SPCA of Texas Seizure TODAY

"There are animals that are emaciated, but there are others that are well fed."  Said the SPCA of Texas spokesperson.  However, I'll bet money they took every single animal during their seizure today.  It appears over 400 animals, mostly livestock, were seized although they haven't provided a final count yet.  It appears from the pictures on the SPCA website that the conditions are more egregious than those in the recent Houston seizure.  (See my recent blogs.)  However, HOWEVER, they provide a mere 6 pictures which hardly seems representative to me of a large property with 400+ animals so I'll decline to "convict" or condemn until I see more on the case.

The hearing for Earnest Kearney, owner of these animals, will be on the 15th.  By that time, the SPCA of Texas and Dallas County will likely be claiming he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars for vet and other care of these animals for those 9 days.  I hope he has the wherewithal to fight back.

Why do I care so much about these alleged animal abuse cases?  I have grave concerns about the constitutionality of snatching up people's private property, wracking up grossly unreasonable charges, and essentially holding the animals hostage to coerce them being voluntarily turned over.  In addition, I find it seriously questionable how the non-profits are involved in these cases.  They have a very serious bias AND an incentive to seize animals (evidenced by their apparent SOP to get the information up on their websites the same day, always along with a few [usually very few] sympathetic pictures and their plea for donations).  When a government agency seizes animals, they have to consider where and how they will care for them and take that into consideration before snatching them up.  That creates a balance and balancing should indeed be a part of the process.  On the other hand, these non-profits expand their facilities and then need to fill them up to keep donations coming in so they have the opposite incentive to take as many animals as they can with no regard for the owners' rights at all.

These non-profits allege they can more efficiently and cost effectively care for the animals than the government.  However, when the "bill" for 5 days of care is $200,000+ as we saw in the Houston case, I'm not buying that theory.  $40/day/animal.  Seriously?????  And, if that's basically a representation of what they think every animal owner should be expending per animal per day to meet their minimum standard of care, then IMO they're just plain NUTS!

More and more of us have seen what the commercial food industry is selling us and to say it is a substandard product would be more than an understatement.  The result is we're starting to raise food at home and buy from small producers like the businesses in these 2 recent confiscation cases.  These non-profits feed off taking these options and our rights away from us and do so with the assistance of the government.  Note that both these businessmen let the non-profit reps and the government agents in and cooperated.  They expected to be treated reasonably.  It certainly doesn't look to me as though they were and that should concern us all.  These small businessmen who are just squeaking by are easy targets, more so you and I who may have dogs and cats, may want to add a few chickens for eggs.  And you can bet your boots they'll come after us after they put the small businessmen out of business.  They're SURE not going to opt for the commercial operations that have staff lawyers!

Back "home" in Missouri, I had a policy for government agents showing up at my property which was nearly 1/4 mile off the blacktop: Call first and show up with a warrant.  I think it's time for the same policy here in Texas if you're a resident with animals on your property!

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