the increase in discretionary homeless companion animal killings on his watch. We also asked why Mamdani permits ACC officials to falsely claim the city pound doesn’t kill healthy animals, and if the mayor is OK in general with agencies he’s in charge of lying to New Yorkers.

A year of TSNY queries (including during the mayoral campaign) concerning ACC malfeasance and DOH mismanagement has yielded no responses from the mayor who preaches accountability at every opportunity, and who five months into his term has declined to publicly acknowledge his responsibility for the city’s homeless and abandoned cats and dogs.

Below the fold are excerpts from the NYC ACC KILLS March 2026 memoriam post. Read them and weep.

Clyde [244000]: 5 years old; killed March 15.

Clyde’s owner left him at a police station, saying they could no longer care for him. A volunteer wrote: “When we first met Clyde he had only been in the shelter for a few days. Shy and nervous, he planted himself next to me for cuddles the moment I sat down. He was quiet, but happy to take some snacks and comfort.

“I’m pleased to report that version of Clyde is a distant memory. This past weekend he came roaring into an adjoining yard with his big personality. He ran around with his big floppy body and popped his big nose through the small hole in the door like it was a drive through window — he was fed his snackies.”

Clyde, underweight with a body score of 3/9, was neutered the week of his arrival, a risky procedure for underweight dogs. Clyde was timid but according to ACC, “highly social with staff.”

By the time ACC killed Clyde on day 88, ACC had him on so many sedatives he was drooling and covered with poop, diarrhea being just one of the side effects of the human-grade drugs in Dr. Robin Brennen’s “behavior” kit.

Diamond Princess [244447]: 9 years old; killed March 11.

Diamond Princess was given to her human six months before they surrendered her due to an illness that made them unable to care for her. They said, she’s “playful like a kid,” will play with any toy given to her but particularly likes to steal socks to play tug of war. An affectionate and happy pup, she liked to give kisses and also to dance.

Diamond Princess did well at ACC, noted to be gentle, social, and cooperative. Like her human, Diamond Princess was also sick, had chronic respiratory and ear issues as well as mammary masses that needed to be diagnosed. Instead, ACC killed her on day 56.

Maximite [248434]: 1 year old; killed March 14.

While out on a walk, Maximite slipped his leash and ran up to another dog to play; the dog became defensive and a fight ensued. Both dogs bit but the other dog didn’t have any broken skin. Maximite, however, had puncture wounds and also was stabbed by the other dog’s owner with a knife.

At home, Maximite lived happily with kids and another dog. An affectionate puppy, he was known to be friendly to all, including strangers. His family surrendered him because of a landlord issue.

At ACC, Maximite was a terrified puppy, trembling and flinching, who so clearly no longer felt safe in the world. Unlike almost every dog there, he was relieved after walks to be back in his kennel. He never showed any signs of agression at ACC but bizarrely, ACC wrote, “Maximite was involved in an incident where he bite [sic] and held another dog, but did not break skin. However, this behavior is likely to continue as it has become part of Maximite’s repertoire, and will need careful management to work toward reducing triggers for Maximite and reducing the resulting bites.”

With irresponsible descriptions like that, it would be difficult for Maximite to find a home. But it didn’t matter; ACC didn’t give him time to find one. The good Dr. Brennen and company killed Maximite on day 17.

Taffy [245980]: 5 years old; killed March 6.

A volunteer said, “We meet Taffy on a bitterly cold day. The sidewalks are full of snow and she is reluctant to walk. Eventually, she slowly makes her way to the yard where we are waiting for lots of cuddles. We try to keep her as warm as possible, but she is clearly having a hard time. Taffy came to us when she was found tied up with wounds on her head.

“A good Samaritan brought her into the police station, where she was brought to us. Since then, Taffy has been dealing with a bad case of pneumonia. She has been uncomfortable, prefers to not leave her kennel and often is not eating. We try our best to offer a little bit of comfort and love, and Taffy tries to be a good sport, leaning into us, but she is clearly a girl not made for the winter NYC is throwing us this year.”

On intake Taffy was timid and trembling but trusting and affectionate despite the wounds on the back of her head and between her eyes. Staff at ACC wrote that Taffy was a “clever and enthusiastic pup,” enrolled in their Shelter Scholar program, eager to learn new skills and making good progress.

After all she went through and survived, Robin Brennen’s vet team killed Taffy on day 45.

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.

• Winograd: Whether team red or team blue, single-party dominance is bad for homeless cats and dogs. (See: Two guesses.)

• Related: Pay-to-play Governor Kathy Hochul has burned up so much time appeasing her billionaire paymasters there may not be enough days on the legislative calendar for bills that weren’t shoehorned into the state budget, which is now the latest it has been in decades.

• Related: Nassau County adopted a bill that imposes what appear to be significant restrictions on tethering, because Hochul and state lawmakers haven’t passed a tethering bill currently stalled in Albany.

• Related: Hempstead Town Supervisor John Ferretti and state Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra announced a couple of animal-friendly state bills that will in all likelihood never see the light of day. But as we know, it’s the press release that counts.

• Zohran “Mass Engagement” Mamdani has agreed to field questions from New Yorkers on the radio ... four times a year. But if you’re a fan of shitposts and dick pics, you can find the mayor on Twitch.

• Related: There was another collision involving horse carriages in NYC.

• If you ever wonder how NYC DOH ACC gets away with operating a kitten/puppy abuse-torture-kill dungeon in one of the richest, kindest cities on the planet (other than single-party dominance), it’s in no small part because “reporters” paid by “news” outlets like Yahoo regurgitate happy talk horse shit like this journalistic felony.

• Related: Here are more goddamn lies via Yahoo from the Press-Republican in Plattsburgh, which reported that there are only 21 kill pounds in the state of New York (!) — where, according to the “story,” just 2,200 companion animals were killed in 2025 (!!) — because the money-grubbing investor cult known as Best Friends Animal Society told them so.

• Related: You can tell how (un)seriously a news outlet takes an issue when it virtually never reports on that issue without incorporating flippant puns a sixth-grader would be proud of. They can’t not do it.

• Fine idea, unfortunate job title: Oneida County has hired its first “animal cruelty coordinator,” assigned to prevent cruelty by developing “a network of resources for things such as transport and housing.”

• Every Cat’s Dream, a rescue in Broome County, is shutting down at the end of June after 17 years placing homeless cats and dogs.

