Kategorie: Animals

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Feds Call Off Raid of Underground Track, Destroy PETA’s Evidence of Horse Doping

Federal officials from multiple agencies failed to act on overwhelming evidence that horses were electroshocked and injected with street drugs–including cocaine and methamphetamine–at unsanctioned races, where illegal gambling and other violations are rampant, The Washington Post revealed today. PETA responded to the feds’ abandonment by seeking local prosecutions and the enactment of regulations to offer some protection for horses.

injecting horse

PETA had brought the videos and syringes collected during our undercover investigation into Georgia “bush tracks” to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which then worked with the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on planning a raid. However, the “three-letter agencies” balked at busting the track, told the USDA to stand down, and abandoned the investigation, leaving enforcement efforts to the local sheriff.

PETA then met with Lamar County Sheriff’s Office investigators and local prosecutors, persuading them to charge six jockeys with cruelty to animals and a bookie with felony commercial gambling. However, doping charges couldn’t be pursued, as the USDA had destroyed all the syringes we had collected.

Meanwhile, convicted felon Arthur “Brutz” English IV—owner of the Rancho El Centenario track in Milner, Georgia—has yet to be charged and continues to operate races at which horses are abused and doped and die in gruesome breakdowns. During the investigation into his operation, PETA’s undercover investigators collected dozens of used syringes from the racetrack. English recently taunted law-enforcement officials by creating promotional pens shaped like syringes and printed with the track’s logo.

syringe shaped pens filled with a yellow liquid and the text Atlanta GA printed along the side

The Washington Post wrote, “Jonathan Adams, district attorney for Lamar and two other counties, said there was little more they could do without federal assistance or a change in Georgia law to make unregulated racing a crime. ‘My hands are tied,’ Adams said. ‘I implore our legislators to make these bush tracks illegal or at the very least mandate their regulation.’”

Please sign PETA’s petition urging Gov. Brian Kemp to take immediate action to shut down unregulated tracks in Georgia so that no more horses will be injected with street drugs, be electroshocked, or die in gruesome breakdowns.

The post Feds Call Off Raid of Underground Track, Destroy PETA’s Evidence of Horse Doping appeared first on PETA.

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7 Charged Following PETA Exposé of Unregulated Horse Racing

Huge news! As detailed in today’s Washington Post, prosecutors in Georgia have charged six jockeys with cruelty to animals and a bookie with felony commercial gambling based on evidence gathered in PETA’s groundbreaking undercover investigation into unregulated Quarter Horse races at two “bush tracks” in that state.

mugshots of men implicated in a PETA undercover investigation at Georgia bush tracks

This progress comes after a PETA victory in California, where we presented our findings to the state’s horse racing board, which then passed a groundbreaking regulation to prevent jockeys, trainers, and owners from participating in or even attending unregulated races. With this measure, California became the first state in the nation to ban its licensees from any involvement in unregulated Quarter Horse races.

mugshots of men implicated in a PETA undercover investigation at Georgia bush tracks

Five of the jockeys who face charges in Georgia also race at licensed racetracks across the U.S., including Horseshoe Indianapolis (Indiana), Turf Paradise (Arizona), Louisiana Downs (Louisiana), Prairie Meadows (Iowa), Remington Park (Oklahoma), Red Mile Racetrack (Kentucky), Belterra Park (Ohio), Emerald Downs (Washington), Sam Houston Race Park (Texas), and FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing (Illinois).

mugshot of a man implicated in a PETA undercover investigation

However, convicted felon Arthur “Brutz” English—owner of Georgia’s largest black-market track, Rancho El Centenario in Milner—has not yet been charged and continues to operate races at which horses are abused and doped.

English recently taunted law enforcement by creating promotional ink pens in the shape of syringes, printed with his track’s logo. During PETA’s investigation into Rancho El Centenario, our undercover investigators collected dozens of syringes from the racetrack, where hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal wagers changed hands.

PETA believes that his conduct amounts to commercial gambling and a violation of the Georgia RICO Act, and we’re urging authorities to charge English for both.

What Happens at Georgia Bush-Track Races?

At Georgia unregulated tracks, PETA’s investigators captured footage of the following:

  • Rampant doping of horses, including injections of cocaine, methamphetamine, and Ritalin
  • Jockeys using electroshock devices and whipping horses relentlessly
  • Gruesome and fatal injuries to horses and jockeys

Please sign PETA’s petition urging Gov. Brian Kemp to take immediate action to shut down unregulated bush tracks operating in Georgia so that no more horses will be injected with street drugs, electroshocked, or die in gruesome breakdowns.

The post 7 Charged Following PETA Exposé of Unregulated Horse Racing appeared first on PETA.

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PETA Exhibit Exposing History of Cruel Animal Experimentation Coming to Nashville’s West End Neighborhood

Starting next Wednesday, PETA will show its eye-opening exhibit “Without Consent,” which explores the troubled history of experiments on animals and challenges institutions to rethink this cruel and archaic concept of science, at Centennial Park—a stone’s throw from Vanderbilt University, an institution with a troubled history of animal experimentation.

