"No Kill" Was Hijacked by Puppy Killers. Here’s How to Restore Its True Meaning.
The term was co-opted by big money non-profits and “shelters” run by people who wield the needle without hesitation or remorse.
Late last year The New Yorker published a piece by writer Jonathan Franzen. It was called “How the No-Kill Movement Betrays Its Name,” and it was not what its title suggested.
Franzen is known, in no particular order, as a fiction writer, avid birder, and recidivist schmuck. He once considered adopting an Iraqi war orphan because he doesn’t understand young people. Worse than that, he shared those thoughts with the rest of us.
The New Yorker is known for vigorous, if not ruthless, fact-checking. That’s laudable, of course, especially given the present societal moment. Without parsing the details, let’s say that in this case The New Yorker either didn’t do much follow-up or they gave Franzen a free hand to file a peevish personal essay as a putative work of journalism.
Franzen’s thesis was basically: People who try to stop other people from executing cats and kittens en masse are hypocrites because cats kill birds. Yes, really.
Wrote Nathan Winograd, a no-kill expert of 30 years:
[Franzen] calls on shelters to re-evaluate their “preoccupation with shelter kills” because “there’s no shortage of adoptable kittens...” In other words, he wants to go back to a time when “shelters” killed cats and kittens in much larger numbers.
To make that case, Franzen offers little beyond exaggerated claims, ad hominem attacks, and clichés. He ignores history and relies on arguments that are unscientific and hypocritical and will lead to the sadistic abuse of cats.
Founder of the California-based No Kill Advocacy Center, Winograd literally wrote the book. In 2001, he took over the shelter in Tompkins County (home to Ithaca) and made it a no-kill facility from day one. “Our philosophy is you count all the noses coming in, and you count all the noses going out,” Winograd told me in 2019.
According to Winograd, through a multi-pronged approach involving shelter staff, rescues, fosters, and local government, Tompkins County became the first “no-kill community” in the United States.
Winograd notes that the definition of euthanasia is, essentially, mercy killing. It does not mean killing for space, or convenience, or dubiously diagnosed “behavioral issues.”
Writes Winograd in The No Kill Companion: “In a No Kill community, animals are not killed unless irredeemably suffering” – in severe, unremitting physical pain – “regardless of whether they enter private or municipal shelters.”
Though no-kill shelters have existed since the 1800s, for decades the dominant narrative in the U.S. held that no kill was not possible. This notion was propagated by prominent “friendly” organizations including The Humane Society of the United States. In the ensuing years, however, shelters all over the country began achieving live release rates – the percentage of animals that make it out alive – a whisker shy of 100 percent. It turns out that no kill is not a population issue, but a cultural one.
Which brings us to today – or, more accurately, the 21st century. In the aughts, a data set wrongly pegged the typical number of irredeemably suffering shelter intakes at 10 percent. As a consequence, many facilities – including, in New York, shelters represented by the Animal Protection Federation industry group – have taken to calling themselves “no kill” even if they are openly and actively killing healthy, adoptable animals, as long as they maintain a 90 percent live release rate.
Again, the high-profile, multi-million dollar “animal welfare” non-profits are amplifying the falsehood – and this time, they know just what they’re doing. In the course of my reporting I have spoken with two employees of such 90 percent no-kill orgs – one with a national presence, one local to New York – who acknowledged to me that the groups they work for are quote-unquote no kill as opposed to actually no kill. These organizations purposely fundraise on the same adorable, adoptable dogs and cats that they ultimately execute and toss in the garbage, while marketing themselves to the public as no kill.
So, how to tell a true no-kill facility from a fake “no-kill” one?
“You can quote any number you want,” says NYC advocate Craig Seeman, “but if they are killing animals that are not irremediably suffering, they are not no kill.”
Fake “shelters” tend to serve as a buffer between elected officials and the public. It’s cathartic to rant at “shelter” staff, who are complicit in, if not indifferent to, the unnecessary deaths of thousands of adoptable animals every year. But if you follow the funding from your municipality to the shelter you’ll find elected officials who also have these deaths on their hands.
Calls to a mayor, council member, county executive or state representative places pressure on the decision-makers, where it can do the most good.
If you don’t know who all your elected officials are, or how to get in touch with your elected officials, check here.
As for The New Yorker’s and Jonathan Franzen’s bad faith not-reporting: Until cats adopt their own no-kill policy, their relationship to birds, sympathetic as birds are, is a separate issue.