Written by Michelle Kretzer
Mike Casey is having a tough time finding a place where he can continue to exploit chimpanzees. Last year, Clark County, Nevada, told him to hit the road after learning from local animal advocates and PETA that Casey was illegally holding chimpanzees and a capuchin monkey there when he wasn't renting them out for use in TV, films, ads, and events. And now, Nye County, Nevada, has told Casey that he isn't welcome there, either, after PETA and local supporters informed the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission about Casey's documented abusive actions, including:
Hannah, one of the chimpanzees imprisoned by Mike Casey.
Casey will now have to move his operation, and you can bet that PETA will be close behind.
This is the second victory for exotic animals in Nye County in as many months. Officials also recently yanked animal exhibitor Karl Mitchell's permit to keep exotic big cats after PETA and local supporters informed authorities that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had permanently barred Mitchell from exhibiting animals because of numerous violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
What You Can Do
Let's keep the pressure on exotic-animal abusers. Please send a polite e-mail to the law firm The Ticket Clinic and ask it to pull its current ad, which features a chimpanzee.
Left out in the cold with no food, water, or shelter, Noel likely wouldn't have survived more than another two or three days. But thanks to PETA, the Virginia Beach SPCA, and a local judge, all her days now feel like Christmas.
A compassionate neighbor called us last December when she spotted bone-thin Noel, who had been left outside to suffer in the frigid winter weather. We raced to the residence and found the young dog under a thorn bush, tethered, tangled, and shivering violently. Not only had Noel's owner failed to take her inside or even provide her with a doghouse, it appeared that she had also been denying the dog food and water. The few pieces of stale kibble that had been tossed her way were scattered across the ground beyond her reach.
When a vet examined Noel, he confirmed that she had been starved and, at 25 pounds, was barely over half her healthy weight of 40 pounds. Our friends at the wonderful open-admission Virginia Beach SPCA found an experienced foster guardian who could nurse Noel back to health, and she thrived in her new home, quickly gaining 17 pounds and starting to trust people again. Shortly after Christmas, Noel's new adoptive guardians described her as the "sweetest, sloppiest kiss-giving, bedtime snuggler."
This week, a judge heard our case against Noel's former owner and sentenced the woman to 40 hours of community service and one year of supervised probation, but most importantly, she has been banned for life from ever owning animals again.
You don't have to have the magic of Santa Claus to help a chained dog. PETA offers a list of lifesaving actions that anyone can take.
Piccadilly Circus has a long, sordid history of cruelty to animals. So when the New York Equestrian Center scheduled a performance by the circus, representatives from animal protection group Long Island Orchestrating for Nature (LION) presented the center with loads of information about Piccadilly's pervasive abuse and neglect of animals.
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LION shared with the event's organizers a firsthand report of blatant animal abuse that a whistleblower had given to PETA. The New York Equestrian Center changed its mind and canceled the performance. LION and PETA sent the center a letter of thanks and a box of vegan chocolates.
Hopefully, the New York Equestrian Center will never agree to host Piccadilly Circus again after hearing the whistleblower's long list of allegations, including the following:
The whistleblower's allegations have since been confirmed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which issued multiple citations against Piccadilly after PETA filed a complaint.
People often choose not to support cruelty to animals when they are presented with information about it. Contact PETA for help getting circus performances canceled in your area.
Written by Alisa Mullins
Yesterday, after five years of campaigning and thanks in large part to thousands of calls and e-mails from PETA supporters to state legislators, Connecticut has overwhelmingly passed a dissection-choice bill that will allow students to opt out of participating in or watching classroom animal dissections and instead be provided with humane non-animal learning methods, such as realistic models and interactive computer programs.
The approximately 10 million animals killed for dissection each year may be caught in the wild, as in the case of frogs—which jeopardizes ecosystems—or be obtained from slaughterhouses, as in the case of fetal pigs, who are cut from their recently killed mothers' wombs. Cats are often obtained from biological supply companies and dealers, who may buy them from animal shelters or even steal the animals right out of their own yards.
Not only are modern alternatives to dissection more humane, they are also safer (no toxic formaldehyde or dangerous tools), less expensive, and more effective (studies have shown that students who use non-animal methods do better on tests than their peers who dissect). Best of all, they teach kids another important lesson at the same time: respect for life.
Connecticut's dissection-choice bill now heads to Gov. Dannel Malloy's desk to be signed into law and will be effective starting on July 1.
If you're a student in Connecticut, be sure to let your science teacher know that you refuse to cut up dead animals and want to use a humane method instead. In addition to Connecticut, more than 20 other states as well as scores of school districts and colleges have enacted laws or policies allowing students to opt out of dissection. For a complete list, visit peta2.com.