When:    Wednesday, February 21, to Sunday, February 25, 12 noon–4 p.m.

Where:    Centennial Park, 2500 West End Ave. (near Athena at The Parthenon and Lake Watauga), Nashville

Visitors view PETA’s “Without Consent” exhibit. Credit: PETA

Modeled after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “Without Consent” will be on display locally for five days. It features 28 panels with descriptions and photographs of nearly 200 animal experiments conducted at U.S. institutions from the 1920s to the present. Watch the trailer here. An interactive virtual exhibit is available here.

“‘Without Consent’ tells the true stories of animals harmed and killed in experiments that they did not and could not consent to,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on Vanderbilt and all other institutions to embrace modern, animal-free research, because having the power to exploit other species does not give us the right to do so.”

Vanderbilt was fined more than $15,000 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for animal welfare violations, including an incident in which a monkey was scalded to death when her cage was run through a high-temperature cage washer while she was trapped inside.

“Without Consent” also points out that vulnerable humans—including orphans in tuberculosis and psychological experiments, immigrant women in gynecological surgeries, soldiers in LSD and poison gas tests, and impoverished Black men in syphilis experiments—were exploited in experiments. Just as society now understands that these experiments were wrong, “Without Consent” shows that we need to let a similar moral awakening guide our conduct today by extending consideration to the 110 million animals killed every year in U.S. laboratories. These animals are individuals who feel pain and fear, yet they’re robbed of their babies, force-fed chemicals, and sickened with diseases, among other atrocities.

Since its debut in 2021, “Without Consent” has traveled to 29 cities and has shared information about the horrors of experimentation with nearly 15,000 visitors. As neuroscientist and Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik describes it, “‘Without Consent,’ PETA’s new traveling exhibit, is a must-see. … Check it out in a city near you and do your part to help create a better future for all!”

After viewing “Without Consent,” more than 2,500 visitors were moved to contact their legislators, urging them to oppose animal testing and endorse the Research Modernization Deal, which offers a strategy for replacing scientifically useless tests on animals with effective human-relevant research methods.

“Without Consent” will be open to the public at Centennial Park from 12 noon to 4 p.m., February 21 to 25.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

The post PETA Exhibit Exposing History of Cruel Animal Experimentation Coming to Nashville’s West End Neighborhood appeared first on PETA.

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Your Taxes Paid Experimenters to Kill Mice—the CARGO Act Could Stop This Absurdity

PETA has found even more reasons to ask your legislators to take action and dam the flood of taxpayer money that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses to bankroll pointless experiments on animals in foreign countries. Not only does PETA point out that these experiments are cruel and deadly, we’ve also found that some have been so riddled with lies and unnecessary agony that scientific journals retracted studies they published about them.

Tax-Funded Falsifications

Experimenters at Henan University of Science and Technology in China injected cancer cells into mice, causing the animals to grow large ulcers and tumors. After allowing the mice to suffer with their wounds, experimenters falsified graphs to misrepresent the magnitude of their pain. Their paper was retracted due to serious animal welfare concerns, the failure to adhere to minimum ethical standards, and the exceedance of “internationally-accepted limits” for the size of tumors grown in mice. NIH had given tax money to University of Louisville experimenter Richard J. Lamont to carry out this experiment. He, in turn, outsourced his dirty work to the experimenters in China.

Figure showing several dead white mice lined upModified from Figure 2 in Xu GS, Li ZW, Huang ZP, et al. MiR-497-5p inhibits cell proliferation and metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma by targeting insulin-like growth factor 1. Mol. Genet. Genomic Med. 2019;7(10):e00860. | CC BY-NC 4.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International | Creative Commons
Mice were killed after suffering from tumors in NIH-funded experiments conducted at Yunnan University of Chinese Traditional Medicine in China.

Experimenters at Yunnan University of Chinese Traditional Medicine in China also subjected mice to painful cancer experiments, deliberately causing the small animals to grow large tumors. After weeks of torment, the mice were killed. The experimenters then faked their graphs and lied about their data, leading to the retraction of their paper. NIH had awarded tax money to U.S. experimenter F. Charles Brunicardi, affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and the University of California–Los Angeles, who also passed the work off to experimenters in China.

There’s no way to undo the senseless abuse of animals in these tests, but we can end funding for animal experiments overseas.

Help End Funding for Foreign Animal Experiments

The bipartisan Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act (HR 4757) would safeguard U.S. taxpayers from more overseas fraud by preventing NIH from awarding any additional public funding to foreign entities for experiments on animals.

If you’re in the U.S., please take action now to urge your U.S. representative to cosponsor the CARGO Act today:

And everyone can take action to urge NIH to stop funding cruel and deadly experiments on monkeys:

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