Animals Rescued From NC ‘Slow Kill’ Shelter

This case has been a decade in the making, with a steady stream of complaints about substandard conditions and terrible suffering at the no-kill shelter in North Carolina, but this week, shortly after the release of a seven-months long PETA undercover investigation into All Creatures Great and Small, the animals languishing in the shelter are finally getting the help that they have desperately needed. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture has announced that it will be launching an operation to transfer the remaining animals—almost 300 of them—out of this hellhole and into pre-approved animal sheltering organizations, and closing ACGS for good due to ongoing, persistent violations of the animal welfare act.

This is a big victory for the animals who have suffered from overcrowding, disease, and untreated injuries at the shelter, and a testament to the hard work and perseverance of the undercover investigator, whose harrowing footage of conditions inside the operation broke this case wide open after seven years’ worth of red tape prevented All Creatures Great and Small from being shut down following a series of failed state inspections as far back as 2001.

We were thrilled to learn that these animals have finally gotten a reprieve, but there’s still work to be done on this case, specifically the filing of criminal charges against the operators of the facility, who have thus far not been held accountable for the shocking neglect and mistreatment of the animals in their care. You can find info to contact the Henderson County District Attorney and urge him to get on with that on this page.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, this is the video from PETA’s seven-month investigation into the shelter. Sadly, these sorts of conditions are an extremely common sight in no-kill shelters like ACGS, which take in more animals than they can manage and refuse to give suffering animals in their care a humane release.