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June 2, 2017


It finally feels like summer here in Portland, Oregon, and that coincides with 'kitten season'. Our family is fostering a sweet mama and her four offspring, now three weeks old. Turned into our county's municipal animal services as a stray when her kittens were newborn, this cat was at risk, and the agency's commitment to foster and adopt mothers with litters means a new chance for her and her family.
 
These hands-on experiences keep my passion high for ACC&D's mission of advancing non-surgical fertility control to reach cats and dogs we are not reaching now. Thank you for subscribing to our e-newsletter and sharing that passion. I'm pleased to share the updates that follow.

Sincerely,
Girl with dog in Columbia
Joyce Briggs, President

Participants from left to right: (back row) Carla Forte Maiolino Molento, Kate Atema, Peter Sandøe; (middle row) Andy Sparkes, Sarah Endersby, Michael Barrett, Amy Fischer, Kevin Morris, Apryl Steele, Jesse Winters, Roger Haston, Lisa Moses, Deepashree Balaram, James Serpell, Carly Robins, Vic Spain, James Yeates; (front row) Valerie Benka, Joyce Briggs, Carmen Espinosa, Monica List, Susan Getty, Phil Tedeschi. 

In February of this year, ACC&D conducted a Think Tank on ethical decision-making when trialing innovations in the field . This Think Tank was prompted by two of ACC&D's more recent "field" projects, a study of a contraceptive vaccine called GonaCon , and a trial of an ear tag  to identify animals sterilized non-surgically. We worked through our dilemmas, but were surprised to find few published resources to help. Experts we reached out to acknowledged a gap. In response, ACC&D convened 24 diverse experts--academics, social workers, veterinarians, bioethicists, field practitioners and animal welfare professionals--at the University of Denver's Institute for the Human-Animal Connection . The Think Tank was sponsored by International Cat Care , the ASPCA® and the Animal Assistance Foundation .
 
For your immediate use is a document to help sort through the ethical questions and considerations when conducting a field trial. Please take a look and we welcome any feedback! A full report on our Think Tank can be accessed on our website .
 
Think Tank participants created actions plans for several projects to address this gap. One project is a moral (di)stress workshop for animal welfare agencies. Ethical decisions can produce great strife in a shelter environment amongst both those making tough decisions and those implementing them. The moral (di)stress workshop will be piloted later this year.

Think Tank participants felt that better guidelines for veterinarians and others conducting field work are needed, particularly when this work involves caretakers and communities as well as animals. The goal: to develop and then deliver new resources via an online, interactive ethical decision-making tool. ACC&D has identified a highly-credentialed consultant to lead this project and is seeking funding to move this important initiative forward.
 
I am so heartened to see the field considering ethics - and even defining what ethics entails - before nonsurgical sterilization products come along that will be applied hurriedly and excitedly. We are all excited to have those products, but I sigh a huge sigh of relief thinking that there might be an associated movement to ensure this is done responsibly from an animal welfare, community welfare and scientific standpoint. Thank you to ACC&D for thinking so far ahead on this one and identifying a very real need, whose benefits have potential to reach well beyond nonsurgical contraception.  Kate Atema, Program Director, International Fund for Animal Welfare

Non-Surgical Fertility Control for Pigeons now Available in Canada  
 

Good news for our feathered friends in Canada! OvoControl P 0.5% (Nicarbazin), birth control for birds, has been registered with the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) of Health Canada and will be distributed through Gardex Chemicals in Etobicoke, Ontario .
 
OvoControl is a humane alternative to poison and other lethal pigeon population control methods. A ready-to-use bait, the product gets administered once-daily, typically on a rooftop!
ACC&D Presenting at 8th International Conference on Wildlife Fertility Control 
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The recently launched Botsiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control a partners hip between  The Humane Society of the United States and the  Dietrich W. Botsiber Foundation , will ho st the  8th International Conference on Wildlife Fertility Control this July. ACC&D President Joyce Briggs  will present on  our efforts to design new forms of identification for dogs and  cats  who have  been non-surgically sterilized without anesthesia. The field of wildlife fertility control similarly seeks a way to  humanely identify non-surgically sterilized or contracepted animals, and we hope to collaborate with them to address our mutual need. Please look for Joyce and ACC&D Director of Programs, Valerie Benka, if you, too, will be at this conference!

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