• A Queens rescue that took in over 100 beagles saved from a Wisconsin research lab says all of the dogs have been or will be adopted.

• Finally: Kelsey Kowalski and Buffalo Guinea Pig Mafia Rescue FTW.

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 May 18, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

Last week, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine — the city’s fiscal ombudsman — released a report on the city health department’s animal population control program, a legally-required effort to reduce the number of stray cats and dogs by “encouraging” New Yorkers to spay and neuter their pets and “providing no- or low-cost spaying and neutering services.”

As anyone who does DOH’s job could have told him, Levine found the agency’s spay-neuter effort to be of the low- variety — and what are you plebes gonna do about it?

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Unfortunately, to the extent it relies on “shelter” intake and outcome data from DOH and Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic], Levine’s report is useless. See if you can guess why that is:

Surprised? Thought not.

Considering his longstanding role in maintaining The Big Lie — the ludicrous claim that DOH/ACC never kills healthy animals when New Yorkers and no-kill advocates in NYC and beyond have for 31 years lived with the fact that killing healthy animals is what ACC is never not doing — it makes sense that Levine would continue to play along, given the ethically-bankrupt mores of New York’s politician class.

As shown in the footnote above, Levine even attempts to validate silent kills — the thousands upon thousands of adoptable cats and dogs ACC chooses to exterminate without trying to rehome — by pretending, along with ACC and DOH, that “owner-intended euthanasia” or “end-of-life services” are a “community service,” rather than absurdly transparent euphemisms for elective quota killings that ACC and DOH simply exclude from the death toll in order to achieve an arbitrary live release rate.

With Levine disregarding close to half of DOH/ACC victims, any resultant data analyses are worse than nothing.

That doesn’t change the upshot of the report: DOH is purposely half-assing its spay-neuter program, is offloading its attendant responsibilities onto New Yorkers, and has no plans to meet its legally-mandated obligations.

DOH contracted with ASPCA to provide low-cost spay-neuter from fiscal years 2023 to 2029. The $3 million dollar initiative is supposed to fund up to 24,000 surgeries, primarily through dog license fees. But since DOH does little outreach to encourage dog licensing, and has declined to exercise its authority to seek additional spay-neuter funding, “37 [percent] fewer surgeries than anticipated were performed” from FY 2023 to 2025, according to the comptroller report.

Further, the report reads, DOH “has not reimbursed or made regular grants to other entities or private veterinarians to support sterilization efforts outside of the contract with the ASPCA, and DOHMH’s outreach efforts to encourage pet owners to have their dogs and cats spayed — one of the core components of the Program and one of the ASPCA’s responsibilities under the contract — have been sparse.”

As one veteran front-line ACC watcher who reviewed Levine’s report told The Scoop New York, “Rescues cannot readily get spay-neuters in NYC, so this supposed contract with ASPCA is worthless.”

Yet DOH is satisfied with the status quo, regardless of the hardships imposed upon countless everyday New Yorkers.

Based on public input collected at a September 2024 City Council hearing, when New Yorkers testified for eight hours on the tribulations of managing the stray cat population of the country’s largest city with precious little help from the city itself, Levine identified a dozen policy proposals.

Of the nine resulting recommendations in the report, DOH rejected six, “generally agreed” with two, and “partially agreed” with one.

DOH rejected Levine’s recommendation to re-evaluate its animal population control activities generally, “stating that the City has a robust animal population control and animal welfare program.” Clearly!

DOH rejected as “not needed” a recommendation to “track the causes of intakes based on owner relinquishments” and “develop strategies for reducing” such intakes. “DOHMH provides no evidence to support its assertions,” the report reads, adding, “this was generally true of its responses.”

Recommendation: “Focus on reducing community cat populations by considering a range of new options, including a formal assessment of the viability of introducing City-funded TNR programs with appropriate oversight and control measures.”

DOH response: “DOHMH disagreed with this recommendation as ‘not needed.’”

There are other related recommendations and rejections, but to New Yorkers who spend their waking hours, if not their own hard-earned income, taking care of the hundreds of thousands of homeless cats abandoned by The Greatest City in the World™, DOH’s flat refusal to even consider considering city-funded TNR has to be the deepest cut.

Of course, as alluded to earlier, DOH’s smug insistence on neglecting its duties is in no small part thanks to Mark Levine himself.

As a City Council member, Levine chaired the health committee. Like current chair Lynn Schulman, during his tenure Levine failed to push for DOH/ACC reforms that were needed just as much then as now.

When it comes to DOH/ACC mistreatment of homeless and abandoned cats and dogs and the New Yorkers who care for and about them, there are no good guys in city government, only enablers. Mark Levine being more prominent than most.

The fact is DOH long ago outsourced its “animal population control” operation to the inherently dangerous streets of New York City, where agency bigs like Alister Martin and Michelle Morse and Corinne Schiff are content to let nature run its course, and to NYC ACC, where Robin Brennen and her team of black-hoods are all too happy to obliterate cats and dogs who survive the streets only to find they may have been better off before arriving at the city “care center,” where they are as likely to be tortured and killed as directed to the loving, stable home they deserve.

As for the New Yorkers who pay their salaries only to have to take up their slack as well, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

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 lawmakers introduced a bill to to make it a misdemeanor to leave animals outdoors without protection from the elements. Baby steps!

• New Yorkers had to organize a rally to get Mamdani’s City Hall to finally check a Bronx apartment building for pets 16 days after a fire forced residents out. A live cat and a deceased dog were found, which prompts the question: Did the dog die from the fire, or the city’s failure to act?

• A longtime volunteer is suing Brooklyn’s Sean Casey Animal Rescue — a NYC ACC New Hope “partner” — for allegedly offloading dogs to out-of-state kill pounds “to make way for profitable puppies,” the Post reports.

• A Hamburg lowlife who killed two kittens and attempted to kill a third got off with no jail time and $250 in fees after tough-talking Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane dropped two felony charges in exchange for a guilty plea to one count of misdemeanor cruelty.

• Take a look inside the new 8,000 square-foot Little Guild Animal Shelter facility in Cornwall, which opened to the public on May 9.

• Lollypop Farm in Rochester is offering free adoptions for people age 60 and over.

• Related: Lollypop Farm is seeking tips “after reports of a deceased animal in the area of St. Paul Boulevard near Windsor Beach.”

• Western New York congressional rep Nick Langworthy wants the federal government out of the animal testing business.

