As a compassionate person, pet owner, and volunteer at a no-kill animal shelter, I was shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the use of the intracardiac, also known as the "heartstick," method of killing cats and dogs. A recent criminal investigation at Miami-Dade Animal Services in Miami-Dade County revealed allegations of the use of this painful procedure on fully conscious animals. According to the guidelines of the American Medical Veterinary Association, "Intracardiac injection is acceptable only when performed on heavily sedated, anesthetized or comatose animals, owing to the difficulty and unpredictability of performing the injection accurately." Indeed, use of this method may involve multiple stab attempts with a needle through the animal's chest wall until the target, the heart, is reached, which is why an unsedated animal suffers immensely when this method is chosen. Please help make Florida a more humane state by signing this petition asking our State Senators and representatives to modify Florida Statute 828.058, whose verbiage currently allows intracardiac injection to be performed without the use of any sedative. It would take just a single word change in line 2 of the statute to make a difference. The current wording of the statute reads: "A dog or cat may be tranquilized with an approved and humane substance before euthanasia is performed." If the wording were changed from "may be tranquilized" to "shall be tranquilized," we could reduce the suffering of animals in facilities who choose to utilize this method. Everyone's help is needed now to legally guarantee a more humane method of euthanasia for animals in the state of Florida. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

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