May 2026

Beyond the benchmark of surgical speed: De-commoditising the veterinarian in the ABC sector BY ILONA OTTER |May 2, 2026  For decades, the success of Animal Birth Control (ABC) programs has been measured by a single, cold metric: The number of dogs operated per day (or by week/month/since the agency begun working in an area). This method of measuring success has made the ABC-program -sector to fall into a dangerous habit: valuing the veterinarian only for the mechanical speed of their hands.   The “per-dog”