Written by Alisa Mullins
The following was adapted from a post on PETA Asia's Hot and Sour Scoop blog:
After Egyptian media reported that a scientific committee was recommending that all Australian cattle have their ears cut off prior to slaughter, PETA Australia encouraged its supporters to speak up. As a result, the Australian government has assured PETA Australia that it has discussed this issue with Egyptian officials and that the ears of animals will not be cut off prior to slaughter.
The recommendation to cut off the ears of cattle came after Australian cattle in Egypt were held for several weeks following the discovery of hormone growth promotants (HGPs) in some animals' ears. Egyptian authorities have demonstrated their mistrust of HGPs, and PETA Australia feared that they were likely to accept the findings of the committee, leaving Australian cattle open to this extreme mutilation—most likely with no pain relief—prior to their inhumane slaughter.
However, it's still unclear if Australian animals in Egypt will have the implants removed from their ears prior to slaughter as has occurred previously, according to Australia's Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. PETA Australia investigators have seen firsthand how cattle are treated in Egypt, so this procedure likely would not be performed humanely, either. PETA Australia is waiting for a response from the Australian minister of agriculture.
It's very clear under Islamic law that for meat to be halal ("permissible"), animals must not experience any discomfort prior to being slaughtered. Cattle can't be mutilated before being killed—otherwise, the meat becomes haraam ("sinful").
As an Australian program, Four Corners, revealed, animals exported alive from Australia are not protected from abuse and mistreatment once they have left that country. As in the case of the barbaric killing of 20,000 sheep in Pakistan, the Australian government would have been powerless to stop cattle from having their ears cut off if Egyptian authorities had mandated this mutilation.
Investigations conducted by PETA affiliates have exposed the abuse and mistreatment of animals used for live export on numerous occasions. It's time for Australian officials to end live export. Please e-mail Joe Ludwig, the minister of agriculture, fisheries and forestry, at joe.ludwig@maff.gov.au and politely ask him to ban these ships of death.
Written by Michelle Kretzer
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) permanently revokes an animal exhibitor's license, it means game over—that person or company can never again exhibit animals. But Lancelot Kollman, aka Lance Ramos, a notorious animal abuser who flagrantly disregards the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), must think that he is above the law. PETA caught Kollman in the act, exhibiting tigers with the notorious Hawthorn Corporation at a Shrine circus in Fort Worth, Texas.
For animals in circuses, there is no such thing as "positive reinforcement"—only varying degrees of punishment and deprivation.
PETA has passed this evidence on to the USDA, prompting a formal investigation into both Kollman and Hawthorn. PETA is demanding that the agency pursue criminal charges against Kollman and permanently revoke Hawthorn's exhibitor license. This is far from the first run-in either one has had with the law.
When the USDA yanked Kollman's license in 2009, he had racked up quite a rap sheet for cruelty to animals by denying animals veterinary care, clean water, and adequate shelter; forcing them to live in unsanitary conditions; using physical abuse as a "training tool"; abusing two young lions to the point that one of them died; and starving an elephant so much that he was a full ton underweight when the USDA took the extraordinary enforcement action of confiscating him.
The Hawthorn Corporation brought Kollman onboard despite his well-documented history of animal abuse and neglect. That's no surprise since Hawthorn doesn't exactly play by the rules. The USDA knows Hawthorn well: The first time it ever exercised its authority to seize an elephant was from the Hawthorn Corporation, after an extensive campaign by PETA. Hawthorn had allowed an elephant named Delhi to stand in undiluted formaldehyde, which resulted in severe chemical burns, and then denied her proper veterinary care for her wounds. Hawthorn was subsequently ordered to relinquish custody of 16 additional elephants. The USDA has also suspended Hawthorn's exhibitor license twice, fined it a total of more than a quarter of a million dollars, and issued numerous cease-and-desist orders.
Hawthorn's litany of more than 60 violations of the AWA includes feeding animals moldy and fly-infested food, denying sick animals veterinary care, forcing tigers to live in tiny transport crates for months at a time, using unsafe handling practices, and keeping tigers who were not compatible in small cages together, which resulted in several tigers' deaths. In a span of just nine years, at least 32 tigers owned by Hawthorn died. Many of them were young, and many of them died under circumstances that were entirely preventable, such as from unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Urge the USDA to show Kollman and Hawthorn that they are not above the law. Ask the agency to pursue criminal charges against Kollman and permanently revoke Hawthorn's license. Enough is enough.
Canada's most wanted man, Luka Rocco Magnotta, has been captured after allegedly posting a gruesome snuff video of the murder and dismemberment of an acquaintance, Lin Jun, online and mailing some of the victim's body parts to government offices. It turns out that this probably isn't the self-described porn star's first videotaped killing.