Cats can finally breathe a little easier today. After an intensive PETA campaign, Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) has announced that it will stop abusing cats for intubation training exercises in its Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course. WUSTL was the last PALS facility PETA knows of that was still attempting to train health-care professionals to intubate human infants by having them ram hard plastic tubes down cats' delicate windpipes as many as 15 times in a row. The procedure often causes swelling and bleeding in the throat and can even cause collapsed lungs and death. Every other one of the more than 1,000 PALS facilities in the country uses superior, lifelike infant simulators, which replicate human anatomy.
WUSTL's change of heart is a victory five years in the making. PETA supporters sent more than 75,000 e-mails, barraged the school with phone calls, and protested on campus and at fundraisers. We placed ads decrying the cruelty to cats in St. Louis newspapers and even on top of gas pumps near the school. Local activists with the Alliance for Medical Progress regularly held eye-catching demonstrations on campus. Comic artist Dan Piraro, a former WUSTL student, created a cartoon to protest the cruelty. Our good friend Bob Barker offered to buy the school human-infant simulators if it would stop abusing cats.
Finally, PETA got our hands on undercover video footage of a cat laboratory and released it to the public. And little more than a month after we did so, WUSTL ended the archaic exercises. Thank you to everyone who protested, sent e-mails, and supported this campaign. Now, please help us save cats suffering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Sixteen of the tigers held by the notoriously cruel Hawthorn Corporation—and kept on the Balm, Florida, property of disgraced and unlicensed animal exhibitor Lance Ramos (aka "Lancelot Kollman")—must be removed from the state, per a recent decision by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWCC). On the heels of an urgent appeal from PETA, the FWCC has refused to renew Hawthorn owner John Cuneo's permit to exhibit or keep tigers in Florida. According to the FWCC, the tigers are being moved today.
Hawthorn—which has supplied a tiger act for numerous circuses, including the Cole Bros. and Shrine circuses—has accumulated $272,500 in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) penalties, has had its federal exhibitor's license suspended twice, and was the subject of the USDA's first-ever confiscation of an elephant after the agency found that Hawthorn had forced an elephant named Delhi to stand in undiluted formaldehyde and failed to treat the resultant chemical burns. Hawthorn was subsequently ordered to relinquish custody of the remaining 16 elephants in its care. Hawthorn's many violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act include forcing tigers to live in cramped transport cages for months at a time, denying them adequate veterinary care, and forcing them to eat moldy, fly-infested food. More than 30 tigers have died in Hawthorn's care since 2000.
Ramos, the notorious big-cat trainer we've told you about many times whose infamous record of abuse—including physically abusing two young lions during training to the point that one died—led the USDA to revoke his exhibitor's license permanently in 2009.
Because Ramos is barred from having a federal license to exhibit tigers, the FWCC refused to issue him a Florida permit to keep or exhibit tigers.
The tigers are returning to Hawthorn's Illinois breeding and training facility, so they are far from safe. Please join PETA in urging the USDA to revoke Hawthorn's license to exhibit animals.
The week isn't going so well for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The company had been benefiting from online promotions through Travelzoo, a site that offers discounts and deals on travel and entertainment. But that was before PETA and its supporters stepped in.
iStockphoto.com/nickfallows
PETA sent Travelzoo information about Ringling's long history of animal abuse. We detailed how Ringling was handed the largest fine in circus history—$270,000—by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for dozens of violations of the Animal Welfare Act. We revealed how former circus employees admitted that Ringling trainers routinely beat elephants and jabbed them with sharp metal bullhooks in order to force them to perform.
We are pleased that Travelzoo listened and made the compassionate decision to stop offering Ringling ticket deals. Travelzoo joins Lucky Brand, Denny's, Lukoil, MasterCard, Visa, and Sears, all of which have terminated Ringling sponsorships and promotions. Let's keep going after Ringling until its trainers stop going after animals. Ask the USDA to seize the ailing elephants used by Ringling and transfer them to a reputable sanctuary.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam today vetoed the state's "ag-gag" bill, an attempt by the agriculture industry to prevent American consumers from learning about the cruelty inherent in factory farming. The governor agreed with animal advocates and legal scholars who loudly criticized the bill, acknowledging concerns that it was "constitutionally suspect" and that it "actually makes it more difficult to prosecute animal cruelty cases."
Even when it appeared certain that Haslam would sign the bill into law, animal advocates in Tennessee and across the country refused to back down. Tens of thousands of kind people like you reposted PETA's action alert, spoke out against the bill, and flooded Haslam's e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts with messages urging him to veto it. A long list of celebrities also voiced their opposition, including Emmylou Harris, Carrie Underwood, Wynonna Judd, Miley Cyrus, Tish Cyrus, Ellen DeGeneres, Tony Kanal, CMT President Brian Philips, and Republican strategist Mary Matalin—who also sent lawmakers a video in which she highlights the importance of PETA's undercover work in prosecuting animal abusers.
