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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: October 2006

Comparing costs of carbon monoxide
vs. sodium pentobarbital

 

After claims that gassing is safer for employees, the most persistent argument for killing animals by carbon monoxide instead of sodium pentobarbital is that carbon monoxide is less expensive--if only because most of the gas chambers now in use were installed and paid for decades ago.

 

"Switching to lethal injection would mean investing in drugs and training staff," reported Raleigh News & Observer staff writer Marti Maguire in February 2006. "That could strap counties that now spend as little as $20 per animal. The Orange County shelter spends $150 per animal," using lethal injection, Maguire wrote.

 

Also in February 2006, American SPCA Northeast Region shelter outreach manager Sandra Monterose told Alicyn Leigh of the Long Island Press that carbon monoxide, as used in Freeport, was less expensive than "injection of sodium pentobarbital with the use of pre-euthanasia anesthetics by a trained professional."

 

Friends of the Columbus County Animal Shelter volunteer veterinarian John Stih, of Whiteville, North Carolina, told Deuce Niven of the Fayetteville Observer in May 2006 that gassing is more cost-effective than injection, at $10-$12 per injection.

 

Columbus County animal control director Rossie Hayes told Niven that the shelter pays about $130 per month for bottled carbon monoxide.

 

Doug Fakkema does not buy the claims. "As an 18-plus year shelter director, including serving as shelter supervisor at Multnomah County Animal Control in Portland," among the larger shelters in the U.S., "and as a 17-year animal care and control consultant," Fakkema told ANIMAL PEOPLE, "I am familiar with costing out programs. I can say without any hesitation that the estimate of $150 per dog to euthanize by injection is ridiculous.

 

"Fatal Plus [the top brand of sodium pentobarbital] costs $0.18 per milliliter. A syringe and needle costs $0.13, PreMix (ketamine/xylazine) $0.40 per milliliter. With doses calculated, the cost for euthanizing an 80-pound methadrine-fed pit bull would be $1.92 for 4.8 milliliters of PreMix, $0.13 for the syringe and needle, and $1.44 for eight milliliters of Fatal Plus, for a total of $3.49.

 

"To suggest that training increases the cost by $146-plus per animal is absurd," Fakkema said. "Dare I say the person drawing those numbers must be drawing them out of a hat? If a shelter does euthanasia by injection on a thousand dogs per year, then according to that figure, it must spend $150,000 for euthanasia. You could hire two full-time vets for that money and equip a mighty fancy euthanasia room! And you wouldn't have to spend any training money.

 

"Yes, it costs money to train staff to perform euthanasia by injection," Fakkema acknowledged. "But this is a one-time cost which is spread out over the number of animals euthanized. The amount of wages paid doesn't make a whole lot of difference. My cost model shows that wage differences impact the cost per animal only a little.

 

"The shelter here in Charleston," Fakkema concluded, "euthanized by injection 10,000 animals in 2002, at a cost of $15,300. The cost would have been $1.5 million dollars according to the $150 per animal estimate. That's almost their entire budget."