North Carolinei Humane Federation 



ThanK you, Members of the Animal Welfaie Act Study Committee 

 and Mi. Pell for inviting the North Carolina Humane Federation to 

 address the Committee. I am Donna brown, current Preiident of 

 the North Carolina Humane Federation, which is the umbrella 

 oi qani za t i on of all the local humane societies and animal 

 protection societies in North Carolina. 



It has been aliened that there is no need to extend the 

 Animal Welfare Act to include city and county animal shelters 

 because conditions in these facilities are good. We did not 

 believe that to be true, based upon our experience, and thus we 

 .•^rt out to collect data on the state of animal shelters in North 

 Carolina. We sent out a letter to the presidents of all sixty- 

 nine humane societies and animal welfare organisations in North 

 Carolina explaining the purpose of this Committee and asking for 

 their help in visiting their local animal facilities and 

 assessing the conditions, documenting their observations with 

 photographs if possible. The Federation offered to help identify 

 people in the area who might be called upon to make these visits 

 if the president of the local society was unable to do so. Some 

 of these humane societies serve more than one county, but there 

 were still several counties that had no local humane society. In 

 some cases we were able to ask Federation members who lived in 

 that area to visit those facilities. We also mailed a letter to 

 all county managers and directors of health departments that were 

 responsible for animal facilities. This letter informed them of 

 the issue and solicited their input. 



Based upon the inspection sheet used by the N. C. Department 

 of Agriculture to inspect private humane-society run animal 

 facilities, we devised a simple questionnaire for people to use 

 when visiting a shelter. We also included several items on the 

 questionnaire that are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act, but 

 are important considerations in shelter operation. This input 

 came primarily from the Humane Society of the United States. 



Telephone follow-up of all the humane society presidents 

 increased our response rate so that we have data from 35 

 counties . 



The data indicate that there are conditions in animal 

 facilities in North Carolina that clearly do not meet the 

 specifications of the Animal Welfare Act, both in terms of 

 adequacy of physical conditions and in terms of management 

 practices. In some facilities, such basic considerations as 

 food, shelter, sanitation, and a painless death for tne animals 

 were seriously compromised or were lacking. 



We also found some facilities which met or exceeded the 

 minimum standards set forth in the Animal Welfare Act and were 

 run competently and with compassion by caring and knowledgeable 



33- 



