Pounds
U.S. animal shelters and pounds were established for the purpose of taking in homeless animals in order to protect the animals and public health. Some animals are taken to animal shelters by guardians who can no longer keep them. Others are strays who are taken in by concerned individuals, police officers, or animal-control officers. While animal shelters take in many species of animals, almost all of them are former companion animals or their offspring.
What Is Pound Seizure? “Pound seizure” is the practice by which animal shelters sell or release stray, lost, or abandoned dogs and cats to laboratories or to animal dealers who sell the animals to laboratories for use in experiments. If an animal shelter or pound is located in a state or county that has a pound-seizure requirement, animal shelters must turn over animals who are not claimed by former or new guardians within a certain number of days (typically five) to laboratories that ask for them. Pound seizure is illegal in Denmark, England, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In the U.S., there is no federal law prohibiting pound seizure, but Washington, D.C., and 18 states—California (not banned at the state level, but banned in every county), Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia—forbid it. Most other states have no law prohibiting pound seizure, leaving it to the discretion of each animal shelter or to local government agencies, but Oklahoma requires government-run shelters to turn over animals to laboratories on demand. Please visit http://www.banpoundseizure.org/yourstate.shtml for more information. The National Animal Control Association officially opposes pound seizure.(1) |