Pound Seizure or Pound Release

The text is copied from PETA’s Factsheet on Companion Animals

The information specific to Michigan was researched and provided by Liska Associates

Pound Seizure: The Shame of Shelters

The public and private pounds and shelters of the United States were established to care for homeless animals, for both humane and public health reasons. Some are brought to the shelters by guardians who can no longer keep them but usually hope that they are adopted. Others are brought in by concerned individuals, police or animal control officers. These animals have been abandoned by their families, have run away from home, or have simply gotten lost. While shelters sometimes take in other animals, most of their charges are dogs, cats, puppies and kittens, almost all of them former companion animals or their offspring.

 

Pound Seizure Defined

Pound seizure means that animals who arrive in a pound our shelter and who are not claimed by former or new guardians within a specified time limit, which may be as short as a day or so, are required by law to be turned over on demand to laboratories for experimentation. The ultimate fate of these animals is inevitably death.

Pound Seizure is illegal in England, Denmark, Sweden and Holland. In the United States there is no federal law regarding pound seizure, but 14 states forbid it. Pound seizure is not illegal in Michigan and is practiced in many counties and the city of Detroit.

 

Pound Seizure Problems

Animal protection organizations object strongly to pound seizure and for good reason. Animals who were once well-loved companions suffer the double blow of living in a laboratory cage, as well as feeling the loss of their human friends. Families experience the anguish of knowing that a lost animal or one they have given up may have been killed in a painful experiment. In communities that allow or enforce pound seizure, people often choose to abandon on the street or in a field, animals they cannot keep, rather than send them on their way to a laboratory via the local animal control facility, thus adding to the problem of homeless strays. Some animal control facilities have been known to quickly sell their healthiest and most adoptable wards to a laboratory rather than adopt them to a new home.

 

What You Can Do

If you live in a county or city that practices pound seizure, contact your local humane society (previous screen) to see if their is any current initiative to stop the practice. If there is no local movement to stop pound seizure in your community, but you are interested in halting the sale of former pet and stray animals to animal dealers or research facilities e-mail us at: harriss@voyager.net for more information.
 

   Additional Pound Seizure Information


Where is Pound Seizure-Pound Release practiced in Michigan?

Counties with Pound Seizure/Pound Release (as of November 2001)

  1. Clinton

  2. Gratiot

  3. Ingham

  4. Jackson

  5. Kent¹

  6. Mecosta

  7. Midland

  8. Montcalm

  9. Montmorency

  10. Osceola

  11. Shiawassee

  12. St. Joseph

  13. Tuscola

Cities that Practice Pound Seizure-Pound Release

  1. Detroit¹

  2. Ecorse-River Rouge

  3. Inkster

Townships

  1. Huron

  2. Sumpter

(Both in Wayne County)

¹Only release to Michigan research labs

Who and where are these "class B research animal dealers?

  1. Hodgins Kennels, Howell

  2. Cheri-Hill Kennels, Stanwood

  3. R&R Research, Howard City

 

States that PROHIBIT Pound Seizure

1. Connecticut
2. Delaware
3. Hawaii
4. Maine
5. Maryland
6. Massachusetts
7. New Hampshire
8. New Jersey
9. Pennsylvania
10. Rhode Island
11. Vermont