• Et tu, The Dodo? The site known for uplifting animal content is slinging propaganda for the New York City kill pound.

• Finally: See tiny (and annoyed!) kitten Norton rescued after he was stuck for days in the sewers of Massapequa.

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 May 9, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, electeds in Albany and NYC again cosplayed “friends of the animals,” congratulating themselves for bills that may never become law, and if they do will do nothing to bring to heel New York’s most prolific companion animal abusers: publicly-funded kill pounds from Buffalo to Brooklyn.

With customary self-indulgent fanfare, state Senate Democrats on Tuesday announced the passage of 11 animal-related bills, on issues including surgical devocalization, insurance discrimination, pets abandoned in vacated rental housing, cruelty laws and cruelty law enforcement.

“It is incumbent upon us to advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves, including our beloved pets and animals,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement. “We remain committed to preventing and addressing animal mistreatment, ensuring animals are treated with dignity and compassion, and holding abusers accountable.”

“Simply put,” Stewart-Cousins said at a related presser, “we’re standing up for animals and raising awareness about their treatment and well-being.”

If only Stewart-Cousins’ rhetoric resembled reality.

To begin with, of the 11 bills passed by the Senate, 10 remain in Assembly committees, where humane legislation goes to die. In fact, many bills passed by the Senate this session might already be law if not for Stewart-Cousins’ obstructionist Assembly colleagues — agriculture committee chair Donna Lupardo (D-Binghamton) and codes chair Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx) in particular. At this writing, Lupardo is holding up three of the 11 bills advanced by the Senate, while five have been idled by Dinowitz.

Last year, of 18 companion animal-friendly bills tracked by The Scoop New York, 17 died in the Assembly. The lone bill to clear both houses — meant to prevent insurance companies from discriminating against renters with pets — was vetoed by Governor Kathy Hochul, who hasn’t signed a major piece of humane legislation into law since 2022.

And lest we forget, Stewart-Cousins was Senate majority leader when both houses rejected the Shelter Animal Rescue Act, which would have required New York kill “shelters” to offer animals to rescues, rather than exterminate them. That Senate and Assembly reps — Lupardo and her Senate ag chair counterpart, Michelle Hinchey of Kingston, to be exact — spiked what would arguably have been the most consequential piece of humane legislation in modern New York history puts the lie to any subsequent claim that state electeds have a serious interest in the welfare of companion animals.

You can’t “stand up” for an animal you purposely allowed a “shelter” to poison to death because its staffers were itching to clock out that day.

Also this week, New York City Council Member Gale Brewer announced bills she introduced to mandate that NYPD designate an “animal cruelty liaison” in each precinct, and require the city health department develop an online form for New Yorkers to report dog bites. A third bill would have DOH, which oversees NYC ACC on behalf of the mayor, establish a program to encourage New Yorkers to purchase dog licenses.

Brewer’s bills are a response to a spate of recent dog-on-dog attacks that left victims seriously hurt and, in at least one case, fatally injured, and after which the aggressor dogs remained with owners who faced little to no repercussions. All well and good, but when the cameras disappear, so does Brewer’s sympathy for the city’s companion animals.

When a few years back New Yorkers asked her to investigate everyday ACC cruelty and abuse — namely, the routine misuse of human-grade prescription drugs and the gratuitously brutal practice of altering animals only to kill them during or shortly after recovery — Brewer sent a fake concern letter to her buddy Risa Weinstock, longtime ACC CEO, who played along by sending back a copy-paste of bullshit ACC talking points. The End.

When The Scoop New York followed up to ask Brewer what she was doing to improve conditions for animals at DOH’s ACC, she had nothing to say.

The suffering endured by thousands of New York kill-pound victims is a direct result of such situational compassion, on the part of every New York elected, from City Hall to the state legislature, who condemn cruelty unless the perpetrators, as they do, also happen to draw a government paycheck.

After all, what’s a little state-sanctioned savagery among friends?

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.

• Residents of Belmont in the Bronx are desperate to get their pets back two weeks after an apartment building fire and Mamdani’s ACC and Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations are doing everything they can to avoid helping.

• Aforementioned state Senator Michelle Hinchey introduced a bill to eliminate state sales tax on pet food for animals who have so far managed to survive her tenure as an elected official.

• Related: State Senator Pete Harckham and Assembly Member Chris Burdick want New York to ban rodent poisons that are harmful to wild animals, pets and children.

• NYC Council Member Phil Wong is giving away pet food to residents of his Queens district, and ONLY residents of his district.

• Rochester Animal Services is looking for foster help ahead of a much-needed renovation project.

• Susquehanna SPCA in Cooperstown opened its new farm animal shelter after purchasing the land last year.

• Felony charges were laid against alleged lowlifes accused of cruelty in separate cases in Niagara and Jefferson counties.

• “Tick bite ER visits surge across Northeast, CDC data show”

• Finally: Fulton County Regional SPCA in Gloversville has foster candidates for Marley, a stray 5-year-old black Lab with a short life expectancy due to cancer, after the Albany Times Union featured Marley’s story — which had she turned up in NYC would likely have ended with a swift backroom killing and a garbage bag, possibly after unnecessary surgery for the lulz.

Food recalls

FDA recently announced one pet food recall:

• Albright’s Raw Pet Food chicken recipe for dogs (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 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 May 1, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, as networkers and others who do NYC ACC’s job scrambled to protect a mama dog and her near-viable puppies from kill-pound ghouls, the New York City Council announced a pending crackdown on the wanton perpetual slaughter of homeless animals dog shit.

ACC veterinary staff, led by senior VP of “animal health and welfare” (lllooollll) Dr. Robin Brennen, were reportedly threatening to spay a pregnant 2-year-old dog they had already burdened with the typically careless handle “Almond Milk” (admitted with “Cashew Milk” — such wit!). That Almond Milk was about to give birth, making the surgery particularly risky for her, was of no consequence. Dr. Brennen, it seems, wanted those puppies dead before they could live. If mama doesn’t make it, well, two birds and all that.

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This is nothing new at Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic], which you’ll be shocked! shocked! to hear has a long record of altering cats and dogs regardless of suspected illness, extant illness, fever, coughing, vomiting, diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, pregnancy and other conditions that would cause any reputable veterinarian to BTFO. No vet you’d want within a ZIP code of your own pet would have anything to do with the butchery that Brennen and her ACC minions get up to (and get off on, clearly) on any given day.

