Spay/neuter popcorn? It’s as real as Alex Pacheco’s s/n cookies!

(Beth Clifton collage)

600 million stray dogs would eat it,  & it would not need FDA approval

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$2.27 million dollars for nothing

Pacheco evidently hopes other prospective donors will never mind that there is still no  evidence in 600 Million Stray Dogs Need You filings of IRS Form 990 of Pacheco actually spending any money on animal contraceptive research and development,  or indeed of having any scientists in his employ.

What the 600 Million Stray Dogs Need You filings of IRS Form 990 do show is that donors have entrusted Pacheco with upward of $2.27 million since 2011,  on the promise that he might somehow produce a “Spay and Neuter Cookie.” 

This is despite Pacheco’s lack of any relevant scientific credentials,  any indication of having achieved verifiable results at even the most basic experimental level,  any plausible suggestion of how a “Spay and Neuter Cookie” might be made,  and indeed,  any evidence that Pacheco actually knows how to bake cookies of any sort,  regardless of the cookies’ effect on anyone’s gonads.

If Pacheco has any credentials of note at all,  it was as a cofounder of PETA in 1981,  who left PETA nearly 25 years ago.

If some of this exposé sounds recycled,  please note,  it is because Pacheco’s claims and rhetoric typically change very little from appeal to appeal.

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Wants $3 million a year

The 2021 “summer fundraising drive” appeal does introduce a few new elements,  though.

One of the new elements is that “Our team of scientists formulated projections for the time and cost required to complete the work” to produce a spay/neuter cookie,  “including the studies needed to submit the data to the FDA and initiate the approval process,   and they concluded the Cookie can be developed within three years with a budget of $3 million per year.”

Form 990,  however,  identifies no scientists on the payroll,  just Alex and Mary Pacheco;  identifies no research and development laboratory with which 600 Million Dogs Need You might be contracting;  identifies no grants made either to relevant research or to anything else;  and while Pacheco has for many years implied that the alleged spay/neuter cookie research is being done somewhere abroad,  Form 990 also identifies no foreign transactions.

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Cutting-edge science?

Some of Pacheco’s previous claims are omitted from the 600 Million Dogs Need You summer 2021 appeal.

“We’re incredibly excited about using cutting-edge science,”  the 600 Million Dogs Need You 2020 holiday season direct mail appeal declared,  offering a link to a “Spay and Neuter Cookie Overview and Update” which appeared to be largely identical to those in recent past years,  going back at least to 2018.

(See Pseudo-science & the Alex Pacheco “Spay & Neuter” Cookie.)

This included the assertion that Pacheco has “eaten trial Cookies” with “no negative side effects.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Ate trial cookies?

That would not be the case if Pacheco had consumed the only animal contraceptive product with which 600 Million Stray Dogs Need You has ever had any verifiable association.

The Arizona rodent control product developer SenesTech in 2006 tested a product based on vinylcyclohexene,  called ChemSpay,  in dogs,  funded by the Alliance for Contraception of Cats & Dogs.

The experiment,  however,  which used vinylcyclohexene to destroy ovarian follicles to prevent conception,  was unsuccessful.

Cookie seller Alexa Pacheco.
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Has not worked with ChemSpay developers since 2011

In December 2010 SenesTech announced that it would be working with Pacheco and 600 Million Stray Dogs Need You to raise funds to try again with ChemSpay.

Mentions of ovarian follicle counts in Pacheco’s 2021 summer appeal and in his 2020 “Spay and Neuter Cookie Overview and Update,”  along with illustrations purporting to be enlargements of microscopic images,  imply that Pacheco is still experimenting with the patented ChemSpay approach.

In April 2011,  however,  SenesTech advised Alliance for Contraception of Cats & Dogs executive director Joyce Briggs that “neither ‘600 Million’ nor Mr. Pacheco have any claim,  right,  title,  license or interest in our ChemSpay product or any other [SenesTech] product.”

Because vinylcyclohexene is an internationally recognized carcinogen,  meaning that exposure could potentially cause cancer in humans,  ChemSpay would in any event have been extremely difficult to register for use in dogs and cats.

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“Known ingredients”

Pacheco’s December 19,  2018 “Science Update” opened by asserting that he is “modifying known ingredients such as calcium chloride,   zinc,  vinylcyclohexene and others so that they (in a single dose) will safely sterilize a stray,  without surgery.”

Calcium chloride and zinc are the chief ingredients in several experimental chemosterilants developed by various others over the past 30 years for injection into the testicles of male animals to block the release of sperm.

See Alex Pacheco of “600 Million” says he was gunner on a boat with no guns.
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The plumbing doesn’t work

The various developers,  unfortunately,  have not been able to consistently avoid extremely painful scrotal swelling in many of the test animals.  For this reason,  the only zinc or calcium chloride chemosterilants ever actually marketed have been withdrawn,  and have not been commercially manufactured since 2014.

Neither calcium chloride nor zinc could be put into a “Spay and Neuter Cookie” to any useful effect because an ingestible product,  passing through the gastro-intestinal tract of an animal,  could not deliver either calcium chloride,  zinc,  or any other mineral into the animal’s sperm ducts.  The plumbing simply does not run in that direction.

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Game developer out of the picture

Pacheco’s 2021 appeal and 2020 “Spay and Neuter Cookie Overview and Update,”  although reiterating promises that the hypothetical cookies “are being designed to be species- and gender-specific,”  have omitted any specifics as to just what might be put into a “Spay and Neuter Cookie.”

These recent appeals have also omitted any mention of one Rayjay Kumar,  whom Pacheco introduced as “one of our scientists” on December 22,  2018,  about 24 hours after ANIMALS 24-7 first posted Pseudo-science & the Alex Pacheco “Spay & Neuter” Cookie.

Kumar,  claiming degrees in electrical engineering and technology commercialization, with no evident background in biology or biochemistry,  was according to his LinkedIn page the principal in Riot Shield Games,  a one-person online game development company.

(See also “600 Million” reasons to toss Alex Pacheco’s alleged spay/neuter cookies,  SHARK circles Alex Pacheco & “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You”,  Steve Hindi & SHARK up the ante & call Alex Pacheco’s bluff,  and Alex Pacheco of “600 Million” says he was gunner on a boat with no guns.)

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