A news analysis by Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Pets and state legislators have more in common than the occasional pest. Both are caught in the middle of an escalating spat between for-profit and nonprofit animal caregivers.
On one side are the state’s veterinarians, who see animal shelters as an unregulated, growing industry where animals sometimes aren’t treated appropriately. They want shelters to be regulated.
“The shelter industry is huge,” said Dr. Patricia Hill, a Greenville veterinarian who is immediate past president of the S.C. Association of Veterinarians. “It is a business entity that has grown untethered in accountability and responsibility.” Later she added, “Shelters need to operate at the same standards that veterinarians have.”
But hold on says Joe Elmore, CEO of the Charleston Animal Society, a shelter in the Lowcountry. Who, he asks, do you think provides and supervises care at shelters? Veterinarians, who have to get the same training and have the same oversight as for-profit veterinarians.
“We provide various levels of treatment to nearly upward of 20,000 animals each year,” he told a House subcommittee last week. “ In 2008, the Animal Society euthanized nearly 7,000 animals. Last year, we euthanized only the untreatable ones, approximately 500. Making veterinary care accessible and affordable has been a significant factor in this phenomenal effort of saving lives.”
Where they seem to agree
Currently, there are at least five bills that deal with veterinary care in South Carolina. One bill, S. 979, seeks more accountability for shelters — better record-keeping across the board on animals in their care and more overall documentation to the state annually. Another bill, S. 980, calls for prescription drugs for animals to be labeled. Also on the legislative tally sheet is S. 981, which would create a state license plate touting “No more homeless pets.” The last two bills passed the Senate this week and headed to the House.
Veterinarians say they hear complaints about animals who receive treatment at shelters in the state. While offering little hard evidence, they point to unlabelled prescription medication that may be provided to pets unsafely. They say records aren’t kept properly to allow them to figure out an animal patient’s history so they can appropriately treat an animal.
“To continue good care, you need a history on the progression of that disease and what treatment has been done,” Hill said, admitting that data on the number of times that prescriptions offered in plastic bags are hard to come by. “I don’t have statistics, but if it happens once, it’s too much,” she said.
Elmore, who describes Hill’s organization as a special-interest group that puts profits over pets, pointed to some hard numbers. He told House members there had been about 100 complaints to state regulators about veterinarians over the last seven years. They generated 59 punitive actions, he said. All but one were against for-profit veterinarians.
“This notion that they want to look at the quality of care — they need to look inward,” he said Thursday. “If you’re pointing the finger at us, then why does the data suggest otherwise?”
Fortunately, it seems both sides generally agree on record-keeping and labeling proposals, even though they don’t seem to understand there’s a lot of common ground. For example, Elmore said the labeling requirements really aren’t needed because they’re already state law, but if another law seeks the same thing even though it’s just a smokescreen, the new law would be fine. And when asked if his organization supported the record-keeping measure, he immediately said, “absolutely.”
Where they still disagree
So it’s the two remaining bills, S. 687 and H. 5160, that seem to cause much of the headaches. While they include most of the accountability and labeling proposals in the other bills, it’s other things that have brought the sides to loggerheads. The bills would limit how shelters could provide care. And they call for rules of where mobile nonprofit clinics can set up in relation to veterinarian offices. Furthermore, they call for limits on time that free prescriptions can be dispensed for animal care.
Surrounding these bigger bills is an aura of misinformation, innuendo, hyperbole, distrust, charges, countercharges and increasing vitriol.
The bills would require pet owners to sign an affidavit of their financial status to qualify for free care at a shelter — a provision that Elmore said was insulting, referring to the story of a veteran whose service dog the shelter treated. “I am not going to ask a veteran who has gone overseas … to shame himself in going through that process.”
Hill said nonprofit shelters serve a noble mission in providing care, but added “People who can afford private veterinarian care should not be able to play on shelters’ compassion and charity for low-cost care while low-income pet owners are left out. The Animal Welfare Law ensures pet owners who are truly in need will have access to basic veterinary care at shelters.”
The bills also would restrict shelters from providing an array of services, which Elmore said would limit choices in the marketplace.
“Our veterinarians are licensed and go to the same schools as for-profit veterinarians. They come under the same oversight,” he said. “To have them have to look at some sort of spreadsheet or laundry list (of services before they could provide treatment), well, if we get into that kind of government regulation of what we can and can’t do, that’s very dangerous.”
Hill said what was dangerous was for some people to treat pets without being veterinarians.
“When I tell people there are no penalties for people practicing veterinary medicine in this state without a license, people are amazed by that,” she said. “We’re saying they should have the same regulations that veterinarians have and they don’t.”
What’s next
The two comprehensive bills, S. 687 and H. 5160, appear to be stalled. Because they failed to get approved in their originating chambers before May 1, they would have to get a supermajority to be sent to the other chamber.
But the legislative process would allow the provisions of either bill to be added — or bobtailed — onto the labeling or accountability measures sent to the House by the Senate.
Translation: While there’s been a lot of work put into the standards sought by veterinarians over the last four years, the legislature is focused on getting a budget by June. But the issue, which may be dead, could come up somehow in the final days of the session.
But if the measures fail this year, look for new bills to be filed next year. Maybe, as some suggest, the bitter fights of the past that have resulted in some compromises in recent months will generate new proposals that are acceptable to all.
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