UPDATE: KMOX has reached out to Missouri's Agriculture Department spokeswoman Christi Miller to find out more information about St. Louis County Animal Care and Control applying for a license last week. We also wanted to know how the facility is remaining open and why without a license.
Miller says she is out of the office all week and when we asked about next week, we still have not heard back as yet.
KMOX has also reached out to the St. Louis County Council person that represents the area where Animal Care and Control is located.
ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - We have a KMOX News follow-up on Saint Louis County Animal Care and Control. We have followed the problems at this shelter for years. Most recently, the parvovirus outbreak and the abrupt resignation of the veterinarian medical director in the middle of the outbreak.
The latest developments, Missouri's Agriculture Department has rejected Saint Louis County's license application, citing three failed inspections.
Some of the failures include animals being in cages too small, bugs in food storage, feces in play areas and expired medications.
April 30th was the first time St. Louis County ACC reported the parvo outbreak, though they denied it was an outbreak and said only a few dogs had the highly contagious virus. Two days later, 19 dogs had been euthanized.
Then in a Sunshine request, KMOX learned the medical director Doctor Doug Pernikoff submitted to the AG department a report saying the first parvo case was on April 18th.
Pernikoff admitted to being understaffed, over-populated with animals, limited resources, including not obtaining monoclonal antibodies to treat the sick dogs because that course of action was not financially feasible.
As recently as Friday, the Post Dispatch reports, the shelter submitted another license application.
According to Linkedin the new Director, Malik Johnson is not a veterinarian, but a public health administrator. The only other known veterinarian, according to St. Louis County, is Doctor Marissa Bowers.
St. Louis County has never provided an explanation as to why Doctor Pernikoff left so suddenly in the middle of the parvo outbreak. KMOX called Pernikoff, but he never returned our calls.
The question now is why is the state allowing ACC to operate without a license, given the past and current history of a facility plagued with problems. KMOX is waiting to talk with Missouri's Agriculture Department.
This Thursday afternoon at 3:30, St. Louis County Council will have a committee of the whole meeting on the shelter. This meeting is open to the public.
