Great Article from Jeffrey Veatch at The Greenville News!
The Greenville News Editorial
Pet overpopulation costs society dearly
Thinking in terms of pet overpopulation, we can see that allowing excessive numbers of cats and dogs to be "produced" has a significant cost. When society has to deal with feeding, housing and caring for a population of pets that is well beyond the optimal output level, we find that the opportunity costs are significant. That is why the cost of spaying and neutering pets is a minor cost in comparison. For instance, the cost of having a pet "fixed" is in the range of $200. The lifetime cost for a litter of unwanted pets is well over $1,000 depending on the exact fate that the litter suffers. If you multiply those costs by the number of animals that enter shelters every year, the opportunity costs lost to society as a whole become clearer. That nationwide total annual cost is on the order of billions of wasted dollars.
If pets are not spayed or neutered, the puppies or kittens that they have must be cared for. If they are purebred dogs, they are often sold for a profit. However, mixed-breed animals that are allowed to give birth to litters are in a much more difficult spot. Their newborns are very rarely well taken care of and often wind up in shelters. These shelters do not make any economic profit and are either taxpayer-funded or run only from donations of others. This spillover cost to the rest of society adds up to quite a bill, as previously mentioned.
Some statistics from the United States Humane Society: On average, 6 million to 8 million animals enter shelters each year. These are pets that are generally products of dogs or cats that are not spayed or neutered. And, on average 50 percent of them are euthanized because of lack of resources to maintain them or inability to find a permanent home. Most of those euthanized are kittens.
There are costs to taxpayers in the form of building and maintaining the shelter structures, paying employees and paying for food, medicine and vet care. If donations are given or people spend time as volunteers, this is also a cost to society as those goods are used for care of excess animals versus more marginal benefits. Volunteer time can be cost-counted as time not spent on activities adding true value to society.
One of the reasons that so many animals are turned in to shelters year after year is the fact that the benefit that people often gain from the adoption or purchase of pets isn't what they had expected. When the "cost" of their pets gets too much, some people are quick to pass off their pets to shelters with the belief that someone else will adopt or care for them instead. These costs can include food and medical expenses.
However, the bigger "costs" that people often give up their pets for are house repairs or the time it takes to properly train and exercise their pets. When people are not educated as to the true costs of owning pets, particularly active dogs such as Labradors or other typical working-class canines, they often fail to understand just what marginal cost is required to keep them healthy and happy.
And when these pets take out their boredom inside an owner's house, they can be relegated to a life on a chain outside -- if they are lucky. The unlucky ones are banished to a shelter, where they often stand a less than 50-50 chance of finding a new home. If they cannot be rehomed, they are often killed. However this is only after taking up resources that society at large pays -- instead of owners who didn't get the benefit they thought they would receive once they bought that "cute puppy in the window."
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