Feds Cite Local Tiger Exhibitor After PETA Tip
For Immediate Release:
June 7, 2021
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
After PETA tipped off the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to an illegal tiger display by Kaufman-based Lisa Lopez—who operates under the name “All Things Wild” and has no federal license to exhibit animals—the agency issued a citation to her and ordered an end to the display, an inspection report that PETA just obtained reveals.
During the event in March, Lopez offered photo opportunities with the tigers, who are confined to small travel trailers and hauled all over the country. According to Liberty city officials, Lopez tried passing off another exhibitor’s license as her own to the event organizer.
“No stranger to skirting law enforcement, this menacing menagerie drags along an extensive rap sheet wherever it travels,” says PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Debbie Metzler. “PETA urges kind people to avoid the tawdry tiger shows at flea markets—and everywhere else.”
PETA notes that Lopez’s current business partner, Marcus Cook—who confines the exhibit’s tigers on his property in Kaufman—had his own license to exhibit tigers permanently revoked in 2012 after he was charged with nearly 100 federal Animal Welfare Act violations for actions that include using an electric prod on a tiger and handling methods that resulted in a tiger cub biting a member of the public. Lopez’s application for an exhibitor’s license was denied in 2017, but she and Cook continued to exhibit tigers unlawfully as “All Things Wild” using the license of yet another exhibitor, Michael Todd—until his federal license was terminated in 2020 for partnering with Cook. PETA has urged the USDA to pursue criminal charges related to these unlawful exhibitions in light of Cook’s and Lopez’s open disregard for the law and multiple civil orders not to violate it.
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and its motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment.” For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
