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You are here: Home>>>Gas Chambers>>>Developments
FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) of chamber information
We attempted to get the interior dimensions of the chambers (plus other information such as the date of manufacture, of what material the chamber is made, the size of the door to the chamber, the location of the viewing glass so that the operator of the chamber can watch to make sure the animals are dying as they are supposed to, and service records for the chamber); most jurisdictions were forthcoming with their dimensions.
In no case was the dimension of the chamber large enough to hold two average sized dogs at the same time. Some were of sufficient size to hold two cats, however, although the cats are each to be individually crated.
The new regs, when followed, create a cycle for killing a dog that takes about an hour from the time the dog is taken from the run until the time the dog’s body is hauled away and disposed of and the chamber cleaned and readied for the next gassing. The time would be the same for cats although two might be gassed in the same cycle.
With the animal records of the jurisdiction in hand (and, as you recall, not all animal records for 2004 were on line from the State Vet – yet another story), and some records were received only by another FOIA request, we were able to estimate the time spent in killing dogs by a single jurisdiction. It got as high as half a year’s time for a pound employee – that person doing nothing more than killing dogs for 6 months of the year. (We use dogs here in the example because some gassing jurisdictions do not accept cats at all; public pounds are not required to provide for cats or any companion animal other than dogs – yet another story.)
We provided these calculations to jurisdictions, and at the same time suggested that the cost of EBI (euthanasia by injection) is far less expensive and far less time-consuming than gassing to say nothing of being more humane.