Please! All it takes is a letter, an e-mail...do something!  Someone has to speak for those that can't!                       Updated 4-6-06

 

Group to Protest Puppies and Kittens Being Skinned Alive in China at Global Pet Expo

IDA, Elephant Expert Blast Inaction for El Paso Zoo Elephants, Urges Mayor to Break Impasse

San Diego, Calif.—In response to recent video evidence revealing puppies being skinned alive (seen nationwide on the CNN’s Larry King Live), In Defense of Animals (IDA) is calling on pet stores and animal guardians to boycott pet products made in China.

The Chinese pet product manufacturing industry has been growing every year, and Americans are outraged that the Chinese Government is turning a blind eye to the brutal killing of dogs and cats while Chinese manufacturers are profiting off dog and cat products sold in the U.S. Members of IDA will gather outside of the largest pet product wholesale tradeshow in the U.S., The Global Pet Product Expo, to expose attendees to the cruel trade in dog and cat fur taking place in China and urge merchants not to trade in Chinese pet products until the country creates and enforces meaningful animal welfare regulations.

When: Saturday, March 25, 2006, 12:00 -2:00 p.m.
Where: San Diego Convention Center, 111 W Harbor Dr.

An undercover investigation of the Chinese fur industry revealed dogs and cats packed into wire cages, stacked by the thousands onto trucks and being transported to be killed for their pelts. More footage shows the strangulation and electrocution of dogs and cats. Investigators witnessed and have documented the animals being skinned alive and thrown onto a pile of other “processed” animals. Some continued to live for up to 10 minutes after being skinned.

Americans love their companion animals so are understandably horrified and outraged when they hear that cats and dogs are being skinned alive in China so that their fur can be made into clothes, fashion accessories and even dog and cat toys. The Chinese pet products industry is very profitable: it is larger than their toy and candy industries combined, and it brings much more money to the booming Chinese economy than cat and dog fur sales. As part of its campaign against the Chinese cat and dog fur industry, IDA is urging animal lovers to boycott any products sold in pet stores labeled “Made in China” and asking pet store owners across the country to refuse to stock these items in the first place.

“It’s time that consumers are made aware of the cruel trade in Chinese dog and cat fur so they will not unwittingly buy while dogs, cats and other animals die,” said IDA spokesperson, Bill Dyer.

Broadcast quality video will be available on site. For more information on IDA’s anti-fur campaign, please visit: www.FurKills.org.

 

BAN IAMS PET FOODS

For nearly 10 months in 2002 and early 2003, a PETA investigator went undercover at an Iams contract testing laboratory and discovered a dark and sordid secret beneath the wholesome image of the dog- and cat-food manufacturer: dogs gone crazy from intense confinement to barren steel cages and cement cells, dogs left piled on a filthy paint-chipped floor after having chunks of muscle hacked from their thighs; dogs surgically debarked; horribly sick dogs and cats languishing in their cages, neglected and left to suffer with no veterinary care.

Iams lied to PETA with promises to improve the conditions for animals in its contract laboratories, even assuring us that enrichment programs were already in place, but our undercover investigator saw otherwise. She fought for six months to have a single cheap, rubber toy placed in each cold, lonely kennel. This is Iams’ idea of enrichment.

Our video footage shows Iams representatives touring the facility and witnessing dogs’ endless circling in barren cells, sweltering in the summer heat. Iams knew the truth yet did nothing to protect the animals.

The dogs and cats in Iams’ tests are no different from our dogs and cats at home when it comes to deserving companionship, play, a stimulating environment, and the right not to be tormented in painful experiments.

Luckily, caring consumers know that advances in nutrition don’t have to come at the expense of animals in labs. Help PETA force Iams to end these painful and unnecessary tests, as many compassionate companies have already done.

Reality TV Hits a New Low: On Celebrity Circus, Reality Bites

European media giant Endemol is strongly promoting its new reality TV show, Celebrity Circus, which features celebrities who perform with animals in the Circo Victor Hugo Cardinali, Portugal ’s largest animal circus.

 

The tricks that the animals are forced to perform are unnatural for them, uncomfortable, and frightening. Animals in circuses spend most of their lives in chains or small cages, and they perform out of fear.

 

The circus’s director and owner, Victor Hugo Cardinali, has publicly—and unapologetically—admitted to beating animals. Portuguese animal protection group Animal Defenders International has released video footage showing that Cardinali jabbed an elephant more than 20 times in the face with a sharp metal spike.  In a recent interview with a Portuguese radio station, Cardinali said, “I did hit the elephant because he did not want to do the trick and I don’t deny it. We can’t let an animal do what he wants to do, otherwise there is no respect and there is no reason for the trainer to be on stage.”

 

Please write a polite letter to Endemol’s chief creative officer. Ask him to leave the animals out of Celebrity Circus—he can still have his reality show and use only willing human performers. Animal-free circuses like Cirque du Soleil are fun, entertaining, and don’t involve cruelty to animals. Please pass this along to your friends, and ask them to write a letter as well:

 

Peter Bazalgette, Chief Creative Officer

Endemol NV

P.O. Box 678 , 1200 AR

Hilversum

The Netherlands

consuelo.silva@endemol.cl

 

Note: The postage rate to The Netherlands is 84 cents. (But e-mail works well too.)

