text: RSPCA hit on animals care (Tasmania)
  Author Topic: RSPCA hit on animals care (Tasmania) (Read 655 times)
  « Reply #1 on: December 25, 2012, 06:15:13 PM »
  The Mercury has obtained documents which show veterinary staff -- including statewide chief vet Gabby Lawson -- have reported on a number of occasions what they describe as serious animal welfare issues.
  "Those allegations are spurious, scandalous, wrong in fact, defamatory, highly inflammatory," president Paul Swiatkowski said through lawyer Leonard Fernandez.
  In January a staffer discovered a rosella trying to escape from a portable cage in the shelter laundry. "Clearly it has been abandoned in a carrier all night," the woman's complaint reads.
  Dr Lawson had complained that animals were not being medicated properly and in November wrote that this remained an ongoing issue. The chief vet's email stated she was "struggling to understand" why a core task was still presenting such a problem.
  A now-former RSPCA inspector emailed supervisors last year expressing reluctance to seize animals and bring them back to the Launceston shelter as "in its current environment it may affect their health in a detrimental way".
  The inspector referred to "terrible outcomes" such as four previously healthy cats due to be euthanised that day after contracting a disease at the shelter.