As of now, Almond Milk and her babies appear to be safe, thanks to the aforementioned mensches, New Yorkers and non-, who don’t collect a salary from ACC and (with some exceptions) IRL care about the “health and welfare” of those Brennen et al. would just as soon see filling garbage bags.

Others were not so lucky.

• Hot Coco [sic]: 1-year-old puppy whose own pups were aborted when DOH/ACC spayed her. Set to die at any time.

• Nova: 2-year-old dog reported in heat on April 4, spayed on April 23, and shunted to death row five days later. On kill command at this writing, could be exterminated at any moment.

• Caramel: 2-year-old dog spayed while in heat. Set to be exterminated tomorrow.

• Bingo: Dosed with Trazodone despite no reported behavior problems. Neutered despite possible CIRDC infection. Exterminated.

Here are more who made it out under their own power, no thanks to Brennen and company, who after cutting them open put them on death row:

• Cheeto: Neutered two days after suffering from nose bleeds and a temperature of 101. Escaped thanks to foster.

• Gucci: Zonked out on Trazodone and neutered three days after intake despite being underweight and sick with diarrhea. Saved from death row by a rescue at the last minute.

• Loyal: Neutered one day after having bloody diarrhea. Escaped thanks to foster.

• Oberon: Neutered though vomiting and shitting blood. Oberon was actually adopted, a feat ACC manages to pull off for only about half its “live outcomes.” (The rest are pawned off on rescues or reclaimed. A competent no-kill shelter, on the other hand, relies on rescues to place about 20 percent of intakes, according to the No Kill Advocacy Center.)

While DOH/ACC vets are elbows deep in the blood and amniotic fluid of innocents, the City Council, whose job is to make sure ACC does what it isn’t doing and doesn’t do what it always does, was occupied with more pressing matters: tut-tutting New Yorkers into picking up after their dogs.

Now, only an asshole deliberately leaves dog shit around for others to deal with. Everyone knows this. But there are quality-of-life issues and there are “quality-of-life” issues. Legislation to put poop bag dispensers next to garbage cans and compost bins at dog runs belongs squarely in the latter column. The City Council has done virtually nothing to add to column one since … when, exactly? Anyone?

The last remotely relevant council action happened in 2024, when New Yorkers lined up for eight hours to testify to the hardships of serving as an unpaid labor force for the nation’s preeminent kill pound. Council members were told the city desperately needs low-cost or free spay-neuter, and lots of it. A full year later, the council came back with a one-shot one-clinic pilot to cover less than 2 percent of the number of procedures cat rescuers — those in the trenches 24/7/365 — say are needed every year.

That was eight months and one “animal welfare caucus” ago. And now this? Bills for poop bags and compost bins and nanny signs and a PR campaign that no one who wasn’t already complying will notice?

One carcass every three hours for an entire goddamn year and that’s your top “welfare” priority, Council Member Epstein? That’s the lede? Shit?

TSNY queried ACC, DOH, Robin Brennen and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office concerning Almond Milk and ACC puppy/kitten abortion policy in general. As usual they had nothing to say for themselves, since there is no legitimate explanation for what they do and what they endorse. And they know it.

There’s a reason Brennen gets away with it. There’s a reason that like her partner in derision Patrick “40K” Nolan she can publicly piss on New Yorkers (story TK) who dare question the dosing and overdosing and unnecessarily risky surgeries and elective puppy abortions and, oh yeah, the eight carcasses a day for 12 months straight.

That reason is Harvey Epstein. It’s also Lynn Schulman. Mostly, though, right now that reason is the People’s Mayor. The Sunshine Socialist. Who when push comes to shove has shown himself to be just as self-serving and politically avaricious as any elected to ever shit between two rocks — that one’s for you, Harv — and is now presiding over a kill pound that has only revved up the death chambers since he assumed the position.

Thanks to a new Substack tool, a few weeks back TSNY added what we call an “accountability box” to every editorial and article involving officials who refuse to do their jobs — that is, all of them, pretty much.

Below you’ll find contact info, complete with links, for about every city elected and bureaucrat responsible for the grisly goings-on at DOH’s ACC. The only way this stops is to use it. Then use it again.

By all means. Light ‘em up.

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: Thousands more New Yorkers may soon be forced to choose between feeding themselves and their pets, thanks to Donald Trump and the GOP’s war on America.

• Welcome to Kathy Hochul’s New York, where billionaires get state-funded sportsball shrines and homeless kittens get the hot potato treatment.

• Related: “Is the help ever enough? No we are all stretched thin every rescue is currently stretched thin.”

• A Hudson Valley couple was charged for allegedly operating a puppy mill in Deerpark, where their house was condemned as uninhabitable.

• Ontario County District Attorney Jason MacBride is chuffed about allowing a Geneva couple who killed 10 dogs and tortured eight others to plead out in exchange for no jail time.

• Get this: Erie County suckers are exercising adoptable dogs to burn off energy when all they gotta do is drug ‘em into a compliant stupor and burn ‘em to ash. Amirite, Dr. B?

• Western New York rescues are putting Western New York kill pounds to shame.

• Beginning May 6, Lollypop Farm in Rochester will hold a series of events to provide free pet vaccinations, food and supplies. Because it’s not like the city is about to do it.

• “Meet the NYers saving hundreds of adorable dogs from ending up on the menu”

• Finally, from Peanut to Rudy: It appears conservation officers in New York and New Jersey all graduated from the Bernard Fife School of Law Enforcement.

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 April 25, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, The Scoop New York was busy preparing for the first installment of The Weekly Carnage, a new feature from sister site NYC ACC KILLS, to be published Monday.

Meanwhile, true to form, the failed serial-killer aspirants at Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] were busy supplying content, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani was occupied celebrating himself while neglecting the animals he exploited to get elected and ignoring questions from a reporter whose work he saw fit to cite during his campaign.

For new and non-subscribers (here’s how to fix that), The Weekly Carnage — named after a feature I maintained during my years covering New York City traffic violence — will memorialize the most recent NYC DOH ACC victims, who will also be honored in monthly NYC ACC KILLS memoriam posts.

The Weekly Carnage will complement The NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show, coming at you live on The Scoop New York dot com on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. As of now the plan is to launch the show sometime in May.

In addition to victims DOH/ACC drags to their deaths in view of New Yorkers and others around the country (and the planet) trying desperately to save them, The Weekly Carnage and the Death Row Show will devote much time calling attention to victims like Bear.

