Inside a subzero freezer at a Northern California pet hospital sit rows of carefully labeled bags of fresh frozen plasma. Each pouch could save a pet’s life: a retriever that ingested poison, a corgi with a bleeding disorder, a puppy with parvovirus.
While the pouches each look the same, their straw-colored contents come from starkly different places. Some of the blood products are from dogs like Augustus, a 55-pound Belgian Malinois whose owner signed him up to donate blood at a canine community blood bank, which is modeled after the human volunteer system.
Other bags hold a more controversial history. Their contents come from donor kennels in California, where hundreds of dogs and cats live in “closed colonies” as full-time blood suppliers. These captive animals have long provided a steady stream of blood to meet the state’s surging demand for advanced veterinary care…