The proposal to include a metric -- or numbers -- in this legislation is aimed solely at one shelter organiztion in the Commonwealth, namely PETA.  PETA takes in and humanely euthanizes the sick, neglected and abandoned animals that would otherwise be hit by cars, be injured in fights or starve to death.  Most importantly, PETA handles outright dangerous animals. 

     Private shelters such as Richmond SPCA or Lynchburg Humane sit on huge assets, aggregated via lucrative contracts with municipalities, affluent boards of directors, and heartwrenching "no-kill" appeals to well-intended office holders and other Virginians.  They and others who boast of a "save rate" (the stated goal of No-Kill Virginia and Virginia High Five) greater than 90% fail to let the public know how this is achieved.  Ask yourself, how can that be done?  It can be accomplished by transfer of dogs from shelter to shelter, foster to foster, renaming, and breed disguising.  With any luck at all, the most dangerous of them can be shipped out of state before they can inflict serious mauling on an unwitting citizen or kill the citizen's domestic pets.  And how would you like to spend the next nine or ten years living in crates and being hauled up and down Virginia highways.

     As a simple nurse, I am hesitant to challenge a physician such as the one who has commented "modern policies and procedures can save 80 to 90% of shelter dogs."  That comment is in conflict with current published medical and trauma literature.  Any physician has access to these studies.

     Big Humane has taken advantage of Virginia's apparent collective guilt arising from the Michael Vick case and profiteered financially, while divorcing itself from public safety concerns.  The metrics question has no real basis in sensible legislation.  Rather, it is an attempt to suppress humane treatment of animals and human beings.