PETA is hitting Panther City—home of the “world’s only year round rodeo” as well as many BBQ joints, steakhouses, and other meaty eateries at the Fort Worth Stockyards—with a sky-high message of compassion to cows, courtesy of a giant new billboard encouraging people to chew on the idea that they’re living, breathing beings, not steaks, ribs, or burgers.
“Cows are intelligent, self-aware individuals who feel love, joy, and fear, and they deserve better than to be killed for food and terrorized for entertainment,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboard urges people to steer clear of the rodeo and all the meaty eateries there and across the city.”
The meat industry brands cows, castrates them, and rips the horns out of their skulls, often without any painkillers. Afterward, workers pack the animals into filthy feedlots and eventually into transport trucks for a terrifying trip to the slaughterhouse. Countless animals used for rodeo spectacles have sustained debilitating and even fatal injuries, including broken backs and necks, heart attacks, and aneurysms.
The billboard is located at 711 W. 13th St., not far from the Fort Worth Stockyards and less than a mile from P.F. Chang’s, Taco Bell, and Lolas Cuban Food.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
PETA pushed for the good and investigated and exposed the bad, and now, a landmark bill has been passed! Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed California Assembly Bill 1282 into law, meaning that The Golden State has ditched its pernicious requirement that blood and other products for transfusions be obtained from dogs held captive and warehoused in “blood banks.” Until now, it was the only state that required blood sold for veterinary transfusions to come from hellholes like Hemopet, a sham greyhound “rescue” in Garden Grove, California, where PETA documented that workers took such massive amounts of blood from dogs, so often, that experts agreed that it was potentially dangerous.
Huge victory!
Thanks to PETA supporters, @socialcompassio and others, California will officially allow community canine blood banks, where healthy dogs can make a vital difference, then return home to their loving families. pic.twitter.com/YDrD6ePdAH
PETA’s investigation into Hemopet and another blood bank that confined greyhounds in inhumane conditions exposed a cruel and secretive industry in which dogs were kept caged, sometimes for life, and we raised awareness of the number of veterinary clinics that help save sick and injured dogs’ lives by working with dog guardians who volunteer their large, calm, healthy dogs for blood draws.
PETA’s video exposés of The Pet Blood Bank (a Texas blood farm that, on the heels of our exposé, shut down and transferred 151 greyhounds into adoption programs) and Hemopet (above) unveiled the systemic suffering of dogs warehoused for blood. Our work informed eye-opening reports on this hidden industry by The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many other media outlets and set the stage for this groundbreaking win.
“Cheers went up at PETA today at the news that California is finally phasing out the operation of hellish facilities like Hemopet,” PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch said in response to the passage of the new law.
This historic triumph is also thanks to our members and supporters who—responding to PETA action alerts—urged their state legislators to permit new, community-based blood banks to open and collect blood from animals who live comfortably in homes with their guardians; the testimony of our own veterinarians; and the hard work of Social Compassion in Legislation, a vanguard voice championing landmark legislation for animals.
“Thanks to Gov. Newsom and the state legislature, California can soon welcome community blood banks, where healthy dogs can make a lifesaving difference for others and then return home to their loving families,” said Nachminovitch.
Thank you to everyone who used their voice and helped make this monumental victory for animals possible!
Take Action: Dogs Are Still Being Imprisoned for Blood
While the National Greyhound Association (NGA) claims to have barred its members from directly sending greyhounds to any blood bank operation, PETA exposed how members can apparently still send dogs to sham “rescues” like Hemopet. Join us in demanding that the NGA take immediate and decisive action to remove all operations that hold dogs captive for their blood from its list of acceptable facilities:
Are you a dog guardian? Please, urge your veterinarian not to purchase blood from dogs kept captive and to obtain it only from dogs who get to live as all of them should—in homes with loving families.
Today, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Administrative Law Judge Jill S. Clifton ruled that Dan Moulton, operator of Moulton Chinchilla Ranch near Chatfield, Minnesota, violated federal law by failing to meet the minimal care standards of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA)—for which he has been cited over 100 times since 2013—including by repeatedly failing to provide chinchillas with adequate veterinary care for open and infected wounds, pus-filled eyes, overgrown teeth, and more.
The USDA has fined Moulton $18,000 and stripped him of his AWA license, meaning that he can no longer operate as a wholesale dealer for the vivisection industry or the pet trade. Below, please find a statement from PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch:
“Dan Moulton has rightly lost his federal license, so he can no longer supply chinchillas to pet shops or to laboratories for crude and cruel experiments. Today’s victory has made PETA even more determined to see his days of violently snapping chinchillas’ necks end and the miserable breeding mill—where a PETA undercover investigation revealed these sensitive animals were denied basic necessities and veterinary care for life-threatening injuries—emptied for good. No more chinchillas should be allowed to suffer and die at Moulton Chinchilla Ranch, and PETA won’t rest until they are given a chance to find suitable, loving homes.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on, wear, or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
We need 500 donors in order to unlock $25,000 and help free the dogs at Texas A&M University. Will you make a special gift before midnight on Saturday, October 9, to help?
PETA is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction on cruelty charges of the person(s) who stabbed a dog named Bully to death.
According to reports, Bully’s guardian, Victor Kila, last saw him alive on Monday night at home, near Ulehawa Stream. When Kila went to look for his beloved brown shar pei/pit bull mix in his yard at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, Bully was missing—and the fence had evidently been tampered with. That’s when Kila encountered a neighbor from across the canal, who had heard a dog crying early that morning and found Bully with multiple stab wounds all over his body, including his chest, neck, back, and genitals. She had tried to save him, but his injuries were too severe.
Honolulu police are pursuing this case of cruelty to animals in the first degree—a felony that could carry a jail term of up to 10 years and a prohibition on owning animals for up to five years—but no suspects have been identified. Would you please share this information and photo with your audience? It may lead to a break in the case.
“Someone apparently stole this dog from his home and repeatedly stabbed him, leaving him to suffer and die and his family heartbroken,” says PETA Senior Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA is asking anyone with information about this dog’s terrifying death to come forward so that his killer can be caught.”
Anyone with pertinent information should contact CrimeStoppers Honolulu at 808-955-8300.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
