Animal activist working to reduce prevalence of animal cruelty

Dec 29, 2014 News

By Nicholas Peters

In an effort to reduce the prevalence of street animals, passionate animal activist, Genevieve ‘Judy’ Beepat, hosted a free animal sterilization clinic early last week at her Lusignan, East Coast Demerara (ECD) home.
Beepat collaborated with Dr. Nardeo Bassoodeo, to spay and neuter over 17 cats and dogs. This marks the third time that Beepat has organized such an initiative as she explained the sterilization procedure is both a safe and effective way of reducing animal overpopulation.

Animal activist Genevieve Beepat

The Lusignan resident noted that volunteers from the Guyana School of Agriculture were also part of the initiative. She added that awareness for her cause has grown as more persons brought their pets to be sterilized.
“This is the most humane thing to do in controlling the animal population,” said Beepat.
The animal activist organized the clinic in order to reduce instances of animal cruelty in the society so that fewer animals would be subjected to suffering on the street.
She explained that the procedure not only reduces animal population but can also reduce the risk of cancers in household pets like dogs.
Despite Beepat’s good intentions, her work has received a lot of criticism from many persons who say that the service is rather cruel to animals, as it robs them of the chance to procreate.
However, she responds to this criticism by explaining that the real cruelty comes from allowing the animal to procreate when adequate care cannot be provided to their offspring, thus resulting in the animals being abandoned.
To Beepat, this seems an even worse fate for animals as they are then subjected to abuse, starvation and other forms of cruelty, which could have been avoided had the animal population been under control.

Dr. Bassoodeo performing sterilization surgery on cat

The animal activist further related that once the animal population isn’t kept under control, more cats and dogs will be forced to be euthanized as shelters will not be able to accommodate the growing stray population.
“It is the least we can do in reducing cruelty against animals,” Beepat told this publication. She said that euthanization seems an unnecessary measure as there are other ways to prevent the animal population from getting out of control without taking lives.
She noted that even though such initiatives are costly, with fees for the surgery alone ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 dollars per animal, her work with animals will continue.
As many of Beepat’s animal saving initiatives are single handedly organized by her, she related that she is open to collaborating with other organizations in helping to control the animal population and reducing instances of animal cruelty.