NYC ACC Killed 616 Cats and 787 Dogs in the First Half of 2024
NYC ACC Killed 616 Cats and 787 Dogs in the First Half of 2024
The pace of ACC's perpetual cat and dog slaughter increased in the second quarter.
Animal Care Centers of New York City exterminated 1,403 cats and dogs over the first six months of 2024, according to NYC ACC data.
Last year, ACC killed a combined average of 270 cats and dogs per month, compared to a combined average of 234 a month in the first half of 2024 — though the combined average number of killings per month was higher at the six-month mark than it was in the first quarter of the year (215). Simply put, the pace of the perpetual slaughter at ACC picked up in the second quarter, edging closer to last year’s higher monthly rate.
ACC admitted a combined average of 1,155 cats and dogs per month from January through June, compared to an average of 1,201 a month through 2023.
As TSNY reported last spring, while ACC has claimed a number of capacity crises since the pandemic, intakes dropped nearly 40 percent from 2019 to 2020, and declined by more than half from 2014 to 2023.
As shown in the 10-year chart above, annual intakes at ACC have hardly fluctuated since 2020. As of the end of June, the NYC pound system was on pace to admit roughly the same number of cats and dogs as in 2020 and 2021.
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The number of cats and dogs put to death by ACC, however, has risen every year since 2020. Though the system isn’t admitting nearly the number of cats and dogs as it was before the 2020 plunge, ACC’s annual live release rate is declining, dropping from 86 percent in 2019 to 78 percent in 2023.
In other words, ACC is taking in fewer cats and dogs than before COVID, while killing more of them.
The combined average live release rate — the percentage of animals who make it out alive — for cats and dogs was 79 percent during the first half of 2024, one point higher than the 2023 combined average rate.
The 2019 live release rate was seven percentage points higher than the combined average rate this year through June. At 75 percent, June had the lowest live release rate of any single month during the first half of 2024.
As shown above, in June ACC exterminated between three and four of every 10 dogs surrendered, and nearly two of every 10 cats were put to death.
NYC ACC operates under the aegis of the city health department, which is putatively overseen by the New York City Council health committee. The current health department commissioner is Dr. Ashwin Vasan. The current chair of the city council health committee is Lynn Schulman.