And we won.
Please take a moment to tweet @BillHaslam and thank him for showing some mercy to animals on factory farms.
In the midst of World Week for Animals in Laboratories, we have exciting news to share. After more than three decades of PETA action, Harvard will be shutting down its deeply controversial primate-testing facility in 2015.
This victory is 30 years in the making. In fact, some early-day PETA members took part in a headline-making demonstration outside the laboratory on April 25, 1983, almost 30 years ago to the day. Since then, we've kept the public informed about the cruel and deadly experiments going on at the facility and filed numerous federal complaints against it. Now, we will urge the center to fund the retirement all of its captive primates to existing sanctuaries or build a place suitable to retire them.
PETA's director of laboratory investigations, Justin Goodman, made this announcement:
PETA is celebrating Harvard's decision to shutter its massive primate prison after our decades-long campaign to achieve exactly that. This forward-thinking move recognizes not only the financial reality but also the signals that the future of research at top-notch institutions does not lie in tormenting other species. For decades, the more than 2,000 primates confined at Harvard have been shocked, starved, infected with debilitating illnesses, and addicted to cocaine, heroin, nicotine, and alcohol in painful and irrelevant experiments. PETA is pleased that Harvard has made the long-awaited decision to stop treating our fellow beings like unfeeling test tubes, and we hope these primates do not end up shunted to yet another laboratory. Since our inception, PETA has protested the abuse of primates in Harvard's laboratories. Harvard's announcement comes almost 30 years to the day after PETA and 5,000 other activists gathered for a historic protest on Boston Common to demand an end to this cruelty. Recently, PETA protested and stopped NASA's plans to fund radiation experiments on monkeys at Harvard, targeted Harvard as one of the worst laboratories in the U.S., filed complaints calling on the federal government to revoke taxpayer funding following the Harvard primate center's laundry list of animal welfare violations, and run ads on cabs and bus shelters around the city declaring that experiments on primates are tantamount to murder."
PETA is celebrating Harvard's decision to shutter its massive primate prison after our decades-long campaign to achieve exactly that. This forward-thinking move recognizes not only the financial reality but also the signals that the future of research at top-notch institutions does not lie in tormenting other species. For decades, the more than 2,000 primates confined at Harvard have been shocked, starved, infected with debilitating illnesses, and addicted to cocaine, heroin, nicotine, and alcohol in painful and irrelevant experiments. PETA is pleased that Harvard has made the long-awaited decision to stop treating our fellow beings like unfeeling test tubes, and we hope these primates do not end up shunted to yet another laboratory.
Since our inception, PETA has protested the abuse of primates in Harvard's laboratories. Harvard's announcement comes almost 30 years to the day after PETA and 5,000 other activists gathered for a historic protest on Boston Common to demand an end to this cruelty. Recently, PETA protested and stopped NASA's plans to fund radiation experiments on monkeys at Harvard, targeted Harvard as one of the worst laboratories in the U.S., filed complaints calling on the federal government to revoke taxpayer funding following the Harvard primate center's laundry list of animal welfare violations, and run ads on cabs and bus shelters around the city declaring that experiments on primates are tantamount to murder."
The almost defunct New England Primate Research Center is one of eight such dedicated federally funded primate prisons across the country. Other similar facilities are located in Oregon, Georgia, Wisconsin, Washington, Texas, California, and Louisiana. We need your help to empty all of their cages. Please ask Congress to divert public money away from experiments on animals in favor of humane, relevant, and lifesaving non-animal research.
I am reminded of a famed Victor Hugo quote: "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." Thank you, PETA supporters. And congratulations.
Great Britain has united against circuses that force wild animals to perform. With the vast majority of the British public behind them, the members of Parliament voted unanimously to ban wild-animal acts in circuses in England and Wales.
iStockphoto.com/GlobalP
Pressure has been mounting for the past few years for the government to make this historic move, particularly after animal rights advocates released an undercover video that showed a groom at Bobby Roberts Super Circus who kicked an Asian elephant named Anne and beat her with a pitchfork. PETA U.K. kept up the anti-circus momentum, with demonstrations, ads, newspaper articles, and action alerts asking its members to e-mail the prime minister. Now Britons can pop a cork and celebrate the fact that legislation to ban all wild animals from circuses is passing through Parliament, meaning no more wild animals will be torn from their homes and families, denied everything that is natural and important to them, confined to tiny boxcars or cages, and forced to perform demeaning and painful tricks for human amusement.
Circuses in England and Wales will go on—but with talented human performers who are there by choice.
We aren't there yet in the U.S.—but the time is coming. Check out PETA's guide "Steps to Take When the Circus Comes to Town" for ideas on how to help. England and Wales are ending these cruel acts, and we can, too.
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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