RSPCA inquiry?
Numerous and widespread doubts .about the capacity of the RSPCA to fulfil its titular function to prevent cruelty to animals will be renewed and strengthened by disclosures that the Society has for some time been using, for the execution of strays, a machine called the Electrothanator, which imposes horrendous sufferings on the animals against whom it is used. Even if we leave altogether aside the general question of how it is that a Society nationally based, and supposed to prevent cruelty to and find homes for lost, stray or suffering animals, can be involved in the killing of so many thousands a year, while its local branches are severely under-financed and required to make contributions to the central administrative activities of the RSPCA, in spite of the fact that the society's general income is massive, the defence offered of the use of the Electrothanator should be looked at askance. To use intravenous injection as an alter-, native method of human destruction would be impossible, says a Society spokesman, because too expensive: it would cost another £80,000 a year, which cannot be afforded. Had the Society not moved to new and more luxurious headquarters, had it been able to save something on its high administrative expenditure, had it been able to make any serious economies on the grossly overblown figures in its most recent annual general reports, the availability of £80,000 would have been the least of its problems. Decidedly the time has come for a public inquiry into the activities, and the justification of the activities, of the RSPCA.
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