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Injection Costs by City are Rebutted

12/05/2004

Text by © Lisa Sandberg/San Antonio Express-News/ZUMA Press

     The cost of closing the gas chambers at the San Antonio animal pound and using lethal injections for euthanasia could be a fraction of the city's estimate, according to a standard analysis used by other municipal pounds.

     Metro Health Director Dr. Fernando Guerra told city leaders at a packed public forum last week that it would cost as much as $500,000 for equipment and additional staff to administer the injections.

     That would increase the pound budget of $3.2 million by 16 percent, a significant expansion for an agency that has been a low city priority and has had its staffing trimmed in the past five years.

     But the Express-News, using a formula relied on by animal-control departments around the country, found the annual cost of lethal injections at the pound would be no more than $74,000 — including startup and staffing costs — to euthanize nearly 50,000 cats and dogs, the same number that will be gassed this year.

     The Express-News could not find out by the end of the week how much the pound spends on its three gas chambers for comparison.

     "The bottom line is the number is almost the same. It's essentially a wash," said Douglas Fakkema, a nationally recognized expert in animal euthanasia who long has advocated injection as the most humane method of putting down animals.

     Fakkema devised the 2 and a half-page formula that the Express-News used to calculate the San Antonio costs. Officials at the animal pound in Chicago said Fakkema's formula served as a guide when they converted to injection four years ago and it accurately reflected their costs.

     Officials at other city and county pounds said they are familiar with Fakkema's work and trust his numbers.

     Fakkema, a former training official with American Humane who now is director of international training programs for the Houston-based Spay Neuter Assistance Program, estimates that it costs 5 cents more for an animal to be euthanized in a carbon monoxide chamber that isn't overcrowded than by an injection of sodium pentobarbital, $1.32 per animal versus $1.27.

     Public demand to close the gas chambers has grown since the newspaper last month reported that San Antonio euthanizes more animals per capita than any other large city, and is the last major city in the country to kill stray and unwanted pets with carbon monoxide.

     Pound officials say the public bears responsibility for the large stray population, forcing dogcatchers to round up — and put down — roughly 900 dogs and cats a week.

     They say the gas chambers remain the most efficient means to deal with such numbers.

     But animal-welfare advocates say other cities have dealt with runaway stray populations with progressive spay and neuter programs and by enlisting volunteers and pet adoption groups to take in more dogs and cats.

     Their success, they say, is evident in the numbers: Animal euthanasia has declined around the country by 80 percent in the past 20 years, while San Antonio's rate has doubled.

     The San Antonio pound has had minimal cooperation with adoption groups, leaving the facility overburdened with strays.

     The pound kills almost nine of every 10 animals in its kennels. Pound officials say they will hire a volunteer coordinator to help lower the rate, but the job has not yet been filled.

     Public outrage, meanwhile, has focused on the outmoded gas chambers. A number of residents demanded at two public forums that they be closed immediately. Pound director Dr. William Lammers, however, has said he plans to keep using gas chambers when a new $12 million pound opens in 2007.

     The discrepancy between Guerra's cost estimate and Fakkema's has led some to challenge the motives of San Antonio officials.

     "Change is always scary," said Kathryn Bice, executive director of the Humane Society of Bexar County, who last week began a public campaign to persuade city leaders to get rid of the chambers.

     "People just assume it's more expensive because it's chemicals and because it's one-on-one euthanasia," said Kate Pullen, director of animal-sheltering issues at the Humane Society of the United States, which isn't affiliated with the Bexar County Humane Society.

     But rarely do officials "sit down and run the numbers," Pullen said. "It's a snap decision. We've got to say something, so let's say it costs too much."

     So what is the city basing its figures on?

     Guerra said the city would need to hire eight to 10 workers; construct a new building or renovate an existing structure where the euthanasia would take place; institute a record-keeping system to account for the medicine; and pay for the solutions, syringes and needles, the cost of which he hadn't yet calculated.

     >"Just from the staff side, we're talking $350,000 a year," he said.

     "That's crazy," Fakkema said. "I'd like to see where they got those numbers. It's not rooted in any fact."

     According to Fakkema's model, a well-trained team of three people can euthanize in about five hours the 154 cats and dogs that are killed on average at the San Antonio pound every day of the week but Sunday.

     Dogs can be euthanized by injection in about two minutes. Cats take about a minute, said Fakkema, who travels throughout the United States and Mexico training workers at animal-control agencies on the proper techniques of euthanasia by injection.

     Workers elsewhere typically give aggressive animals sedatives in their food or they can sedate them with a dart. Aggressive animals can also be placed in a squeeze cage.

     Fakkema says he doubts the city would have to build a new structure or do expensive renovations. A stainless steel table and good lighting could be installed in the building that now houses the gas chambers.

     "You don't need a big room. In fact, it gets in the way," he said.

     Major animal-welfare groups call injection the preferred form of euthanasia or the only acceptable method. The Humane Society of the United States is now tweaking its euthanasia statement to read that that use of carbon monoxide gas is conditionally acceptable only in states that don't allow shelters direct access to sodium pentobarbital.

     Texas and 29 other states do allow shelters direct access to the drug, Pullen said.

     Four years ago, Nikki Proutsos oversaw the transition in Chicago to injections from gas. She remembers fretting about the change. "Do we have enough staff? Are we well enough trained?" Chicago added five positions to carry out its transition and to raise its quality of care. Initial concerns and reluctance among staff have dissipated.

     "The current staff would never allow us to go back," Proutsos said.

     In 1989, Dr. Dawn Blackmar oversaw the transition to injections at Harris County's animal control department, which then received about 24,000 animals a year.

     Blackmar believes it is more time consuming and more expensive to administer injections to large number of animals, but she said it is much less stressful for the animals and for the staff.

     Putting animals in a gas chamber, leaving the room and closing the door "sounds good until you have to do it," Blackmar said.

     She said no one can avoid being affected by the "yelping and crying and screaming" of animals as they're gassed, or from the sight of animals that are still alive when they're pulled out of the chamber. Blackmar said neither she nor her staff would ever return to the chamber.

     City officials in San Antonio, meanwhile, say they'll be relying on Guerra's numbers to make decisions about whether to get rid of the chambers.

     City Council members Carroll Schubert and Julián Castro, both mayoral candidates, said they hoped to hear more about costs from city staff as well as outside experts. "We need to get correct numbers, accurate numbers," Castro said.

     Critics of San Antonio's pound say they hope the debate about gas chambers doesn't overshadow the larger issue of moving Animal Care and Control in a more progressive direction.

     Citizens for Pound Reform, a newly formed umbrella group that also is known as Citizens for Pound Adoption Change, is pressing for leadership change at animal control and a shift in city funding to tackle the root causes of pet overpopulation.

     Organizer Laura Stanford says the city could divert part of the $12 million for the new facility into educational and spay/neuter programs.

     Guerra last week said it could take as long as a decade to switch to injection euthanasia.

     It's not clear if the city is on schedule to comply with a new Texas law that stipulates that certain animals be euthanized with injection.

     Under the Texas Health Administrative Code, which was passed last year and takes effect Jan. 1, animals in Texas under 4 months of age and animals that suffer from respiratory problems should be killed with sodium pentobarbital.

     Guerra said the pound would "over a period of several months" ensure that younger animals be euthanized by injection.

     This text may not be edited or altered, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. For editorial licensing of the pictures or text, please contact ZUMA Press at (949) 494.7704 or e-mail Info@zReportage.com.

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