Would you believe about half the cats and dogs DOH/ACC puts to death are never offered for adoption? Of course you would.

These exterminations — thousands per year — are known around the world as “silent kills.” They are cats and dogs (and rabbits and guinea pigs, no doubt) whom the public never sees, or sees incidentally on the victims’ way to the death chamber. Many are killed upon admission, on the spot.

These victims never appear on the “[placed] at-risk [by us]” death row list, because DOH/ACC/Zohran Mamdani don’t even pretend to give them a chance to live. I would note here that every silent kill is a prima facie violation of ACC’s contract with New Yorkers, but ACC watchers have long known that the 34-year no-bid renewal of that dirty deal, engineered by Mamdani role model Bill de Blasio in collaboration with simpatico City Council accomplices, was never worth the paper it was printed on. So that goes without saying.

DOH and ACC classify many silent kills as “end of life services” or whatever Clear Skies Initiative horse shit euphemism is currently favored by ACC mentors-slash-partners in corruption like ASPCA, Best Friends and others of their greasy ilk. Silent kill victims’ discretionary exterminations are footnoted on ACC data reports only because ACC is required to include them. They are not counted as “euthanasia” victims, however, because doing so would make it impossible for DOH and ACC to juice their live release rates.

So poor dogs like Bear, age 8, found abandoned and exterminated nine days later, are killed without ever being offered for adoption. Ditto Drifter, 6, who went from a bite hold “straight to kill command.” Grizzly, who had renal disease and was exterminated on day three. And Tinkerbell — a year-old puppy, who might just be DOH/ACC/Mamdani’s favorite targets — of whom a volunteer said, “All she wanted was to be close to me, pressing her head into my body and leaning her whole weight against me for comfort.”

There are many more victims, of course. More than we have time or space for here. Via The Weekly Carnage and the Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show, these cats and dogs, tortured and killed around the clock by The Greatest City in the World™, will have their day.

Facts: If you can look at Bear’s terrified, pleading face and want to do anything other than take that dog home and protect him forever, you are mentally ill or a natural-born stone killer, a distinction without a difference. Whether you wield the needle or stand by and watch it happen.

Either way, the people are gathering at the gates. The doors to your pervert playhouse are fixing to bust open.

Time to brace.

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.

• Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan, who campaigned on cleaning up his city’s shithole “shelter,” is instead cutting his kill pound’s budget, virtually ensuring more animals will suffer and die there. But don’t worry — Ryan dispatched a surrogate to promise a new shelter sometime in the future.

• Hudson Valley congressional rep Mike Lawler announced a bipartisan effort to amend federal law to help prevent public housing residents from losing their pets. Your turn, Albany.

• Rescues say legislation NYC Council members are considering to legalize bodega cats will actually codify neglect and do nothing to help other “working cats,” like the ones landlords starve to prod them to kill rats.

• Jamestown lawmakers are considering imposing a limit on the number of cats residents may have.

• Susquehanna SPCA in Otsego County took in a dozen neglected dogs from Washington County, where as TSNY noted last week supervisor Brian Campbell opposes a local campaign to shame his county into finally building a shelter of its own.

• Lollypop Farm of Rochester says the usual spring influx of homeless companion animals may be augmented this year by households facing eviction. Your turn, Albany.

• A reward is available in Cortland County for help identifying whomever tortured and killed three dogs found by a roadside in the Town of Scott.

• “Authorities in Oswego County say they are investigating what may be one of the worst cases of animal abuse they have ever encountered.”

• Greater Cayuga SPCA, f.k.a. Finger Lakes SPCA of CNY, is set to reopen after a year-long construction project. Meanwhile, Little Guild Animal Shelter in Cornwall is prepping for an open house to debut its new 8,000 square-foot facility.

• Time Out New York gave a shoutout to White Whiskers Senior Dog Sanctuary — profiled by TSNY in 2024 — as a top rescue for adopters.

• Political reporter and essayist Hamilton Nolan explains why a government decision-maker should never be happy to see a reporter, which should cause many many New York journos to feel seen.

• Finally: Nathan Winograd of the No Kill Advocacy Center throws down on Best Friends Animal Society — which ICYMI (as yours truly did) began as a cult. Really.

Food recalls

FDA announced one pet food recall this week:

• Breeder’s Edge, Shelter’s Choice 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

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.

Animal Care Centers of New York City exterminated 3,202 cats and dogs in 2025, according to NYC ACC data.

That figure reflects an average of one cat or dog put to death at ACC about every three hours. Non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

NYC ACC killed 1,508 cats last year, and 1,694 dogs — virtually all of them healthy and adoptable when they entered the kill pound system.

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ACC exterminated 31,830 cats and dogs combined from 2016 through 2025, according to system data.

The number of cats and dogs killed by ACC dipped in 2024 for the first time since 2020. The decline was short-lived: Last year’s total marked an 8 percent increase in combined cat and dog killings compared to 2024.

Worse, 2025 was the second deadliest post-pandemic year for cats and dogs at NYC ACC, with just 33 fewer victims than the combined total from 2023.

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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.

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

Correction: Due to a typo, The Scoop New York overcounted the number of DOH/ACC dog killings in this post by 12. ACC reported 112 exterminations, not 124. The number of dogs reported killed through February was 268 (not 280), and the total number of cat and dog killings 487 (not 499). The increase in year-to-year combined cat and dog killings through February was 14 percent (not 17 percent). The copy and illo have been edited to reflect same. The Scoop New York regrets the error, but is elated for those 12 dogs who made it out alive.

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

Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] exterminated a significantly higher number of homeless cats and dogs during Zohran Mamdani’s first two months as mayor compared to kill totals reported during the same time period in 2025, Eric Adams’ last year in office, according to ACC data.

As reported this week on NYC ACC KILLS, ACC carried out a total of 487 cat and dog killings in January and February, compared to a total of 427 in the first two months of 2025 — a 14 percent jump. Dog exterminations over those two months rose year-to-year from 248 to 268, an 8 percent increase. Elective cat killings spiked 22 percent, from 179 to 219.

Contrary to agency propaganda, virtually all cats and dogs killed by NYC ACC are healthy and adoptable when they enter the pound system.

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The Scoop New York asked Mamdani’s press office if the mayor could account for the increase in discretionary homeless companion animal killings on his watch. We also asked why Mamdani permits ACC officials to continue to falsely claim the city pound doesn’t kill healthy animals, and if the mayor is in the main copacetic with agencies he’s in charge of lying to New Yorkers.

