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UPDATE:
We recently learned that Yadkin County followed through on its promise to construct a new animal shelter with many important improvements. Click here to see photos of the new climate-controlled, easy-to-clean, comfortable facility that has been constructed thanks to the outcry of concerned individuals like you! Although the progress that Yadkin County has made is vast, the county is still poisoning animals to death in a carbon monoxide gassing box. It has upgraded from the old chest freezer that it had evidently been using for this purpose—and the new box was intentionally manufactured for gassing animals—but local residents continue to report that it is being misused. They also report that the county lacks a humane euthanasia method for animals who are elderly, ill, pregnant, or injured. Death by gas poisoning is often slow and agonizing for these animals, and sometimes it doesn’t even work. We regularly receive reports that animals have regained consciousness at landfills and in freezers after being gassed—even in commercially constructed chambers.
Please write to Yadkin County officials and urge them to switch to the humane euthanasia method of sodium pentobarbital injections for animals who have not been adopted from the animal shelter. Explain that, at the very least, the county must provide euthanasia by injection to those animals who cannot humanely—or legally—be gassed (i.e., puppies, kittens, and elderly, ill, injured, and pregnant animals). Please also stay in touch with the Yadkin County Humane Society to find out how you can help improve conditions for lost and homeless animals in the community.
Keep speaking up for animals—you are making a big difference!
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Despite the efforts of the local humane society and animal
advocates throughout the U.S., Yadkin County officials continue to
ignore the dire living—and dying—conditions for the unwanted
animals whose care and custody they are charged with. Commissioners
don’t seem to consider their county’s unwanted animals
as worthy of anything more than the county landfill adjacent to the
animal shelter.
Many of you remember lending your voices to the lost, stray, and abandoned
animals of Yadkin County, North Carolina. Complaints about the county
“shelter”—a dilapidated collection of cramped wire-and-wood
cages with metal roofs offering little to no protection from the elements—have
been flooding PETA’s headquarters for years. These animals
still need your help.
 PETA
and many concerned citizens have attempted—in vain—to
help Yadkin County improve the deplorable conditions at its shelter.
In 1996, county officials rejected an offer to pay the difference
in cost between intravenous injections (the most humane method of
euthanasia) and the gas chamber. In May 2002, after receiving increased
pressure from PETA and local residents, Yadkin County commissioners
finally voted to put $75,000 toward the construction of a new shelter
if the community could raise an additional $75,000. PETA offered to
donate $15,000 toward the construction of the shelter if the county
would ensure that certain humane standards were met. The commissioners
never bothered to respond directly to PETA (but Commissioner Thomas
Wooten had the audacity to tell the media that the offer was “not
as much as [he] would have liked” and that each of PETA’s
750,000 members should be willing to donate $1! And in January 2003,
commissioners turned down an offer by the Humane Society of the United
States (HSUS) to visit the shelter and make suggestions for improvements
for free. Why? County Manager Cecil Wood told the local paper,
the Elkin Tribune, “We’re already aware of the
problems we have over there. We’re focusing on a new shelter.”
 It
is now nearly a year later, and nothing has changed for the needy
animals in Yadkin County. Not only has a new shelter not been built,
little if any effort is being made to find land to build it on, either!
And the animals are paying the price, often with their lives.
Animals at the shelter are killed in a crude, windowless metal box
pumped full of carbon monoxide. Even adequate carbon monoxide equipment
can fail, subjecting fully conscious animals to the horror of watching
and hearing others struggle and suffer as they succumb to the fumes.
But makeshift chambers, like the one used by Yadkin County, are virtually
guaranteed to subject animals to suffering and to a prolonged, agonizing
death. PETA is told—and video
footage confirms—that animals are crammed into the box one
on top of another and that live animals are thrown in, layer after
layer, on top of dead and dying ones. A shelter employee allegedly
once bragged about being able to stuff more than 80 animals into the
tiny “kill box” at once.
Yadkin County’s Annual
Animal Control Report for January 1, 2003, through October 11, 2003,
shows that out of 1,933 animals killed, only four puppies and four
kittens were euthanized by a veterinarian. This means that the rest
of the animals—including the old, young, and sick ones, who
are particularly susceptible to gas-related trauma because they breathe
and circulate oxygen and other gases differently than healthy adult
animals—were crammed into and died inside the chamber that has
been used to kill animals at the shelter for years. (News reports
indicate that Yadkin County commissioners have spent nearly $7,000
on a new gas chamber, which they refuse to hook up until a new shelter
is built. So the new chamber sits unused.)
Yadkin County budget reports for 2001 through 2003 show that not one cent was slated to be spent on training for the animal control staff or on veterinary fees.
One complainant wrote to PETA to say that on one occasion, an adult dog had "a large flap of skin and muscle [lying] down over his left hip, exposing bone.
