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County OKs sale of shelter 'pets' despite protestsBy
Emily Mullen, Staff Writer
CENTREVILLE - Area pet lovers are still reeling from the 4-3 vote on Tuesday by county commissioners to allow the Animal Control Shelter to keep selling animals for medical research. "They're totally missing the point," said Carol Loudenslager of Colon. "We're just trying to keep the county from selling pets, and they keep bringing up medical research - we're not against medical research on animals." Animal Rescue Fund members submitted a petition containing over 3,500 signatures at the commission meeting on Aug. 15, asking the county to stop selling animals for research. Residents claim the commissioners believe petitioners oppose medical research in general. But what they are really seekin is humane treatment of pets donated to the shelter. Rodney Beam, of Three Rivers, and president of the local Animal Rescue Fund, said they were not there to discuss medical research. "St. Joseph County is in the business of selling former pets," Beam said. "We're not here to debate the ethics of animal research because that's as unanswerable of an argument as abortion or the death penalty. "We should not be in the business of selling pets." Commissioners cited the benefits of medical research on animals as the main reason for their decision. Gerald Loudenslager, Lilian Carter, David Girton, and Monte Bordner voted to keep selling the animals for medical research while commissioners John Dobberteen , John Bippus and Rick Shaffer voted to stop selling animals for research. "I couldn't take my own pet to the pound - I just know I couldn't,"Carter said. "But the life of my son, who only had 11 months to live, was lengthened by animal research." Gerald Loudenslager also attributed saving human lives to medical research, saying that he wouldn't be here today if it weren't for animal research. But residents at the meeting were upset at the outcome. "This has become a personal issue - they don't care about their constituents," Loudenslager said. "We knew beforehand what the outcome would be." Both Shaffer and Bordner addressed the issue of animal care as a related topic, stating that the animal shelter properly cares for the animals before they are sold. "I'm just not convinced that the animals there are abused," Bordner said. Fred Hodges, the dealer who purchases the dogs from the shelter, said the animals were not harmed or killed before they go to the research labs. He urged commissioners to continue selling the animals, saying the animals are treated humanely including free recreation and air-regulated kennels. Sharon Forsyth, of Constantine, and leader-dog trainer for Canine Companions, a national-knopwn organization, said the real concern in selling dogs from shelters is the kind of dogs that are put there. She said dog dealers make a practice of buying animals from shelters specifically because the animals are tame, well-tempered, trusting and house-broken. "These researchers are looking for the pet quality in dogs instead of those that are raised for research and don't know the love or freedom of having a home," Forsyth said. Daniel Ringler, professor and director of the University of Michigan's Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine whose facility uses the animals bought from the shelter, defended the lab's use of dogs in research medicine. Ringler said the Ann Arbor, Mich., lab only uses 600 dogs annually for experiments where a dog is more useful than smaller animals like rats and mice. "There is a size issue with dogs," Ringler said. "The actual tissue in dogs are more like human tissue." He argued that computer technology also can't replace medical research on dogs because programming is limited and inaccurate. "A computer doesn't know well enough how bones will react when metal is attached to it instead of tissue," Ringler said. "People can't program new knowledge in computers that won't exist until the future. We need to know more about human biology before we stop doing research on animals." |
