Agency Has Duty to Assure Dumped 'Pets' Not Cruelly Killed

For Immediate Release:
July 30, 2009

Contact:
Stephanie Bell 757-622-7382

Today, PETA sent an urgent letter to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission urging the agency to ensure that Burmese pythons who have been dumped in the Everglades are euthanized in keeping with American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) guidelines. The commission's permit requirements currently allow for bludgeoning, which is often not humane, and PETA is asking that hunters be required instead to use methods that will ensure a humane death for these abandoned animals.

"It's not the snakes' fault that human beings bought them on a whim, tired of them, and chucked them out," says PETA Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. "It's a crime in Florida to cause any animal unnecessary pain or suffering, so officials are duty bound to ensure that animals -- not only those we know and love but also those we might find strange or scary -- are provided with a humane death."

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA's letter to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission follows.

July 30, 2009

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
620 S. Meridian St.
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1600

Dear Commissioners:

I am writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 2 million members and supporters to express our concerns regarding the manner in which Burmese pythons and other reptiles may be killed pursuant to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's permit programs.

PETA is concerned that the methods of euthanasia -- a word that is derived from the Greek terms for "good death" -- as set forth in the Burmese python permit do not appear to be accepted methods of euthanasia for reptiles and thus may lead to an unnecessarily cruel death for these animals.(1) The Commission's Web site indicates that pythons who are captured "must be killed with a blunt or sharp hand-held device."(2) However, the American Veterinary Medical Association's (AVMA) Guidelines on Euthanasia, while providing for cranial concussion (stunning) for most reptiles, advises that the procedure must be followed by decapitation, pithing, or some other physical method.(3)  In addition, the AVMA does not consider decapitation alone to be an acceptable form of euthanasia.(4)  The Commission's endorsement of blunt trauma or use of a "sharp hand-held device," apparently with no additional direction to permitholders, fails to ensure a humane death for the animals who are killed as part of the state's effort to eradicate Burmese pythons from the Everglades.

PETA agrees with the AVMA's tenet that "[i]t is our responsibility ... as human beings to ensure that if an animal's life is to be taken, it is done with the highest degree of respect, and with an emphasis on making the death as painless and distress free as possible."(5)  PETA would like your assurance that adherence to a method of euthanasia approved by the AMVA for the particular species is included in each permit issued to kill Burmese pythons and other "reptiles of concern" under the Commission's permit programs.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Lori Kettler
Senior Counsel
PETA Foundation

1) Florida's cruelty-to-animals statute criminalizes the "cruel death, or excess or repeated infliction of unnecessary pain or suffering" on an animal. Fl. Stat. 828.12. "Cruelty" is defined in the statute to include "every act, omission, or neglect whereby unnecessary or unjustifiable pain or suffering is caused, ... permitted, or allowed to continue when there is reasonable remedy or relief." Fl. Stat. 828.02.
2) http://myfwc.com/NEWSROOM/Resources/News_Resources_PythonPermitFAQs.htm.
3) American Veterinary Medical Association, AVMA Guidelines on Euthanasia 21 (2007), available at http://www.avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf.
4) Id. at 20.
5) Id. at 1.