Why tell the truth, when you can mischaracterize No Kill AND hurt animals?

​When we first began advocating for No Kill in Long Beach five years ago, a very small group of people started grumbling that No Kill actually meant "never euthanize" and led to animal cruelty and warehousing of animals at shelters. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, and we soon cleared that up, speaking at City Council to clear up ANY misunderstandings whatsoever. We'll take a moment to do that again here on this page today.

To first address the mistaken idea that animals are not euthanized when they are suffering under No Kill: This is completely, totally and unequivocally INCORRECT. No Kill absolutely believes in euthanasia of animals that are suffering and are past help. In those cases, euthanasia is humane and necessary to relieve irremediable suffering. However, if an animal is deemed treatable by a veterinarian, euthanasia is not appropriate: Treatment is. No Kill makes a very clear distinction, then, between killing, which is the taking of the life of animals that are healthy or treatable, and euthanasia, which is the taking of the life of an animal when it is irremediably past help.

That's the No Kill stance on euthanasia, but what makes No Kill an eminently effective approach to sheltering is No Kill's emphasis on having a secure, stable and reliable system in place, in the form of programs, that 1) supports the public to keep animals out of the shelter if possible, and 2) gets animals out of the shelter as quickly as safely possible once they're in.

People who bring up completely erroneous definitions of No Kill are generally attempting to discredit it as a movement. They are disgruntled people in the sheltering profession who invested their time and effort into a broken system and basically bought into the idea that you can only save some of the animals some of the time, and have to kill the rest. Some of them have found ways to make significant amounts of money through this broken system and see No Kill as a threat to their revenue stream. This is enough for them to fight innovations in animal sheltering tooth and nail, in spite of the fact that in doing so, they are advocating for the unnecessary killing of animals.

The solutions to animal killing in our shelters that originated in the No Kill movement are being implemented successfully in shelters across the nation.

If it's being done by other shelters, it can be done, and opposing the programs that No Kill advocates for is both irrational and harmful for animals.

No Kill is a movement whose time is here. The animals have waited long enough for humane shelters that offer lifesaving instead of death. 

It is absolutely certain that the majority of shelters in this country will one day be No Kill shelters, and we'll look back on this dark time in our history and wonder how people could have ever argued against it. 

Be on the right side of history - advocate for our shelter animals. Know what No Kill REALLY is, and spread the word.

INFORM - ADVOCATE - EDUCATE - SHARE

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