Kategorie: Animals

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Alabama’s Blue Ride Kennel Should Be Shut Down: PETA Statement

Since 2020, the contract dog-testing laboratory Blue Ridge Kennel in Wetumpka, Alabama, has been cited for 32 violations of federal animal welfare laws—including for having unqualified personnel and for providing animals with inadequate veterinary care. The kennel purchased dogs from individuals who didn’t possess licenses—indicating that these dogs could have been someone’s animal companions or could even have been stolen from someone’s property. For years, the company has violated federal regulations pertaining to the functioning of its Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. The U.S. Department of Agriculture considers such violations “grave,” as they indicate that the system of oversight has fallen apart. In 2021, the kennel used 67 dogs in experiments and held an additional 56 dogs for testing.

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding federal documents that reveal serious animal welfare violations at Blue Ridge Kennel:

Blue Ridge Kennel treats dogs like disposable equipment and needs to get out of the cruel animal testing business. Its employees are either unable or unwilling to comply with minimum animal welfare laws. According to a just-posted federal inspection report obtained by PETA, the facility failed to offer adequate veterinary care to multiple dogs, including a yellow male Labrador retriever who was weak, struggled to stand, and had pressure sores on his body. Because he found it difficult to move, he struggled to avoid his own urine and feces. Several dogs were underweight. One redbone coonhound had protruding ribs and hipbones as well as a protruding backbone.

About 70,000 dogs are abused in archaic and unreliable experiments in the U.S., just like those at Blue Ridge Kennel. We need state-of-the-art, human-relevant research methods that don’t use animals, such as those described in PETA scientists’ groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal.

For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Alabama’s Blue Ride Kennel Should Be Shut Down: PETA Statement appeared first on PETA.

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Hainan Airlines’ Illegal Monkey Shipment Prompts PETA Complaint to Feds

Armed with documentation that a Chinese airline shipped 720 endangered long-tailed macaques this month from Cambodia to Chicago, ultimately destined for a notorious Alice, Texas, monkey facility, PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement, calling for an urgent investigation. The USDA confirmed to PETA that it had canceled Hainan Airline’s registration in May, making this shipment an apparent violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA).

Based on a whistleblower report, the monkeys were sent to a facility operated by Envigo Global Services Inc. in Alice. Envigo has repeatedly shown that it values profits over animal welfare. Following PETA’s undercover investigation into Envigo’s beagle-breeding facility in Virginia last year, the USDA cited the company for 48 violations of the AWA and a U.S. Department of Justice civil case led Envigo to announce that it will shut down the facility. In 2019, the USDA also cited the company’s monkey facility in Texas with a critical violation of the AWA for failing to provide 25 monkeys with food for six days. Envigo had to euthanize two of these animals because they were so severely starved.

“Whether you’re talking about beagles or monkeys, Envigo cannot be trusted to take care of animals or safeguard public health,” says PETA Senior Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “Monkeys brought in from squalid farms in Asia endure terrifying, grueling journeys and can harbor everything from Ebola to malaria. If Hainan can’t be bothered to do the minimum of registering itself as required and Envigo doesn’t ensure that its carrier is legitimate, we have to ask whether they’re following any of the protocols required for public safety.”

Long-tailed macaques are now recognized as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature—in large part due to their exploitation as part of the international wildlife trade to U.S. laboratories, where they’re mutilated, poisoned, deprived of food and water, forcibly immobilized in restraint devices, infected with painful and deadly diseases, psychologically tormented, and killed.

Hainan appears to be one of the last airlines still shipping monkeys to laboratories. In January, Kenya Airways ended the practice just 24 hours after discussions with PETA U.S., Air France followed suit in June after a decade-long campaign by PETA entities, and EGYPTAIR stopped shipping monkeys earlier this month following PETA entities’ global protests.

For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Hainan Airlines’ Illegal Monkey Shipment Prompts PETA Complaint to Feds appeared first on PETA.

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‘Hell on Wheels’ Is Coming: Squawking Truck to Ruffle Feathers at West Chicago Food Festival

Diners at the West Chicago Food Festival just might think twice about chowing down on fried chicken after they see—and hear—“Hell on Wheels,” PETA’s new guerilla marketing campaign featuring a life-size chicken transport truck covered with images of real chickens crammed into crates on their way to a slaughterhouse, complete with recorded sounds of the birds’ actual cries and a subliminal message every 10 seconds suggesting that people go vegan. The truck will stake out the festival on Saturday—which is World Day to End Speciesism—as part of the group’s national tour.

“Behind every fried chicken sandwich or barbecued wing is a once-living, sensitive individual who was crammed onto a truck for a terrifying, miserable journey to their death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ‘Hell on Wheels’ truck is an appeal to anyone who eats chicken to remember that the meat industry is cruel to birds and that the kindest meal is a vegan one.”

Birds killed for their flesh are bred to grow such unnaturally large upper bodies that their legs often become crippled under the weight, and the sheds in which they’re confined are so filthy that the red, watery goo in packages of chicken is referred to as “fecal soup.” They’re trucked through all weather extremes, sometimes over hundreds of miles and without any food or water, to slaughterhouses, where their throats are slit—often while they’re still conscious.

The “Hell on Wheels” tour includes stops outside several other food festivals and state fairs: the Michigan Chicken Wing Festival in Lansing, the Taste of Buffalo in New York, the Nashville Hot Chicken Music Festival in Tennessee, and the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. The truck is also driving by chicken restaurants in Baltimore, Memphis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and other cities.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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