Written by PETA
Update: Thanks to an anonymous supporter, PETA is now offering $5,000 for information leading to the identification of the men responsible for this beating. The U.S. Army has now determined that the uniforms worn in the video belong to the U.S. Air Force, and the Air Force has launched its own investigation.
The following was originally posted on January 18, 2012:
Update: After much public outcry, Army investigators are looking into the video that depict soldiers beating a sheep with a baseball bat. “We are aware of a Live Leak video depicting the killing of a sheep,” an Army spokesman said. “The actions of those involved are not condoned or supported in any way. We are currently assessing the situation to determine more information.”
The following was originally posted January 13, 2012:
Last year, a scandalous video emerged of a U.S. marine throwing a puppy off a cliff. Now there is this video of a soldier repeatedly beating a sheep with a baseball bat to the whoops and laughter of other soldiers who are looking on. I would say "beating to death" because that is probably what happened, but we do not know the upshot. We only know, from watching the video and seeing the mood of the soldiers -- and what appears to be a local lad who arrived with the animal -- that the sheep could only have come to a very nasty end. He or she tries to rise several times but the soldier continues to thwack away amid the laughter.
PETA did what it always does when someone blows the whistle on these incidents of gratuitous cruelty: We wrote to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and then, when no answer was forthcoming, to other high-ranking officers, including Chief of Public Affairs General Stephen Lanza and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command David E. Quantock. No one -- not PETA and not the thousands of people who have seen this video and are rightly disturbed by it -- has received any acknowledgment, not even a single comforting word, that an investigation has been started.
Click here to read the full article at Huffington Post
Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk
Written by Michelle Sherrow
© Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
PETA U.K. is lambasting the judge who let convicted thief Jack Taylor out of serving jail time so that he would be free to kill baby seals and sheep.
Taylor admitted to stealing a motorcycle because he thought there were drugs under the bike's saddle. But instead of throwing the self-confessed burglar into the slammer to ponder his crime, the judge sentenced Taylor to a mere 100 hours of community service so that he could return to his two jobs: slaughtering sheep in Norway and traveling to North America seasonally to beat baby seals to death.
PETA U.K. blasted the sentence, saying, "Imagining that criminals might reform their deviant, anti-social behaviour by bludgeoning baby seals to death is not only delusional but also downright dangerous."
It is not surprising that a career animal abuser appears to be headed for a life of crime. What is surprising is that the judge apparently ignored the fact that there is a strong link between violence against animals and violence against people and that Taylor's crimes could very well escalate. Only by taking cruelty to animals seriously—reporting it when it is illegal and protesting it when it isn't—can we hope to quell the incidence of crimes against people.
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 Heather Faraid Drennan
It never hurts to brush up on answers to questions about animal issues—even seasoned protesters can get a stumper from passersby now and then. See if you know the answers to the following five questions that often pop up in discussions about animal rights:
What's wrong with eggs and dairy products from "free-range" animals? There are no standards for what "free-range" means, so animals on such farms may still spend most of their time in filthy, crowded sheds. Cruel practices such as searing off hens' beaks with a hot blade and relegating male calves to veal crates occur, and when the animals stop producing enough eggs or milk, they are sent to the same slaughterhouses as factory-farmed animals.
If we don't test on animals, what other methods are available? Computer simulations, cell cultures, human cadavers, and clinical trials are just some of the many options researchers can use instead of animal testing to obtain more accurate and cost-effective results.
davedehtre|cc by 2.0
What's wrong with wearing wool? In Australia—where most of the world's merino wool comes from—sheep have been bred to have excessively wrinkled skin in order to produce more wool. The wrinkles collect moisture, which attracts flies, so many farmers resort to "mulesing," a gruesome and cruel procedure in which huge chunks of skin and flesh are cut from lambs' backsides in a crude attempt to prevent flystrike.
Should we put endangered animals in zoos? Endangered animals bred in zoos are rarely released into the wild. Instead, they will spend their lives "warehoused" in cramped enclosures that cannot come close to replicating their natural habitats. As a result, many develop stereotypic behaviors such as pacing, rocking from side to side, and self-mutilation. The only humane and effective way to combat extinction is to protect animals' habitats.
What's wrong with using a choke or prong collar on my dog? As their names imply, choke and prong collars inflict discomfort and pain, and they can severely injure dogs' necks and throats. Far safer and more humane options are no-pull harnesses and halters like the Easy Walk, Halti, or even a standard figure-H harness. For cruelty-free dog-training tips, check out celebrity dog trainer Tamar Geller's video series for PETA.
Have another animal rights question that you've always wondered about? Visit PETA's Frequently Asked Questions page.
There's nothing chic about mutilating sheep, and the Australian wool industry's efforts to make the sweater set appeal to the younger set via its Facebook page have hit a snag. After PETA asked its supporters to post photos from our "We ♥ Sheep" album, which show the unlovely cruelty behind the wool industry's "We ♥ Wool" page, the page was shut down!