As with all prior queries from The Scoop New York concerning his kill pound as well as companion animal welfare generally, the mayor who preaches accountability and buck-stoppage at every opportunity had nothing to say.

TSNY is working up a comprehensive analysis of NYC DOH ACC 2025 kill data for publication next week. In the meantime, below are excerpts from the NYC ACC KILLS February 2026 memoriam post. Read them and weep. Because the cowardly conniving hypocrite most responsible sure as shit won’t.

Eminem Meowthers [247972]: 3 years old; killed February 28. Eminem Meowthers, a stray cat, who was noted to be calm and timid, was listed for medical reasons. ACC wrote: “He is a young sweet cat and recovering from a urinary obstruction. He needs monitoring and pain management in a veterinary clinic to recover.” Instead, ACC killed him on day 10.

Scoob [244378]: 1 year old; killed February 27. Puppy Scoob, says a volunteer, was “69 lbs of adolescent energy and behavior. And yet he managed to disarm us with his charm. Running across the yard he flew onto a lap, and a summer Olympics would say he stuck the landing. I truly don’t think he cared that he was entirelv too big to fit, he was pleased to be where he was.”

Scoob, a stray, was found outside a pizzeria eating from the trash. Apparently, he stole a glove from someone’s pocket to play with, but politely dropped it when asked. On intake ACC wrote that he was “very sweet and friendly.” His leash biting, for which ACC killed him, began only after he’d been at ACC for a few weeks. Scoob was killed on day 64.

Doeby [183902]: 4 years old; killed February 4. Everyone loved Doeby, who lost her family when they moved to NYCHA housing. Gentle, loving, and loyal, her family said. Volunteers agreed. “She listened well, loved treats, and soaked up attention. She was playful but also happily content,” one said.

Another said, “This incredibly affectionate, human-adoring pup, who once lived with other dogs in a home, has become increasingly stressed in the shelter environment and needs out. Doeby is a social butterfly and greets all her people on our way out of the shelter, and on our way back in.”

A great leash walker, Doeby loved exploring and also “loves to snuggle with you on the backyard bench or score a butt scratch or hug.” ACC killed Doeby on day 49.

Zoe [245893]: 2 years old; killed February 20. Zoe arrived at ACC with 30 bite puncture wounds from an altercation between dogs at her home. She had recently had a litter and was being kept in a separate room when the door was left open and the other two dogs got in.

The owners blamed Zoe. They called the police, who said Zoe remained calm in the crate during transport. At ACC she was very social, wiggly and wagging, easily leashed and walked, with no notes on or signs of aggression. She liked to toss toys in the air and catch them. ACC killed Zoe on day 33.

Nuevo [244513]: 2 years old; killed February 16. Nuevo, a timid stray, trembling during his medical exam, was social with staff despite feeling poorly most of his time at ACC.

ACC dosed Nuevo with a boatload of drugs: Trazodone, Clonidine, and Gabapentin. Nuevo had persistent GI issues, and ulcerated paw pads that caused him to limp.

Noted to be consistently panting, hyper salivating, and barking, ACC diagnosed kennel stress. Instead of working to alleviate that stress, ACC killed Nuevo day 57.

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.

• Both Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump are looking to evict poor New Yorkers (and their pets) from their homes.

• Millionaire Kathy Hochul reportedly donated $2,102 to the “Erie County animal shelter” (whatever that is), which is rich (no pun intended) considering the governor and state lawmakers are why New York animal shelters are forced to survive on public donations.

• Related: Case in point.

• Related: “North Country animal shelters struggle to adapt to new state guidelines.”

• Related: Washington County supervisor Brian Campbell doesn’t get why locals want an animal shelter when taxpayers are already doing the job out of their own pockets.

• Oswego County has approved its own animal abuser registry; meanwhile, Saratoga County officials added the first perpetrator to their new roll.

• New York City Council Member Chi Ossé told Curbed the council is “brainstorming” legislation to save dogs from the city kill pound get people to clean up dog shit.

• ASPCA will spend 2026 reminiscing about the time before it became a self-interested resource-hogging investment vehicle that does animal advocacy on the side — when it isn’t doing the opposite of animal advocacy.

• Finally: Godspeed Garfield, saved from LIRR tracks by MTA police and now recovering after he was hit by a train.

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 April 4, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, the rabid hyenas at Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] were feeling themselves.

Why wouldn’t they be? Spring has finally arrived, and with killings on the rise under absentee Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who at one week shy of his first 100 days has bravely avoided acknowledging his role as the highest of ACC higher-ups — the warm weather portends an abundance of puppies and kittens to obliterate before the little ones have a chance to know much of anything beyond the medieval dungeon that is the mayor’s kill pound.

To get the party started, with the tacit if not explicit approval of their minders at the city health department, the hyenas decided to have a little fun.

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Early in the week, ACC watchers — many of whom spend much if not most of their online time raising or making pledges to help overworked rescues save animals from the people New Yorkers pay to save animals — noticed ACC had changed a condemned dog’s name to a sentence.

From:

To:

Set aside for a moment the fact that, like countless other DOH/ACC victims, the city put this former family pet on death row because he “needs care and treatment [DOH/ACC] cannot provide.” Illness, often contracted or compounded thanks to porta-potty conditions at the “shelter” itself, is second only to fear among causative pre-extermination factors at DOH’s ACC. Despite the de facto city agency’s gold-plated no-bid 34-year $1.4B contract with New Yorkers, ACC’s crack veterinary staff, led by DVM Robin Brennen, is incapable of much more than vaccinating and exterminating. When they’re not dosing and overdosing animals with human-grade sedatives or spaying and neutering ahead of discretionary post-op killings, that is. Garbage in, garbage out, n'est-ce pas, Dr. B?

In 2022, Nathan Winograd of the California-based No Kill Advocacy Center wrote about a then-recent study that included adoption rates for dogs with names “perceived as nonhuman,” who tended to be passed over for dogs with more common names.

Wrote Winograd:

The dogs with the longest stay in the shelter … had unfamiliar names, like “Wigglystuff,” “Flufferton,” “Fruit Loops,” “Skittles,” and “Sir Pupper.” That, too, was my experience when I ran animal shelters.