He lay from Wednesday until Friday on kill day. He had numerous other wounds, and the hip injury was teeming with maggots."
PETA's file on Yadkin County is full of similar heartbreaking accounts.
The General Statutes of North Carolina, specifically § 130A-192,
state that impounded animals who are not reclaimed can only be destroyed
by “a procedure approved by the American Veterinary Medical
Association, the Humane Society of the United States [HSUS], or …
the American Humane Association [AHA].”
The AVMA panel states that “inhalant agents [should] not be
used alone in animals less than 16 weeks old except to induce loss
of consciousness, followed by the use of some other method to kill
the animal.”
The HSUS states, “It is unacceptable to use [carbon monoxide]
for the euthanasia of dogs and cats who are … [o]ld …;
[u]nder the age of four months; [s]ick or injured; or ([o]bviously)
pregnant.”
The AHA considers euthanasia by injection of sodium pentobarbital
to be “the only acceptable method for euthanasia of dogs and
cats in animal shelters” and states, “American Humane
considers the use of any other lethal method for dogs and cats in
animal shelters unacceptable, including use of carbon monoxide ...”
The AVMA also specifies in its panel that when carbon monoxide is
used, the “chamber must be of the highest quality construction
and should allow for separation of individual animals … [and]
the chamber must be well lit and have view ports that allow personnel
direct observation of animals …,” neither of which is
followed by Yadkin County.
Moreover, Yadkin County has a mandatory kill policy, prohibiting adoptions,
supposedly because of a fear of rabies. However, the county dedicates
no resources to enforcing North Carolina law requiring that
animals be vaccinated against rabies. The excuse? Money, which, of
course, would be collected if violators of the state rabies law were
fined as warranted!
Conditions for animals before they are destroyed are equally cruel.
The rundown structure that animals are housed in offers little to
no protection from harsh wind, freezing or scorching temperatures,
rain, and snow and more often than not is covered in urine and feces.
Small, weak animals are housed in cages with aggressive large animals,
who bully the smaller animals and prevent them from eating or drinking.
Food bowls are not used at the facility, so food is simply thrown
on the ground, contaminated by feces, urine, dirt, and water, creating
a disgusting health hazard for the animals. The water buckets provided
for the animals appear to be too tall for small dogs to reach, and
the water is often foul and black with mold
and filth. Cats are forced to sit on wire
in small cages.
On November 4, 2003, Yadkin County Humane Society President Alice
Singh spoke to the House Interim Committee on the Prevention and Disposition
of Unwanted and Abandoned Companion Animals in Raleigh—formed
last August by the Honorable Speakers of the North Carolina House
of Representatives to address the overpopulation crisis and related
issues in the state—about dire conditions at the Yadkin County
shelter. Singh shared with committee members heart-wrenching photos
of the facility, and graphic video footage of gas
killings shot in 1997 (the same gas box is still in use) by a North
Carolina School of the Arts student. The following day, County
Manager Cecil Wood advised humane society members that they were no
longer welcome to use the county planning building for their monthly
meetings as they had been doing for nine months. The humane society
is the only hope that these animals have.
Please help. Commissioners must get their heads out of the
sand and immediately improve the deplorable conditions that the animals
have and continue to be subjected to right now. Construction of a
shelter hasn’t even begun and won’t be completed overnight
once it does. There’s a long list of simple
things that the county can and must do to make the shelter comply
with minimum national standards.
Please contact Yadkin County commissioners and urge them to stop shirking
their legal, moral, and financial responsibilities to their county’s
lost, abandoned, and unwanted animals. Ask that they provide these
animals with the least they deserve: a painless, peaceful death administered
by a licensed veterinarian at least until caring individuals can be
trained. Please push for immediate improvements to be made at the
current facility. Animals shouldn’t have to wait for fundraising
and construction efforts before having their basic needs met.
Yadkin County Commissioners
Cecil Wood, County Manager
Yadkin County Commission
P.O. Box 146
Yadkinville, NC 27055
336-679-4200
336-679-6005 (fax)
cwood@yadkincounty.gov
Roger Evans, Commissioner
6052 Aquilla Creek Rd.
East Bend, NC 27018
336-699-3261
Kim Clark Phillips, Commissioner
1139 Knoll Dr.
Yadkinville, NC 27055
336-463-4590
Allen Sneed, Commissioner
2511 Rockford Rd.
Yadkinville, NC 27055
336-961-2600
D.C. Swaim, Commissioner
2553 Swan Creek Rd.
Jonesville, NC 28642
336-835-5736
Brady Wooten, Commissioner
3540 Arnold Rd.
Hamptonville, NC 27020
336-468-8626
James Graham, County Attorney
P.O. Box 625
Yadkinville, NC 27055
336-679-8082
Please keep all correspondence and calls polite. Thank you.
For more information on helping homeless animals, please click
here and here.
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