News from the Noteworthy from Susquehanna SPCA

Five Freedoms Help Ensure Independence for Animals

This is the week we all celebrate, and are grateful for, our independence. Happy Independence Day! There is no more appropriate time to talk about how we ensure independence for the animals under the care of the Susquehanna Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and beyond.

The SQSPCA—along with many leading organizations, including national institutions such as the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the United States—believe in the Five Freedoms for animals. In our new shelter, the animals in our care are granted those Five Freedoms.

Encompassing both the mental and physical well-being of animals, the Five Freedoms we follow today originated with the U.K. Farm Animal Welfare Committee in 2009, have been accepted by the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, and are globally recognized as the gold standard in animal welfare.

Those Five Freedoms are:

• Freedom from Hunger and Thirst: By ready access to fresh water and diet to maintain health and vigor.
• Freedom from Discomfort: By providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
• Freedom from Pain, Injury or Disease: By prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
• Freedom to Express Normal Behavior: By providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind.
• Freedom from Fear and Distress: By ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.

Our new shelter facility, which we celebrate two years in later this month, was designed with the Five Freedoms in mind. The Five Freedoms, in fact, are used as the basis in writing animal care protocols and expectations, and New York State legislation passed in December of 2022 provides comprehensive standards of care for municipal shelters, not-for-profit humane societies, SPCAs and animal shelters, and not-for-profit animal rescues. Those standards take effect in three years.

We were, of course, always able to provide the animals in our care with freedom from hunger and thirst. However, in our old shelter the other four freedoms were difficult to attain, if not impossible.

I am so proud to say that the SQSPCA now recognizes, embraces, and implements all Five Freedoms, and the animals we care for are provided with the independence these freedoms afford them every single day. Our new shelter is designed to ensure they receive the very best in comfort, medical care, space and mental wellbeing. This is all possible and thanks to our amazing supporters. As a charitable 501c3 organization that does not receive any government support for operations, we rely solely on the kindness and generosity of businesses, foundations, and individuals in our region.

This week, and every week, we at the shelter celebrate our own independence, and that of the animals in our care. The Susquehanna SPCA promises to keep working non-stop, around the clock, to make sure as many companion and farm animals in need as possible are granted their independence, too.

Stacie Haynes is the executive director of the Susquehanna Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.