Winograd continued:

[O]ne of those shelters was near Cornell University, where graduate students made up a significant portion of our volunteer base. These volunteers were fond of giving animals unfamiliar names based on their field of study, doing the animals no favor to the extent that “Molly” and “Ben” got adopted faster than “François-René de Chateaubriand,” “Edna Pontellier,” and “Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.” (I finally told the Cornell students they weren’t allowed to name the animals.)

The Cornell students Winograd refers to were at least applying names, as opposed to random parts of speech and non sequiturs favored by DOH’s ACC.

Once normal folk on social media got wind of what the trolls were up to, ACC changed the name back. If you’re wondering what motivated this exercise in shit-assery, don’t trouble yourself overthinking it. It’s the same reason DOH/ACC spayed Chestnut, killed her soon after, and blamed the victim — blamed a dog — for her own death. From board chair Patrick “40K” Nolan to chief extermination officer Risa “Anyone Know How to Do My Job?” Weinstock to Robin “The Reaper” Brennan and on down the line, ACC principals practically ooze contempt for their four-legged charges as well as New Yorkers who have the temerity to expect them to, say, not behave like 14-year-olds left home alone for the weekend.

The particularly pernicious strain of nihilism infecting DOH’s ACC is how you get poor souls shunted to death row saddled with inscrutable handles like “Futon” (found abandoned with another dog ACC called “Bunk Bed” — get it?), “Foreign,” “Popcorn Shrimp,” “Telanovela” (ACC staff spell about as well as they do everything else), “Ceiling Fan,” and “White Eyeliner Is Tea.”

As they so often do, ACC goons are telling on themselves here. They give no more thought to these animals than to the office fridge stuffed with medication and remains. That includes those whose role is facilitating adoptions but who would rather an animal on the precipice of freedom be put to death than endure the inconvenience of making a phone call.

I’ve been a reporter for 25 years, give or take. For a decade I covered literal child killers, virtually all of them — those law enforcement bothered to prosecute, anyway — never showing remorse, only interested in saving their own hides. Even so, though I would never have thought it, the depravity I’ve witnessed in two years covering Animal Care Centers of New York City is unmatched. Like the man said, it’s hard to even take its measure.

There are no adults in the room at NYC DOH’s ACC. No one minding the store. TSNY’s latest query for Harvey Epstein went unanswered, like all others submitted to the freshman City Council member after he made a big to-do over his new “animal welfare caucus,” which hasn’t been heard from since, save for one worthy but politically pedestrian initiative that would do nothing to impose order upon the city “shelter” system.

As health committee chair, Epstein’s council colleague Lynn Schulman is supposed to keep watch over the mayor’s kill pound, but is aggressively if not defiantly uninterested in doing so, having failed to convene a relevant oversight hearing in years. Schulman simply could not care less what goes down at DOH’s ACC, meaning she’s perfect for her position.

Likewise, current comptroller Mark Levine, ostensibly the city’s fiscal ombudsman, is Schulman’s health committee chair predecessor. Levine held no hearings on the aforementioned ACC contract boondoggle, since he was occupied brown-nosing Risa Weinstock. It’s been 11 years since a city comptroller last investigated ACC. Expect the next audit after Levine lands his next government gig or Hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

Despite its size, New York City has a political class as insular and self-dealing as that of any corrupt rural backwater. Ultimately, of course, the buck stops with the mayor, who on inauguration day said this [emphasis added]:

We expect greatness from the cooks wielding a thousand spices, from those who stride out onto Broadway stages, from our starting point guard at Madison Square Garden. Let us demand the same from those who work in government.

Waiting on you, your honor. Still.

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.

• The Putnam County district attorney wants state lawmakers to pass a bill to make aggravated animal cruelty offenses again eligible for bail.

• Related: Queens DA Melinda Katz charged a “man” with felony cruelty for allegedly torturing his former girlfriend’s cat to death.

• After begging off due to difficulties working with the city, a local rescue has agreed to renew its contract with Syracuse, which has failed to build a facility of its own after years of allegedly looking for a suitable location.

• NYC ACC is gaslighting/brainwashing Bronx college students — and, apparently, their professor.

• A former Clinton County rescue operator who got 10 years probation for neglecting and abusing animals in her care was arrested for violating the terms of her plea deal.

• A Brooklyn woman and her dog, Grace, were reunited after the woman sued a neighbor she says volunteered to care for Grace temporarily but later refused to give her back.

• A scammer tried to trick a Syracuse-area woman out of her credit card info by posing as a CNY SPCA employee.

• NYPD shot and killed a dog in Queens, saving ACC the trouble of exterminating/disappearing him/her and lying about it.

• From New York Magazine: “Just as Americans are crossing borders and flying to other countries seeking cheaper dental and medical care for themselves, they are now doing the same for their pets.”

• PSA: Some of the most popular types of dog treats are not necessarily safe for dogs to consume.

• Finally: Godspeed, Jinx and carpenter Joe.

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 March 28, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s gang of downward-punching bullies at Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] took out their dissatisfaction with their pointless existences on Chestnut, a 5-year-old stray beloved by volunteers and staff members, whom ACC subjected to a medical torture killing they tried to justify by insisting the bitch was asking for it.

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There were other victims, of course. Like 7-month-old Godzilla, whom Risa Weinstock and Ellen Curtis and Gieun Im and Tara Mercado and Jessica Vaccaro and Robin Brennen and Biana Tamimi and Phillip Reid and Katy Hansen and the rest happily poisoned to death after all of 10 days, with no effort to place an easily placeable puppy in a loving home — that being their job and all — because killing is easy, they are lazy, and inflicting maximum pain upon animals and humans alike is their kink.

Chestnut arrived at ACC on New Year’s Eve and soon came down with kennel cough, a rite of passage for dogs at ACC due to ever-present unsanitary conditions. She was spayed on March 1.

Before and after alteration, DOH/ACC veterinary staff — or clerical staff; or kennel cleaners; or dog walkers; who knows? — drugged her with more Trazodone and Gabapentin than the recommended human adult dosages of each medication. Like exposing dogs to CIRDC, administering high doses of human-grade sedatives — to both cats and dogs — to induce compliant stupor is standard DOH/ACC practice.

I was on Trazodone for a while, for insomnia. The first time I took it I made the mistake of not going directly to bed. Sitting on the sofa, streaming “Adam-12” or whatnot, my arms and legs began to feel very heavy, as if weighted by cinderblocks. I could hardly move. The dizziness followed. To the point I wasn’t sure if I could, or should, try standing up. From then on, I never took Trazodone more than a few minutes before my head met the pillow.

