Feds Wallop Local Roadside Zoo With $13.5K Fine After Complaint From PETA

For Immediate Release:
December 7, 2022

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After PETA alerted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to several animals in need of urgent veterinary care at Indian Creek Zoo, the agency issued the roadside zoo a penalty of $13,500 for multiple alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), including failing to maintain enclosures, which allowed a baboon to bite an employee and a porcupine to escape, never to be found.

Other violations involve the roadside zoo’s repeated failure to provide adequate veterinary care and to communicate with the attending veterinarian regarding the condition of multiple sick and injured animals in its custody. These include a tayra and a rabbit with hair loss and reddened skin, a goat who was limping and had a swollen leg joint, and multiple underweight white-tailed deer, including one with overgrown hooves and another with diarrhea that was rolling down and staining the animal’s rear legs.

“Animals were left covered with their own waste and denied much-needed veterinary care at Indian Creek Zoo,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Michelle Sinnott. “Cutting corners, exhibiting ailing animals, and endangering everyone with shoddy enclosures is unacceptable, and PETA will continue to track this hellhole and loop in the feds at every turn.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—notes that Indian Creek Zoo has received 18 citations for AWA violations since 2015.

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