NATHAN WINOGRAD

 NATHAN
WINOGRAD
Nathan is a graduate of Stanford Law School and a former criminal prosecutor as well as corporate attorney. A vegan for over 20 years, he has helped write animal protection legislation, spoken internationally on animal issues, created successful No Kill programs, and has consulted with animal protection groups all over the world. Under his leadership, Tompkins County, New York, became the first No Kill community in the United States. Nathan is the author of two books: Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America, which won five national awards; and Irreconcilable Differences: The Battle for the Heart and Soul of America’s Animal Shelters. Nathan is the national director of the No Kill Advocacy Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the systematic killing of animals in U.S. shelters. You can hear Nathan every week on the nationally syndicated radio show Animal Wise Radio, learn more through his work with the No Kill Advocacy Center, or read his popular No Kill blog at nathanwinograd.com.

NATHAN WINOGRAD FROM HIS BLOG                                                           We have the power to build a new consensus, which rejects killing as a method for achieving results. And we can look forward to a time when the wholesale slaughter of animals in shelters is viewed as a cruel aberration of the past. We have a choice. We can fully, completely, and without reservation embrace No Kill as our future. Or we can continue to legitimize the two-pronged strategy of failure: adopt a few and kill the rest. It is a choice which history has thrown upon us. We are the generation that questioned the killing. We are the generation that has discovered how to stop it. Will we be the generation that does?   http://www.nathanwinograd.com/

Below are excerpts from Winograd's 2 books & blogs

The main arguments in my two books is my contention that pet overpopulation is a myth.
Many in the shelter community and humane organizations have tried to discredit me by arguing that I have some nefarious purpose. But I did not wake up one day and say, "pet overpopulation is a myth." Nor did I think that some day I would champion the notion that it was. I once argued with my wife that there were too many animals and not enough homes. She correctly argued that even if it were true, killing remained unethical. 

How did I know it was true? Because I've heard it repeated a thousand times. Because I took the fact of killing in shelters and then rationalized the reason backward. I reviewed data from over 1,000 shelters nationwide, and reviewed several national studies. And the conclusion became not just inescapable but unassailable. Pet overpopulation is a myth, and we had the power to end the killing, today.

Other studies have proven that I was right; indeed they show I was being conservative. Contrary to what many shelters falsely claim are the primary hurdles to lifegiving (eg., public irresponsibility, or lack of homes) the biggest impediments are actually in shelter management's hands.

Effectiveness in shelter goals and operations begins with caring and competent leadership, staff accountability, effective programs, and good relations with the community, which do not currently exist in most shelters. It means putting action behind the words of every shelter's mission statement,"that all life is precious". And it is abundantly clear that the practices of most shelters violate this principle.

Shelter killing is not the result of pet overpopulation; it is the result of shelter managers who find it easier to kill animals than to save them. And not only do they kill animals they should be saving, too many of them neglect and abuse them in the process.The bottom line is that shelter killing is unnecessary and unethical. And pet overpopulation is merely an excuse for poorly performing shelter managers who want to blame others for their own failures.

We must first understand how a movement founded on compassion became a network of shelters that do little more than kill animals. We have to ask and answer the question, what went wrong? And then ask the follow-up question, how do we make it right?

An understanding of the no kill movement and the historical animosity to it by the large national animal welfare organizations is simply not possible without an understanding of its history ( see "Redemption" p.7-16      and "Irreconcilable Differences" p.xvi-xxii).