In addition to Trazodone and Gabapentin, the DOH/ACC compliance cocktail includes Clonidine, of which Chestnut received almost twice the maximum dosage recommended for human adults. Again, standard practice.

Chestnut was spayed three weeks and change before her extermination date. Given the alarming number of spay-neuter-kills so far this year (TSNY’s A-list advos are keeping count), subjecting a cat or dog to alteration only to kill them soon after is edging toward routine for DOH/ACC malpracticing sawbones sadists.

Here’s what her foster said about Chestnut:

Meet this sweet girl who’s been an absolute dream in foster care! She adores cuddles and will happily snuggle up with you any chance she gets, especially when she’s cozy in her favorite jammies. She picked up loose-leash walking incredibly quickly and is a joy to take out for strolls. In the home, she’s been a perfect houseguest: no accidents, no chewing or getting into things, and no reactivity. She’s gentle, well-mannered, and ready to bring comfort, love, and lots of snuggles to her next home.

An ACC staffer agreed:

Chestnut arrived as a stray with no ID and has blossomed into a gentle, affectionate companion in shelter and foster care. She's a total snuggle bug who loves to be cozy (her foster even reports she enjoys cuddling up in her jammies) and is quick to offer affection. Though she shows some nervous body language likely from a difficult past, she warms up with calm, patient introductions and is an absolute sweetheart once she trusts you.

Below is what an ACC flack — Katy Hansen being the most logical perp, though we don’t know for certain since ACC and DOH haven’t replied to a single TSNY query this year — said about Chestnut when asked why DOH/ACC exterminated this “absolute sweetheart” in the prime of her life.

Here is the dog DOH/ACC says was so hopelessly vicious and out of control she had to die.

Not convinced? Here’s another clip, with a soundtrack that makes what Mamdani’s kill pound did to her that much worse.

A regular Cujo this one, huh?

The blithering idiot who sent that text, being a blithering idiot, was likely unaware that it presents as a confession, not just concerning Chestnut but every cat and dog DOH’s ACC puts to death for “behavior.”

They acknowledge that under normal circumstances — that is, a stable home environment, cared for by normal humans who don’t want to kill her because she is a dog — Chestnut was fine. They further acknowledge that, to the extent her behavior was an issue at all (spoiler: it was never an issue), “shelter” conditions were the primary precipitating factor.

This is what ACC does to every 1-2 cats and 2-3 dogs who enter the system. Cram them into cages in a cold, loud, filthy, hostile shithole, for 23 or more hours a day, surrounded by unfeeling strangers who want them dead, then kill them for reacting normally — naturally — out of fear and self-preservation.

Then the capper: victim-blaming. The blithering idiot refers to Chestnut as if she was an unrepentant miscreant who decided to wild out until she got what was coming to her, when to anyone with half a brain and a functioning moral compass she was obviously a frightened dog who wanted nothing but to love and be loved. “Part of the picture”? “Misleading”? Are you fucking serious?

There it is, clear as can be. DOH/ACC thugs exterminate because, if you ask them, their victims deserve it. Imagine being so feeble-minded, so mentally unstable that you are triggered by the actions of a cat or dog. Seriously: How do these knuckle-draggers make it to work every day?

The Scoop New York asked DOH and ACC for evidence that Chestnut was a raging hellhound who had to be put down lest she wreak bloody havoc upon the good people of New York City. They of course provided none, because there is none. Professional liars lie. It’s what they do.

Like his kill pound and the health department that pseudo-supervises it, Mamdani has ignored queries regarding ACC, even as his DOH death squad exterminated a significantly higher number of dogs in January than in January 2025. This might be because, given Mamdani’s amateurish flailing to this point, it’s unclear if his admininstration can walk and chew gum at once. More likely it’s that, like every other New York elected, his interest in companion animals begins and ends with how effectively he thinks he can use them for personal gain.

Either way, until mister “govern audaciously” lives up to his own hype, here’s the volume knob.

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.

• How embarrassing: Halfway through what is likely NYS lawmakers’ fourth consecutive no-show session, that renowned bastion of enlightened governance — Utah — made it illegal to kill animals rescues want to save. Skunked by a deep red state. Heckuva job, Lupardo & Hinchey.

• Related: Sullivan County Assembly Member Paula Kay has introduced a bill that would make felony animal cruelty eligible for bail.

• Related: Put these freaks under the jail.

• Mamdani made a campaign promise to boost funding for city parks, but has instead decided Eric Adams didn’t neglect them sufficiently.

• Animal Shelter of Schoharie Valley — the only shelter in Schoharie County for both cats and dogs — expects its new vet clinic to open in the fall.

• A new private shelter for dogs is coming to North Syracuse.

• “After Tragedy, an Ulster Park Woman Builds a Sanctuary for Rescued Pigs”

• FIFY: “Can I Shame My Mayor Into Acknowledging His Kill Pound?”

• Finally: What became of this cat? And the helicopter rescue was amazing, but how did this dog wind up in the middle of the river?

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.

For the second year running, it appears state legislators and Governor Kathy Hochul will not reach a budget agreement ahead of the March 31 deadline, mostly because (for the second year running) Hochul is looking to shoehorn unrelated measures into the budget bill.

This is so the governor can please her corporate paymasters (fossil fuel companies; Uber) with relatively minimal blowback from good-government groups and the pesky public. That’s the idea, at least. It also allows legislators to vote for contentious extraneous measures they might otherwise prefer not to be associated with.

As Politico put it, “[I]ssues that aren’t easy to agree on are often the ones members avoid casting stand-alone votes on.”

As far as state politics are concerned, budget machinations will suck up most of the oxygen until the governor and legislators reach a deal. Once they clear that obstacle, state electeds can continue to ignore bills meant to improve the lives of companion animals and the New Yorkers who care about them.

Of the couple-dozen or so relevant bills tracked by The Scoop New York since TSNY went live two years ago, Albany lawmakers succeeded in passing just one, in 2025: a measure to prohibit insurance companies from discriminating against renters with pets based on what breed of dog they have — the same protections the state affords homeowners.

The renter protection bill did not become law, however. Hochul vetoed it.

As for this year’s docket, legislation to establish animal abuser registries; strengthen notoriously weak cruelty laws and streamline cruelty law enforcement; keep abused pets away from their abusers; spare animals from tortuous deaths in vacated rental housing; initiate a recurring revenue stream for shelters statewide; and more await passage.

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