Brady Backs Off Bill Authorizing the Mass Gassing of Stray Pets

By Kevin Robinson in News on Feb 25, 2010 9:20PM

State Senator Bill Brady, still a contender for the GOP nomination for Illinois Governor, is backing off a plan to authorize the mass killing of stray animals in shelters that he introduced earlier this month, just days after the primary election. Brady, from Bloomington, sponsored the legislation which would allow animal control facilities to kill more than one animal at once in a carbon monoxide chamber.

The legislation, which Brady says he sponsored at the request of "a constituent" would undo a compromise reached last year between the Humane Society, veterinarians and the state Department of Agriculture, allowing one animal at a time to be euthanized in a gas chamber. “A constituent asked me to do it, and I have an obligation to represent my constituents,” Brady told the Sun-Times. “I was never for it, but I thought it was a subject that deserved discussion...But the politics surrounding me being the nominee created an environment that’s more attack mode than discussion mode, so we shelled the bill,” he said.

Jordan Matyas, Illinois director of the Humane Society of the United States, says the procedure is unnecessarily cruel, and would cause undue suffering for animals being put down. “I have no idea why Sen. Brady introduced a bill that would allow as many animals as you want to be put into a gas chamber and they’d be exposed to one another,” he told the Sun-Times. “Under his legislation, you could have 10 dogs in one box, gasping for air, at the same time fighting, at the same time fearing for their lives,” said Matyas. “Even if the animals are separated, you still have to run the gas chamber 20 to 40 minutes, which takes a lot more time than an injection.”

McLean County Animal Control, in Bloomington, has one of the two gas chambers currently in use in Illinois. That machine can kill up to four animals at a time. “There’s no way to fit 10 dogs in ours,” Tolle Link told the paper, noting that they deal with aggressive dogs and cats that don't end up with the Humane Society. “As far as them gasping for air, it’s a humane process. It’s as simple as usually they hear the noise of air going out, and carbon monoxide coming in . . .then they pass.”