Animal protectionists have been tracking Magnotta for more than two years, ever since a video titled "1 boy 2 kittens" was posted online in 2010. The video showed a man who is believed to be Magnotta placing two kittens inside a bag and suffocating them by vacuuming out the air. One year later, a second video surfaced in which the same man allowed a kitten to be attacked and eaten by a python. Days later, a third video appeared in which a cat was duct-taped to a broomstick and drowned in a bathtub filled with water.
"He might end up killing human beings one day," read an eerily prophetic post on the animal protection group Animal Beta Project's (ABP) Facebook page in 2011. "He might just not stop with animals."
After the second video surfaced, PETA U.K. offered a reward for information leading to the perpetrator's arrest, and PETA U.S., together with ABP, documented Magnotta's online profiles, blogs, websites, known associates, relatives, and whereabouts. PETA and ABP passed the information along to the Ontario SPCA and the Toronto Police Service, which unsuccessfully sought warrants for Magnotta's arrest.
When Magnotta made the news earlier this week, PETA got in touch with the Montréal police and provided it with the information on the kitten-killing videos, in hopes of reviving the cruelty-to-animals charges and bolstering the police's case against Magnotta. A member of the Montréal police department's cyber team will be analyzing the information.
If Magnotta is indeed responsible for these heinous crimes, could he have been prevented from graduating to murder if he'd been caught and punished after killing kittens? We may never know, but this tragedy is a prime example of why it is vital always to take acts of violence against animals seriously and to prosecute the offenders vigorously. If you ever witness cruelty, even by children, please report it to the authorities immediately. You will be protecting the community as a whole, as well as animals.
© Hands & Faces/Digital Vision/Getty Images
A disturbing new undercover investigation inside two pig farms in Goodwell, Oklahoma, one owned by Seaboard Foods, shows injured piglets with their legs duct-taped to their bodies as well as pigs suffering from abscesses, torn body parts, and bacterial infections without being given veterinary care.
Workers are seen chopping off pigs' tails and testicles with no painkillers and hitting pigs in the genitals in order to force them to move from one gestation crate to another. Many of the gestation crates—small metal enclosures in which sows spend most of their lives while they are impregnated again and again—were full of feces and urine. The video shows sows desperately chewing the metal bars of their cages and struggling to stand up. Some are bleeding, and some lie dead.
Seaboard is the country's third-largest pork producer and a supplier to Wal-Mart. Prestage is the fifth-largest producer. Both were investigated.
Did Seaboard know that there was abuse on its farms? Well, 10 years ago, in 2001, a PETA investigation at a Seaboard facility outside Guymon, Oklahoma, led one of its managers to plead guilty to three counts of felony cruelty to animals. Video footage taken by our undercover investigator showed that employees beat pigs with metal gate rods and slammed pigs head-first into the floor in a crude attempt to kill them. Sick and injured pigs were left to die without access to food, water, or veterinary care. Different time, different people, same company, same sort of abuse.
Not an Isolated Incident
Abuse of animals is par for the course on pig farms and all other factory farms. Pigs have the same capacity for suffering as dogs and cats do yet are abused in ways that would be illegal if these animals were the victims.
How You Can Help
The only way to protect animals from this abuse is to stop eating them.
Animals have voices. They cry out when they are being skinned alive for their fur, being beaten and forced to perform painful tricks, or having their throats cut before being hacked apart for their flesh. Animals express their pain, but often, people don't understand or they choose not to listen.
As animal advocates, we must raise our voices alongside animals' and put into words what they can't. Whether we are calmly explaining to someone at the dog park that his or her dog might be yelping because the animal's prong collar hurts or telling a friend that her mascara was smeared into a bunny's sensitive eyes, we have to speak up. Animals need us to.
If you haven't yet made a New Year's resolution, how about this: Never remain silent when an animal is hurting. Just one small voice can—and often does—save animals from cruelty and abuse. How will you use yours?
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Authorities recently rescued 108 animals from three homes in Duncanville, Texas, where dogs and cats were found stacked in filthy, hair-encrusted, rusty cages and confined to rooms in which urine and feces coated the floors—allegedly up to a foot deep. According to news reports, the door to one room to which dogs were confined was sealed shut with industrial tape and hidden behind a curtain, and the dogs had been deprived of adequate food, water, and care.
The woman responsible for these cats and dogs was apparently busy acquiring unadoptable animals from at least one local animal shelter and running a "rescue" group.
