Does the HSUS support PETAs stance on euthanasia as a necessary evil to control overpopulation?
The use of euthanasia to end the lives of healthy, adoptable animals is still conducted in many parts of the United States for dogs and cats because open-admission shelters and animal control agencies do not turn away animals and do not have sufficient space to house all of the animals who need shelter. These public and private facilities face the lose-lose choice of euthanizing healthy animals or turning them away. The HSUS advocates the use of a wide range of tools – including training and education of the pet-keeping public to reduce the frequency of animal relinquishment, public and private spay and neuter programs to slow the birth rate for animals, active promotion of adoptions of shelter animals, and aggressive policies to discourage excessive breeding of animals, especially from puppy mills – to create a social environment where the number of people seeking to adopt animals is roughly equivalent to the number of homeless animals. We’re now at the tail-end of the annual “I Love
