Domestic Animal Welfare Network - The Michigan Department of Agriculture

The Michigan Department of Agriculture is a sprawling bureaucracy that encompasses things that you would normally associate with the word "agriculture" such as crops, fruits, vegetables, livestock, poultry, etc.

But it is also the regulatory home of a diverse collection of other services with historical origins. MDA inspects every gasoline or diesel fuel pump in Michigan for accuracy, regulates meat processing, regulates commerce in turtles and turtle eggs, and regulates the licensing and "control" of cats and dogs.

The Michigan Department of Agriculture is the link between the State of Michigan and the 83 counties of Michigan which carry out the day-to-day business of Animal Control. The MDA provides a number of functions that are important to the continuation of "the way we've always done it" approach to dealing with the welfare of homeless animals.

(1) The MDA licenses every animal shelter in the state, public or private. You can't run a pet shop or a pound or an animal adoption facility without your MDA license.

(2) The MDA is supposed to inspect each shelter at the time of licensing and periodically thereafter. The MDA is supposed to make sure that sheltered animals are being held in humane and sanitary facilities. Supposed to. We've seen enough negative reports from volunteer observers to leave it at "supposed to".

(3) The MDA supplies to the counties the tags required for licensing dogs, the cost of which the counties must repay. MDA does furnish dog licensing paperwork free of charge. The State of Michigan doesn't recognize the licensing of cats, so the growing number of counties and municipalities that license cats are on their own.

(4) The Michigan Department of Agriculture insists that every shelter must have an official veterinarian, whose name must appear on their license. You might think that this to make sure that sheltered animals will receive professional health examination and treatment on a regular basis, but the MDA's only requirement is that this veterinarian must be called "whenever a health hazard arises". This is the first hallmark of the MDA's service to the state's animal shelters -- permitting amateurs to make veterinary decisions in order to keep operating expenses low for the counties and municipalities which operate shelters -- professional medical care is optional. In Michigan, the absence of scheduled medical care is the MDA standard, and any shelter that has an ongoing program of medical examination and treatment is a premier facility.

(5) The second hallmark of keeping operating expenses low is the MDA's aggressive pursuit of encouraging animal shelter employees to administer euthanasia. In the massive 582-page Michigan Health Code, administering a drug to an animal is defined as the practice of veterinary medicine (MCL 333.18805) which requires a license from the Michigan Board of Veterinary Medicine (MCL 333.18811). However, by getting a legislator to insert a series of "notwithstanding" subsections into the Controlled Substances article (MCL 333.7333) of the Michigan Health Code, at least the illusion of legality, if not actual legality, of permitting amateurs to practice veterinary medicine has been firmly established as "the way we've always done it".

(6) The third hallmark of the MDA's time- and money-saving approach is to permit euthanasia without prior sedation. There are instances where a very sick or very docile animal will submit peaceably to euthanasia (which is preferably performed by sticking a hypodermic needle into a vein in the animal's leg). There are other cases where a frantic struggling animal has to be held down by a couple of people, the leg held firmly by a third person while a fourth person tries to get the needle into the vein. Yes, worst case scenario. Yes, totally preventable.

If you're sensing that we are disappointed in the performance of the Michigan Department of Agriculture, you're alert. The more we find out about the MDA and it's operation, the more disappointed we become. In fairness, the MDA like the rest of the Michigan government, is broke. Years of political raids on the state treasury and a manufactured depression have left every department struggling. The MDA doesn't have the money to support the tired old ideas that they've been promoting for decades; and on the unlikely chance that they came up with a new idea, there's no money to bring it to the light of day.

Quite honestly, we would like to see the MDA out of the cat and dog business so that they could focus more on actual agriculture. Why? We believe that their priorities are wrong. We believe that they are infatuated with facilities (fix that crack in the floor) and technicalities, and that animal care is at best on the very edge of their radar screen. We believe that they lack any vision of progress, lack any vision of how to deal with the problems that make it necessary for shelters to believe that they need to euthanize so many animals, lack any vision of how (and why!) to make a shelter a community resource rather than "animal jail".

What progress is being made in the care of homeless helpless animals, and in halting the continuing growth in the numbers of homeless animals, is being made by insightful leadership at local shelters both public and private. It is being made by volunteers, by contributors of money and resources. It is being nurtured by supportive county and municipal boards. It is being made by volunteer organizations that don't even have shelters, but support progress in animal welfare by assisting shelters, by rescuing animals from abusive situations, and by providing veterinary services.

One of the most helpful tools for the animal welfare activist is the MDA annual database of information about every animal shelter in Michigan:

2009 Animal Shelter Database

2008 Animal Shelter Database

2007 Animal Shelter Database