Written by Jeff Mackey
After inspectors found animals kept in appalling conditions without proper care, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited two disreputable roadside zoos in North Carolina for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). PETA keeps these two hellholes constantly in our sights and had just filed a complaint about Jambbas Ranch Tours before the inspection.
A USDA visit to Jambbas Ranch Tours last month following a PETA complaint led to a citation for AWA violations after inspectors discovered a thin elderly llama who had a "thick creamy discharge" oozing from an eye socket (the eye "has been gone for some years"). As PETA had told the USDA, the llama also appeared to be suffering from diarrhea—the animal had a large area of what appeared to be dried feces on the back legs but was given no medical treatment for these conditions.
The inspector also observed a raccoon whose tail and part of whose hindquarters showed complete hair loss, as PETA had reported. The animal was being given an ineffective flea- and tick-control medication, which wasn't prescribed by a vet as required by law. Immediate veterinary care was ordered to treat the raccoon's condition.
An inspection of the Cherokee Bear Zoo last month resulted in a repeat citation for failure to feed a young tiger cub a healthy, edible, and contaminant-free diet. The cub is described as "small and underweight for its age. The coat looks dull, dry, and brittle."
The shabby animal prison (one of three around Cherokee, North Carolina) also received a citation for failure to vaccinate the same tiger cub. The operators were warned of the need to correct this failure "from this day forward."
Roadside zoos range from small menageries to large compounds—but they are all unhealthy environments for animals. The owners' focus is on their customers' desires, not the animals' needs, so neglect and abuse are common.
These cruel operations stay in business only because people patronize them, so please never visit a roadside zoo, and encourage your family and friends to stay away too.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
It's starting to feel like déjà vu: PETA has once again filed formal complaints with the federal government about the abuse of animals in laboratories at the University of Colorado–Denver (CU). Through a state open-records request, PETA has just learned that the same neglect and incompetence that we documented there in a 2007 investigation are still occurring.
The records show that during just the past two years, at least 60 animal welfare incidents—dozens of which may constitute violations of federal law and guidelines—have occurred, including the following:
Based on PETA's undercover investigation, in 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited CU for serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act and also issued the university an official warning letting it know that it would be fined $10,000 per incident if it were found violating the law again. It's time for the government to follow through on that warning and stop CU's abuses for good.
Please ask the federal government to stop funding cruel animal experiments and to put your tax dollars toward modern, humane non-animal research methods.
There's good news today in a case we told you about in May 2010: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hit the Texas Biomedical Research Institute—formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research—with a fine of more than $25,000 over serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act. The facility has repeatedly allowed primates to escape from their cages and injure themselves and others, including humans.
The stiff fine comes after PETA filed a formal complaint with the agency in 2010 after two baboons imprisoned at Texas Biomed escaped from their cages, injuring an employee in the process. The fine also covers an incident from 2009 in which a juvenile rhesus macaque monkey escaped from a cage and then spent the night in below-freezing temperatures. He suffered from hypothermia and had to be euthanized.
But quite apart from the satisfaction of seeing these primate torturers pay at least a small price for their misdeeds, these penalties are an important reminder to heartless experimenters everywhere that abusing animals can cost them more than karma points.
But since karma is on our side, let's keep the momentum going. Texas Biomed is notorious for being one of the last laboratories in the world that still torments chimpanzees in cruel and invasive experiments.
You can do your part to help protect primates—just click here to ask your congressional representatives to cosponsor and support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act today, which would end experiments on chimpanzees at Texas Biomed and elsewhere.
Written by Jennifer OConnor
Update: After a PETA staffer swore out a complaint against Henry Hampton, Lazy 5's owner, Hampton finally made arrangements to trim two giraffes' painfully overgrown hooves. Because he delayed the critical procedure and caused one giraffe to suffer for more than a year, PETA is calling for prosecutors to pursue cruelty-to-animals charges against him. However, PETA is open to dropping the charges if Hampton promises the court that he'll adhere to a continual regimen of appropriate hoof care.
