The Feral Freedom program: leave outdoor cats where they are!

Even in parts of the country in which the dog overpopulation problem is mostly under control, the cat overpopulation problem is still rampant. Cats entering shelters often have a less than 50% chance of adoption, down to 10% or less in many communities. Certainly, unfriendly feral cats coming in to shelters have a miniscule chance of adoption, so small that most shelters euthanize them rather than trying to find them a barn home.

On the other hand, cats living outdoors often do very well for themselves. Contrary to the popular assumption that the life of an outdoor cat is nasty, brutish, and short, most of the cats coming through trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs are healthy. They may not live as long as indoor cats, but they are not miserable. To some people, the idea of euthanizing a cat rather than run the risk of its being hit by a car in a year seems silly or even a little mean.

The city of Jacksonville, Florida, recognized that the choice for outdoor cats, feral or not, was either to be spayed/neutered and returned to their territory, or euthanized. That was it. Certainly feral cats stood no chance of adoption, and the influx of friendly cats was so great that their chances weren’t much better. That realization was the seed of Jacksonville’s Feral Freedom program. This program facilitates the sterilization, vaccination, and return of all healthy outdoor cats that are presented to the shelter. These cats come from the surrender of “stray” cats and from active trapping. Rather than become shelter inhabitants, they are returned to the location where they were originally trapped or picked up.

Does it cost a lot? Because the city was holding all cats for five days in case an owner came to reclaim them, and paying for euthanasia and disposal of the body, the program costs the same as the previous policy, or a little less.

Do owners fail to find actual stray cats when they are not held in a shelter? Research has shown that stray cats are less likely to be reunited with their owners in shelters than if they are left outside to find their own way home. Many owners do not expect to see their outdoor cats daily, and may not start looking for a missing cat until after it has already been euthanized in a shelter.

Are outdoor cats nuisances? Some certainly can be, although sterilization does reduce nuisance behavior, and vaccination reduces disease. (Cats are much more likely to get sick in a shelter than outdoors.) Feral Freedom provides assistance to people with complaints about individual cats. They will trap, sterilize/vaccinate, and return the cat, and then suggest that people who want it off their property try methods like motion-sensitive sprinklers. (And hilarity ensues.)

Do the good citizens of Jacksonville approve of this program? Jacksonville initially implemented the program on the sly without a lot of publicity, but did publicize it once it had proven to reduce cat euthanasia rates in shelters. The city receives complaints about individual cats, but rarely about the program as a whole. Most people, when they understand that the cat’s choice is euthanasia or return, accept that putting the cat in a shelter is not a humane option. (Some people do disagree. That will be true of almost any public policy, except maybe the one where every new baby gets a chocolate eclair.) But cats will not be relocated, even problem cats. Aside from the question of how well a cat will do when dropped down into a new territory, there is nowhere for them to go. There are no places that want more outdoor cats.

And, of course, the ethical questions. Isn’t it the job of a shelter to provide care for homeless animals? Of course it is. But if the shelter does not have the resources to provide for all of them, does it become the job of the shelter to kill them when they are not otherwise suffering? And aren’t cats better off in a good home? Of course they are. But if there is no good home available (or even bad one), are they better off dead?

I certainly recognize that this approach to cat overpopulation is a controversial one and that many will disagree with it. (If there is interest, I may blog later about the questions of communicable disease in outdoor cats, or predation of wildlife by outdoor cats.) But I think we have reached the point in dealing with the pet overpopulation problem where revolutionary ideas are worth trying, because we have tried almost everything that is non-revolutionary. Don’t get me wrong: euthanasia of healthy domesticated animals has certainly decreased in the past decades. But there is still a long way to go. As one of my faculty advisors said to me recently, “It’s an exciting time in shelter medicine. Everything’s on the table.”

For more information:

• Feral Freedom Guide from Best Friends
• Feline Shelter Intake Reduction Program FAQs (PDF)
• TNR Fact Sheets from Vox Felina
• Feral Freedom comes to DeKalb country, Georgia

Organic standards and animal welfare

Over on Animal Science Review, Austin J. Bouck just posted his paper, Do organic animal operations encourage management decisions that negatively impact animal welfare? Personally, I do tend to buy organic dairy products when I can in hopes that I’m contributing to improved animal welfare, even though deep in my heart I suspect I’m doing no such thing. In veterinary school, classmates told me they avoided buying organic because of things they had seen on organic farms. I’ve argued before that the best way to ensure the welfare of the animals whose products you consume is to make your purchases at a local farmer’s market, but of course not everyone has access to those. So this question of whether organic is good for animal welfare or not is a pressing one.

Austin starts out with a discussion of terminology. The word “organic” has a legal meaning, but many producers also use terms like “natural” and “free-range,” which don’t. What do these terms mean to producers and what do they mean to consumers? I have heard veterinarians dismiss these terms as meaningless, but Austin describes a tendency among organic producers to view their ecocentric model of farm management as a way of managing their animals “naturally.” In an ecocentric model, overall sustainability of the farm and interactions with the environment take priority over individual health.

If that’s the case, what are the consequences to individual health of prioritizing the environment over the individual? Austin uses as his examples dairy cows, focusing on the use of antibiotics to treat infected udders, and chickens, focusing on the use of medication for parasite infection. In both cases, he describes the strong incentives for organic farmers to withhold treatment for disease, as once an animal has been treated with an antibiotic or antiparasitic, its products (milk, meat, or eggs) can no longer be considered organic. Austin explores alternative treatments and concludes that none are effective. He notes that in Europe, use of antibiotics and antiparasitics to treat clinical disease is legal in organic production; only preventive use is banned. He advocates a change in U.S. regulations to imitate the European model, on the reasonable theory that if incentive to withhold treatment is removed, then more sick animals will be treated.

I agree! I would have been very interested to hear some statistics about how many animals go untreated on organic farms, or how far illness on these farms might be allowed to progress before animals are treated, compared farms using conventional methods. Austin doesn’t say, and I think this is because no one really knows. It would be an interesting line of research, and possibly a necessary one if we want to get the American public fired up to support change in the current regulations. If a video of a sick cow being moved by a forklift was invigorating to the animal welfare community, maybe some videos of untreated sick animals on organic farms would be as well.

Check out the paper. It’s an interesting read.