San Francisco SPCA Aims to Live Up to City’s Namesake

The San Francisco SPCA has made a pact: Within a few months, the city will try to live up to its namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and nature.

By then, no adoptable animal, healthy or with a treatable disease, will be euthanized, said Richard Avanzino, the SPCA president for the last 20 years.

“What is unconscionable, abominable and outrageous is that animals, healthy and well behaved, are being killed because somebody says there are too many,” Avanzino said. “That is something we do not accept. That is something we find intolerable.”

For 101 of its 129 years, the San Francisco SPCA served as animal control for the city, rounding up stray animals and, later, enforcing the pooper-scooper law.

In 1989, it dropped the contract to concentrate on saving animals’ lives, Avanzino said. In 1994, it signed an agreement pledging to take any adoptable animal that couldn’t find a home.

Many believed that San Francisco then became this country’s first “no-kill city,” but Avanzino is not willing to claim that title yet.

In fiscal year 1995-96, 6,720 animals were euthanized. With more time and resources, some of those animals labeled “unadoptable” because of medical or behavioral problems might have been good pets, said Carl Friedman, director of San Francisco’s animal control department.

The San Francisco SPCA, which has space for 450 dogs and cats now and is expanding, will take any animal for which other shelters cannot find a home. With the expansion, the SPCA also will promise to care for any animal with a treatable disease and find it a home, Avanzino said.

When San Francisco’s SPCA gave up euthanizing, it was able to raise more money--it now has a $9.6-million budget--and spend that money on low-cost sterilization, he said.

In addition, the SPCA has used incentives to encourage people to care for their animals. For example, it pays $5 to owners who bring in a male cat for neutering. And it will pay for medical care for an animal with a long-term health problem after it is adopted.

At least three other major U.S. cities--Milwaukee, St. Louis and New York--are taking steps toward becoming no-kill cities, said Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, a newspaper based in Clinton, Wash.