|
What
is Pound Seizure?
Pound seizure is the practice of releasing or selling lost, stray, or abandoned cats and dogs from municipally funded
animal shelters for use in biomedical research, product development, safety testing, and educational demonstrations. Animals from shelter, commonly called "random source animals",
are used to practice surgery by medical and veterinary students and are then euthanized. Hundreds of dogs and cats taken
from shelters are used every year in painful or long-term experiments or programs.
What is a Class B Dealer? Class B Dealers are brokers who acquire animals that they sell for profit to research facilities. The animals
are used in the pharmaceutical industry, the cosmetic industry, at certain medical schools and veterinary hospitals for training.
Most of the animals are put through painful experiments and testing only to be euthanized after the experiment is over. Class B dealers get their animals from "random sources" such as auctions, flea markets, "free to good
home ads" in the paper, an in the case of Montcalm County pets, from our local animal shelter. Our county has a
contract with an animal dealer and our shelter gives dogs and cats to the dealer in exchange for certain services that he
provides. Montcalm County is one of 4 counties
in Michigan who still release animals to Class B research dealers. The counties are Gratiot,
Montcalm, Mecosta, and Osceola. There are only 3 dealers lef in the state and only 10 in the country who sell animals
to research facilities. There is a reason for that. The day of the Class B dealer is hopefully coming to an end.
|
