Provo Municipal Council to discuss euthanasia methods at animal shelter | Provo News

The Provo Town Council will discuss the method by which animals are euthanized at the South Utah Valley Animal Shelter during its working session on Tuesday.

The Utah Animal Rights Coalition (UARC) has attended city council meetings across Utah County on the use of carbon monoxide to euthanize animals. The SUVAS uses the carbon monoxide chamber.

It is the Provo Animal Control Division that asked the council to hear a presentation on using the CO Chamber, how it works, and why the method UARC wants to use is dangerous and inhuman.

This is the same discussion that was brought up with the North Utah County Animal Shelter, which is also euthanizing animals in CO chambers.

On June 16, just before the Orem City Council meeting, dozens of protesters gathered around the corner in front of Orem City Office, holding up signs urging Orem to “ban the killing of gas chambers in the shelter,” claiming that they did Animal shelter “abuses dogs and cats”.

The Provo Council is expected to hear the same outcry on Tuesday. The Provo Council does not take public comments in its working sessions unless the Council Chairman has given permission. The regular night meeting was canceled this week.

The coalition-organized protest in June claimed that “dogs and cats at the Orem shelter are being dragged out of their cages and sealed in a chamber filled with toxic gas, a practice condemned by almost all veterinarians and shelter professionals, because they take up to 30 minutes for the animals to die while gasping for air and suffering. “

The coalition is calling for euthanasia to be through injections, a more humane process.

During the Orem protest, Jeremy Beckham, Executive Director of UARC, said in a written statement, “There is no reason this shelter cannot use euthanasia as the overwhelming majority of shelters already do.”

An online petition to end the “killing” of animals at NUVAS, located in Lindon and serving all cities in northern Utah County, received more than 70,290 signatures.

In a 2020 report by the American Veterinary Medical Association outlining euthanasia guidelines, the American Veterinary Medical Association states that the “preferred method of euthanasia in (animal control, rescue, and housing) facilities is to inject barbiturate or barbituric acid is “.

Tug Gettling, manager at North Animal Shelter, defended carbon dioxide euthanasia during a working session of Orem City Council, saying, “Because we believe this is the safest and less stressful method for them, but also the most humane method for the animal. ”

Gettling noted that the method is “insidious,” which means that it does not frighten animals and that death “comes quickly”.

“So if you look at the definition of humane death, that’s what you want,” he said. “Something with minimal discomfort or pain, something that works quickly and doesn’t startle you and completes the job.”

Gettling’s description of the euthanasia practice was very different from that of a Lindon resident, who said she was “traumatized” while working at the North Animal Shelter in 2013 and 2014.

During the public comment at Orem’s city council meeting, the Lindon resident said she vividly remembers animals screaming and howling in fear and cats that fought in the gas chamber. When she hears a hissing noise, “I experience very vivid flashbacks and I’m back in this room killing her animals.

“You have to understand that it is not human,” said the resident of Lindon. “It’s a very cruel method and these animals suffer.”

Orem Mayor Richard Brunst, finding that he and other city officials had been bombarded with emails from residents who opposed the practice of euthanasia, said the city would “wait and see what research shows and act accordingly” .

Now it is Provo’s turn to listen and decide if they want to change the way family pets and strays and unadopted animals are killed.

The Daily Herald reporter Connor Richards also contributed to this story. The Daily Herald reporter Genelle Pugmire can be contacted at [email protected], (801) 344-2910, Twitter @gpugmire.

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