The following was originally posted December, 14, 2011.
North Carolina's Lazy 5 Ranch should be the last place that schools take children on field trips, unless the trip is meant to teach children about how cruelly animals are treated in roadside zoos. But visiting Lazy 5 is exactly what some local schools are doing.
In the last year and a half, federal authorities have cited Lazy 5 for 21 violations of animal welfare laws, and the feds have also opened a formal investigation into the roadside zoo. One giraffe's hooves are so overgrown that she has to walk on her heels. She has suffered this painful, debilitating condition for more than a year.
The zoo has also been cited for leaving a deer to languish with a hernia for more than a month after euthanasia was recommended, failing to properly care for a deer with a large wound that was infested with flies, failing to shear sheep who were left panting in heavy fleece in 86-degree weather, and allowing dangerous, unsupervised public contact with animals. The list goes on and on, and PETA is appealing to all local schools to stay away.
If your local school takes children on field trips to the zoo or circus, click here for tips on reaching out to your principal to get these cruel field trips off the list.
Written by PETA
After receiving complaints from PETA about the cruel and neglectful treatment of elephants Tina and Jewell, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has now formally charged Cole Bros. Circus and its owner, John Pugh, for numerous violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including the following:
In addition, Cole Bros. Circus and Pugh were charged with exhibiting animals without a license, employing a tiger handler who lacked adequate training, and illegally dealing in tigers.
The charges follow the seizure of Jewell and subsequent surrender of Tina last February after the circus was slapped with a $150,000 fine for illegally selling the elephants in violation of the Endangered Species Act. Tina and Jewell were rehomed at a zoo, which, while not ideal, is a considerable improvement over being trucked across the country in chains and cramped, stuffy trailers.
Wherever the circus goes, you can bet that animal suffering goes with it. Please leave these cruel shows off your summer itinerary and choose animal-free circuses instead.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
PETA has obtained copies of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection reports that describe repeated citations against the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for failing to adhere to the bare minimum regulations of the federal Animal Welfare Act.
According to the most recent USDA inspection report, Ringling has failed to provide adequate veterinary care to an elephant named Sarah who is apparently suffering from an infection: According to Ringling's medical records, Sarah has a history of pus oozing from her vulva and now also has a significantly elevated white blood cell count. But handlers have been ignoring orders from the circus' senior veterinarian to rinse the infected area twice a day, and there was no documentation that this ailing elephant's blood work was even reviewed. Indeed, Ringling did not express concern about Sarah's high white blood count until the USDA raised questions. Sarah is clearly not receiving the care she needs, and her condition could become fatal if she doesn't receive proper treatment. Yet Sarah is still on the road with the circus and is being forced to perform night after night. PETA is calling on the USDA to require Ringling to remove her from the road immediately so that she can receive the care that she needs.
Last November, the USDA cited Ringling for failing to provide veterinary care to another elephant named Sara who is underweight and chronically lame. Ringling was cited yet again for transporting animals in trailers and boxcars with broken, protruding metal trim, wires, and sharp edges, despite the fact that Ringling's own medical records documented that elephants had already been injured by poorly maintained equipment.
An independent elephant expert also observed elephants used by Ringling at recent performances and reported elephants with several injuries, including a bloody foot, a fresh puncture wound, and extensive scarring. In addition, elephants were so stiff—likely with arthritis—that they had trouble moving.
Please never attend a Ringling performance and urge the USDA to take action to remove these ailing elephants from the road.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
Update: Eighteen people with homes near the Yerkes National Primate Research Center have filed a complaint with city and county officials demanding that the facility be shut down. The female rhesus monkey still has not been found.
It shouldn't come as any surprise that the 4,000 intelligent, sensitive nonhuman primates at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center would want to flee their misery and deadly fate. But a brave monkey who escaped her captors at Yerkes this week is now loose in a foreign and frightening environment, and she faces injury, starvation, and possibly worse, thanks to the facility's failure to maintain safe and secure enclosures. PETA is calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate the laboratory for possible violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act.