The wool industry is notorious for mutilating millions of gentle lambs every year with "mulesing," a crude and cruel attempt to prevent a maggot infestation known as "flystrike." Farmers cut huge chunks of flesh—not just skin—from lambs' backsides, usually with little or no pain relief. In agony, the mulesed lambs scuttle sideways like crabs, and the deep wounds can take weeks to heal, often becoming infected before they do.
You can help save sheep's skin—and get under the wool industry's skin—by shopping for cruelty-free clothing
After receiving damning reports from someone working inside the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) earlier this year. The USDA found, among other abuses, that sheep who had undergone invasive experimental surgeries (including one sheep who could not stand up afterward) apparently received no pain relief at all, that a goat died in surgery without proper monitoring during anesthesia, and that experimenters using ferrets in an infectious-disease study neglected to consult with veterinary experts. The USDA noted that experimenters failed to provide basic post-operative pain relief to animals who had been subjected to invasive surgeries—including allegedly leaving a dog who had tubes implanted during surgery to die without any treatment. The agency has cited UTMB for violating the minimum standards of the Animal Welfare Act. UTMB has "ongoing" problems with oversight, says the agency.
Please e-mail UTMB President David L. Callender and ask him to immediately discipline experimenters for their cruelty to animals.
PETA wishes a very happy 60th birthday to rock legend Chrissie Hynde, who, when she isn't using her beautiful voice to sing platinum hits, uses it to stop cruelty to animals. From opening her vegan restaurant, VegiTerranean, to having her hit song "I'll Stand by You" featured in a heartbreaking public service announcement, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has spent decades advocating for animals. Chrissie's actions for animals are too numerous to list, but here are our six favorites:
We know that animals would agree with us, Chrissie—you rock!
Update: After the Australian RSPCA was at last permitted to board the disabled ship, they discovered that at least 200 sheep had already died. The surviving sheep are being unloaded and sent to a feedlot, a process that is expected to take several days. Australia's agriculture minister acknowledged that hundreds of sheep had died but shrugged off the deaths as being "expected."
The following was first published on August 16th.
For the past week, 67,000 sheep have struggled to survive inside a crowded, filthy multitier ship in Australia. We're betting that not all of them have made it. The sheep―either discarded by the wool industry or bred for meat―were bound for slaughter in the Middle East, a grueling journey, but when the ship experienced mechanical problems, the captain turned the ship around and returned to Australia.
Now the ship is sitting at the dock, and the sheep have been left on board to suffer in cramped quarters, mired in their own waste. Eventually, one supposes, it will be back out to sea again for these unfortunate animals.
The voyage from Australia to the Middle East can take weeks, during which time many sheep commonly starve to death, are trampled, or become ill and die, their bodies tossed overboard. Upon arrival, the survivors are dragged from the ship, thrown into the backs of trucks, and driven to slaughter, where they have their throats cut while fully conscious.
Please urge Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to put a stop to the immense suffering endured by millions of sheep and other animals every year by banning live export.
Many Australian sheep will be spared from mutilation, thanks to U.K.-based grocery giant Tesco, which has announced that it will buy lamb meat only from farms that do not perform mulesing. Farmers who raise sheep for wool often sell them for slaughter if wool prices drop, meat prices increase, or the sheep are too old to breed. But now Tesco will only buy the meat if the farmers did not mutilate the sheep during wool production.
Mulesing is a barbaric procedure in which Australian farmers use garden shears to carve chunks of skin and flesh from the lamb's backsides in a crude attempt to create smoother skin that won't collect moisture and attract flies. But the exposed, bloody wounds often attract flies before they heal, or they become infected. Many sheep who have undergone the mulesing mutilation still suffer slow, agonizing deaths from flystrike. PETA has lobbied for the Australian wool industry to require all sheep farmers to control flystrike with the humane methods—such as breeding for a bare breech, spray washing, and more frequent monitoring of sheep—that are already being used by some farmers.
To thank Tesco for helping to end this cruel practice, PETA U.K. has sent the company a vegan cake emblazoned with the image of a sheep. You can help by urging the Australian government to outlaw mulesing today.
Virginia police are looking for a serial butt-slasher—a man who has cut several women across their backsides with a sharp blade in crowded shopping malls. While these attacks are disturbing, they are all too common—at least in Australia, where there is a veritable butt-slashing epidemic.
Every year, Australian farmers cut huge chunks of flesh from millions of gentle lambs' backsides during the mulesing mutilation. The lambs struggle as they are forced into metal restraints and have the skin around their tails cut away with garden shears in a crude and cruel attempt to prevent flystrike—a maggot infestation that affects Merino sheep who have been bred to have excessively wrinkly skin in which flies lay their eggs. The wounds from mulesing may take weeks to heal, and until then, the little lambs walk sideways like crabs because of the pain. Many lambs die when infection sets in or from flystrike—the very condition that the mulesing mutilation is supposed to prevent.
There are humane and more effective options for preventing flystrike, including breeding sheep to have less wrinkly skin and monitoring flocks more closely to treat the early signs of flystrike. Please take a moment to tell Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard that it's time for the wool industry to get off its a** and start treating sheep as living creatures, not commodities.
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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.