Cases like this are common and remind us how animals suffer when people warehouse homeless dogs and cats for years—with no chance for them to run, play, or feel the grass beneath their feet—as a "solution" to quick and painless euthanasia. Animal shelters that shirk their responsibility by handing over animals to anyone who says that they'll take them—as shelters across the country are doing to make their euthanasia rates look better in the face of pressure from the irresponsible snake-oil salesmen who call themselves "no kill" supporters—share the blame for the suffering of animals at the hands of hoarders posing as "rescuers." Beware, beware, beware!
Avoiding euthanasia at all costs is not humane, and it is not a solution to the animal overpopulation crisis. Until the flood of homeless animals is stopped through spaying and neutering, euthanasia will remain a mercy for unadopted and unadoptable animals. Spaying and neutering are the keys to keeping animals out of shelters—and out of "rescues" that are worse than death.
Written by PETA
After buying a dog over the Internet sight unseen for a staggering $7,500, a Long Island man added insult to injury by sending the dog on a terrifying 3,000-mile journey back to the breeder in Washington state less than a week later. The dog, who was likely confused and disoriented after the initial cross-country flight, had failed to adjust immediately to her strange new environment, so the man essentially returned her like a sweater he'd ordered from L.L.Bean, despite the fact that the breeder refused to take the dog back and reportedly said that he would not pick her up at the airport. (The breeder did eventually claim the dog but only after she'd been forced to spend the night at an airport boarding facility.)
The dog buyer could have saved himself a lot of trouble—and the dog a lot of trauma—if he had just taken his family to the local animal shelter, where they could have chosen from among a plethora of great dogs. But considering that he was dumb enough to hand over an exorbitant amount of money to a breeding operation that exacerbates the animal homelessness crisis, allowed the dog only six days to settle into her new home, and was inconsiderate enough to ship her off to an unknown fate in an airplane's dangerous cargo hold after tiring of her, any responsible shelter worker would now lock the doors to this man.
But for those of us who don't view animals as disposable accessories, animal shelters are the perfect place to make a permanent love connection.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
As part of its new sculpture park, the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) at the University of Rochester is planning to install a piece by Tom Otterness, who notoriously purchased a dog from an animal shelter, tied him to a fence, and shot him to death as part of a 1977 "art" film. Although he has since apologized, he reportedly has yet to make any meaningful gesture of regret, such as donating time or money to a reputable animal shelter.
Public outcry has led to the cancellation or postponement of other Otterness sculptures, including a planned New York Public Library sculpture that was canceled after PETA protested. So far, MAG has ignored the most recent protests and plans to proceed with Otterness' commission.
PETA is urging people to avoid visiting MAG so that the gallery will get the message that killing animals is always cruel and that animal abusers should be held accountable. Instead, we encourage people to check out artists such as Miru Kim and Nafe Nanfeng as well as art collective Neozoon, all of whom use their work to help stop cruelty to animals.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
It only takes one look to see that the pony below desperately needed help, but whenever authorities were called out to check on this miserable horse, they inexplicably found "no issues" with his condition and left him to suffer at the hands of his neglectful owners.
The pony was so malnourished that every rib jutted out, and his hoof was so grossly deformed (possibly from an untreated broken bone) and overgrown that it had folded under, forcing him to hobble around. The pony's owners left him to wander the streets and routinely took off for days at a time, leaving him to fend for himself. He had no food, no water, and nowhere to escape the elements.
Thankfully, when PETA and a wonderful local rescue group got involved, the owner quickly agreed to surrender the pony. His overgrown hoof was immediately trimmed, and he was adopted into a loving home within days!
If you've tried to get help for a neglected or abused animal to no avail, don't give up. PETA can often help when no one else can—or will. If you aren't getting anywhere with local authorities, please contact PETA. You may be the only hope for an animal in an otherwise hopeless situation.
A horrific hoarding case in Chicago is a reminder of why, despite any ill-founded "good" intentions, hoarding never results in a happy home—for anyone. It's absolutely vital to report all known or suspected cases of animal neglect or hoarding to authorities immediately.
Police reportedly found a mentally disabled 14-year-old boy dead in a backyard, wearing only a T-shirt. Inside the house, they allegedly found more than 200 animals—and three more sick children—living in filth and feces. Reportedly, all 109 cats in the house were suffering from feline AIDS and leukemia and had to be euthanized, and many other animals were starving and diseased, including a cockatiel whose spine was visible on his nearly featherless back. The children reportedly had never been to school or a doctor and slept on the floor, and their bare feet were caked with feces and dirt. The children's mother has been charged with child abuse and cruelty to animals, among other crimes.
Hoarders exist in virtually every community, so it's crucial to be alert to the signs of hoarding:
If you notice red flags of animal hoarding, please don't hesitate—call the police. Hundreds of lives—both animals' and humans'—may be at stake.
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.
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