The New York City Council's "Animal Welfare Caucus" Is Bullshit
One more time, for the freshman council members: It's the killing.
The Scoop New York is a website and newsletter covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from BUF to BK. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
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 March 6, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, the New York City Council unleashed a fresh assault on companion animals who live and suffer and die at the mercy of so-called Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic], as well as the New Yorkers who fight around the clock to get those animals out of ACC alive.
On Monday, AMNY ran a press release published as news announcing that council Speaker Julie Menin and newly-elected East Side rep Harvey Epstein formed a caucus “dedicated to advocacy for the humane treatment of animals” and making the city “more friendly” for “those who care for them.”
The caucus reveal comes on the heels of a policy platform proposal issued by Flatbush Cats and Voters For Animal Rights, which among other measures calls on Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council to fund spay-neuter surgeries and establish free pet food pantries. Available evidence suggests the timing was not coincidence.
“The launch of the Animal Welfare Caucus is a historic milestone for animals in New York City,” said VFAR Founder and President Allie Taylor, in a statement published by AMNY. “For years, advocates and constituents have called for sustained leadership on animal protection within the Council, and this caucus creates the structure to make that work lasting and impactful.
“Voters For Animal Rights looks forward to working with caucus members to advance thoughtful, effective legislation that reflects the values of New Yorkers,” Taylor said.
Couple things.
The reason the City Council does not have and has likely never had “sustained leadership on animal protection” is that council members like Lynn Schulman (endorsed by VFAR) and Justin Brannan (granted a prominent happy talk blurb on the Flatbush Cats/VFAR policy page) make sure of it.
Instead, the preferred move is to every few years make big promises about animal welfare departments or sustained help for cat rescues — initiatives that after the mics and cameras disappear are mutilated beyond recognition or whittled down to effectively nothing — then bring back the mics and cameras to congratulate yourself for a job left undone. Blather. Rinse. Repeat.
Epstein and Menin are running the playbook now — the caucus already appears on Epstein’s Wikipedia page — as accomplices like VFAR and ASPCA and HSUS, alongside credulous news outlets like AMNY, amplify the lie. Said lie being that you can be a Friend Of The Animals while willfully ignoring what is by far the biggest threat to vulnerable cats and dogs in the city’s history: the city itself, which torches hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, along with the carcasses of tens of thousands of once and/or future family pets, via the always-open death chambers at NYC ACC.
TSNY queried Menin and Epstein as to whether the caucus will address the ACC kill quota; the oft-repeated goddamn lie that ACC doesn’t kill healthy animals; everyday ACC medical torture killings, specifically spay-neuter-kill; the routine violation of ACC’s open admission contract with the city; and the stagnant, recalcitrant, malicious, cowardly do-nothing ACC board.
Wouldn’t you know: Menin’s office acknowledged the query, then dodged it, passing it off to Epstein’s office, which never replied.
While ducking uncomfortable questions from a news org uninterested in press release pablum, Council Member Epstein — like candidate Mamdani before him — was exploiting companion animals for personal benefit: the calling card of FOTAs from City Hall to the Red Room.
As Epstein — an erstwhile Assembly member like Zohran Mamdani; a purported vegan like Justin Brannan and Eric Adams — pimps poor Simon, here are scenes from ACC death row. Mere snapshots of the day-to-day reality faced by homeless companion animals in the city’s custody, and the sadistic abuse purposely foisted by ACC upon IRL advocates who sacrifice their wallets and waking hours desperately trying to save those animals from extermination, knowing that many of the cats and dogs they have vicariously come to love won’t make it, and watching them vanish into the maw.
Imagine stories just like these by the thousands per year, every year, over the course of three decades, and tell me how electeds “dedicated to the humane treatment of animals” could ever stop working to stop the killing.
Call it a welfare caucus or a welfare office, until self-declared FOTAs like Epstein and Menin take up that task, all else is window dressing. Misdirection. Distraction. Gaslighting. Lies.
Only the truth will set them free. Who will be the first New York elected to speak it?
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: Donald Trump’s war on the poors means more New Yorkers will have to choose between feeding themselves and their pets.
Efforts to establish a statewide animal abuse registry look to have bipartisan support in Albany, which means exactly nothing as long as SARA killers Lupardo & Hinchey have a say.
Court records reviewed by TSNY show an alleged unlicensed driver was charged with felony cruelty for dragging his dogs behind his car as he drove down a Queens street (ASPCA says the dogs are recovering, for whatever that’s worth), and New Yorkers are hell-bent on making sure justice is served.
Might chronic under-funding and cheaping out on salary be why Rochester can’t find a qualified vet willing to work for its kill pound?
Syracuse officials claim they haven’t managed to locate a suitable site for a municipal animal shelter despite a five-year search, which in addition to an admission of stunning incompetence is now a problem, since the private facility contracted to house stray dogs is ending its relationship with the city. Meanwhile, a Syracuse advocate is pushing for a new private shelter without “concrete walls where dogs sit in kennels all day.”
Speaking of specious statements from sketchy officials, Town of Hempstead supe John Ferretti claimed in an op-ed that his kill pound is “a no-kill facility.” I’d say Tell it to Butchy, but TOHAS exterminated him.
The City of Elmira will again beg Albany for funding it needs to bring its animal shelter into compliance with new state regulations, after the Hochul administration rejected the city’s first application for help with the governor’s half-assed unfunded mandate.
ASPCA should put its big money where its big mouth is, says a former ASPCA CEO who for 10 years did no such thing.
Like his health department, Zohran Mamdani’s DOE also hates cats.
Fortunately, New Yorkers are never not helping.
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.