In any specialized field or community, there’s going to be jargon, slang, buzzwords. Jargon is unavoidable, but occasionally needs to be clarified, for everyone.
Take the word euthanasia. In the animal rescue community, sadly, some animals are euthanized. In 2009, Michigan shelters reported taking in 224,531 pets. Of those pets 72,761 (32.40%) were adopted by new owners, 20,179 (8.98%) were returned to their original owners, and 110,833 (49.36%) were killed.* You read right, 49% of animals brought into shelters were killed. I’m gonna go out on a limb here, but I am pretty sure that not all of them were euthanized.
Euthanasia, depending on where you get your definition from, can mean good death or mercy killing. You know, a painless death when a painful death is extremely likely.
Euthanasia does not mean killing an animal because of a lack of space, time, patience, or funds.
That is, plain and simple, killing, although I know many others that would go so far as to say murder.
The picture below is not euthanasia.
Incorrectly applying the term euthanasia to killings that are not beneficial cheapens what it is, an occasional tragic necessity, by being applied so indiscriminately. Euthanasia is never done wholesale and so should not be used to describe wholesale deaths. Call murder what it is.