Yerkes, which is also one of the last facilities in the world to conduct invasive experiments on chimpanzees, has a sordid history of violations of federal animal welfare laws, including 10 violations in just the last two years and a $15,000 fine in 2007. It has been cited for scalding a monkey to death by allowing her to go through a boiling hot automated cage washer, restraining conscious primates with duct tape, and negligently causing the deaths of chimpanzees. We are urging USDA inspectors to file civil charges and levy substantial fines to let Yerkes know that it means business and that experimenters cannot violate the law with impunity.
You can help our fellow primates imprisoned at Yerkes by asking Congress to end to all invasive experiments on great apes.
If rats, mice, dogs, and monkeys were choosing public enemy number one, they would probably go with Charles River Laboratories (CRL), which breeds and sells millions of animals every year to laboratories around the world, supplying half of all the animals used in experiments. CRL is the second largest U.S. importer of nonhuman primates sold into experimentation slavery, importing more than 7,000 monkeys in 2010 alone.
A PETA "mouse" and "monkey" protest CRL's animal abuse at the company's annual meeting.
CRL also performs torture-for-hire for other companies, in which dogs, monkeys, rabbits, rats, and other animals are force-fed poisonous compounds, have their skin burned off with chemicals, and are forced to inhale toxic substances. The animals may endure severe abdominal pain, convulsions, paralysis, and bleeding from their orifices before they die or are killed.
With a sordid history of violating the regulations of the Animal Welfare Act, CRL has failed to do even the bare minimum for animals in its laboratories. Shoddy surgical methods resulted in the protracted misery and eventual death of a dog, and sick and injured animals are routinely denied veterinary care, including rabbits with skin lesions that were more than 4 inches deep. CRL workers sent a cage—with a monkey inside—through a high-temperature cage washer, which boiled the monkey alive, and CRL cooked 32 monkeys to death as a result of negligence.
To help animals abused by CRL and other laboratories, see PETA's tips on fighting animal experimentation.
A photojournalist spent days riding through the Burmese jungle on a motorbike in an attempt to capture on film how elephants are "trained" before being smuggled out of Burma and sold into slavery to perform in circuses and street shows in Thailand. Brent Lewin's prize-winning photograph is leaving viewers horrified in disbelief.
During the training session that Lewin witnessed, a baby elephant tried in vain to turn away and shield herself from the blows. Her mother was tied up where she could see what was happening. Lewin said, "I've never heard an elephant scream like that before …." The baby was beaten until she began to cry, her spirit broken. During these training sessions, animals are typically tied up and beaten for days. Says Lewin, "There was a point when the elephant just resigned to what was happening and stood still, the life in her eyes disappeared. It was a look that was haunting."
Elephants who are forced to perform in any type of act are beaten until they comply. Please, don't patronize any elephant act at home or abroad. To help elephants forced to perform in the U.S., please send an e-mail to the USDA asking the agency to enforce the Animal Welfare Act in cases of violations by groups such as Ringling Bros.
Mr. Smith, where are you when we need you? PETA has learned that Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, not content with hiring an ex-CIA agent to spy on us, is now trying to use Congress to bully the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) out of doing its job.
According to sources on Capitol Hill, the staff of the House Committee on Agriculture, at the urging of a lobbyist for Ringling, summoned the USDA to justify an unannounced inspection (as inspections are supposed to be) that resulted in citations against Ringling for violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including failure to provide veterinary care to a young elephant who is suffering from chronic lameness. In response, PETA has sent a letter to the committee chair and ranking member asking for a meeting to discuss Ringling's long history of animal abuse.
When the USDA attempted to perform its inspection, Ringling employees refused to allow the inspectors to enter for more than an hour. Hmmm … makes you wonder what Ringling is trying to hide, doesn't it?
If you're shocked that Ringling has resorted to hiring spies and using Congress to sweep its abuse of animals under the rug, read this eye-opening Salon article for more on the circus's shady dealings.
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If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.