Urge U.S. Department of Defense to End Partnership With Ringling

The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) “America Supports You” partnership with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus provides military personnel and their families with special ticket offers. The DOD’s association with Ringling appears to be a conflict of interests, because Ringling is under federal probe by another governmental agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and such a relationship could undermine the public’s expectation that the federal government will play an unbiased role in enforcing the minimum standards of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Just last month, the USDA confirmed a fourth open investigation into Ringling, this time for possible violations of the AWA during an incident at the end of 2005 in which two elephants allegedly got spooked, escaped from their handler, and ran amok inside an arena. The circus is also under investigation for three 2004 incidents: the death of an 8-month-old baby elephant, who was destroyed after fracturing both hind legs in a fall from a circus pedestal; the bullhook beating of a young, chained elephant; and the death of a lion from apparent heatstroke.

Military personnel have joined the list of concerned parents who would never take their families to a circus that uses animals, because of the cruelty involved.  In a December 2005 letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, members of the military community wrote, “[W]e are proud to defend and protect the weak and helpless from oppressors, and that commitment of compassion extends to animals in the circus, who have been robbed of their freedom and families and are forced to perform under the constant threat of punishment.”

Please remind Secretary Rumsfeld that cruelty to animals used in circuses is unacceptable and that any association with Ringling is not in line with the armed forces’ code of honor. There is nothing honorable about depriving intelligent and sensitive animals of their physical and emotional needs and beating them into submission. If you are a former, current, or retired member of the armed forces, please include that fact in your letter.

The Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
703-695-1219 (fax)
http://www.defenselink.mil/faq/comment.html (comment form)

Zero In on Georgia Man Charged With Neglecting ‘Hunting Dogs’

Please respond and forward as appropriate.

Many of you have found yourselves driving on lonely highways during the coldest months, only to spy dogs in various states of emaciation. They are often spray-painted with identifying numbers, wandering helplessly in search of food, water, or a warm place to lie down during the relentless winter weather. This is the fate that awaits many so-called “hunting dogs,” who are often kenneled in deplorable conditions until they are trucked into the woods and then released to chase wild animals into clearings that are rife with hunters, beer cans, and guns poised for action.

Craig Armstrong of Springfield, Georgia, faces charges stemming from authorities’ alleged March 19 discovery that his seven “hunting dogs” were starving in a feces-strewn pen on his property. According to news sources, Armstrong is accused of denying the animals food for approximately two weeks prior to their seizure. One dog was apparently too weak to stand.  

The responsibility of prosecuting the accused falls to the office of Mark Lee, the solicitor for surrounding Effingham County.

Please respectfully remind Lee that people who abuse or neglect animals rarely do so only once. Ask Lee and his staff to aim to keep animals safe and, if Armstrong is convicted, out of the defendant’s hands and apparently filthy backyard pens. Kindly suggest that any person convicted of leaving a dog—let alone seven dogs—to sit neglected and forgotten in a filthy pen deserves to spend a meaningful period of time sitting similarly ignored in a grim jail cell.

Impolite correspondence works against our efforts.

The Honorable A. Mark Lee
Solicitor General, Effingham County
123 S. Laurel St.
Springfield, GA 31329
912-754-9770 (fax)

IDA Calls for Stiffest Penalty for Cockfighters

Animal Protection Group Says Forty Arrested Should Pay Highest Price for Staging “Violent, Bloody Events”

Banks County, Ga.—International animal protection organization In Defense of Animals (IDA) sent an urgent appeal today to Assistant District Attorney Paul Hitchcock, urging his office to vigorously prosecute the forty people arrested last weekend in connection with cockfighting. According to news sources, as much as $20,000 was seized at the scene.

In the United States cockfighting is illegal in all but two states, and in thirty-three states it is considered a felony offense. A federal law increasing the penalties for shipping game fowl across state lines for fighting purposes or for international export took effect in 2003.

“Cockfighting is egregiously cruel and anyone caught participating in these violent, bloody events should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Elliot M. Katz, DVM, founder and president of IDA.

During cockfights, “gamecocks,” bred to be aggressive, are pumped full of stimulants like strychnine and testosterone and blood-clotting drugs. Their natural spurs are sawed off and replaced by razor sharp steel blades or curved implements called gaffs which measure from one to three inches long to make fights more “exciting.” Fighting birds suffer gruesome injuries, including broken wings and legs, punctured lungs, severed spinal cords and split eyes. Cockfighting is also a breeding ground for other criminal activities; illegal gambling, weapons and drugs are part and parcel of “gaming.”

For more information, please visit www.idausa.org/campaigns/sport/cock/cockfighting.html. A copy of the letter is available upon request.

Columbia University Cruelty

Grotesque abuses to animals in laboratories at Columbia University, including subjecting baboons to invasive surgeries and leaving them to suffer and die in their cages without any painkillers. This horrific story came to our attention when a courageous whistleblower, Dr. Catherine Dell’Orto, a postdoctoral veterinary fellow at Columbia, stepped forward to tell us what she had witnessed.

While investigators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the university’s own internal investigation have concluded that Columbia failed to provide even basic post-surgical care, adequate veterinary care, and euthanasia to animals used in experiments, the torture continues.
• Strokes artificially induced in baboons by removing their left eyeballs to reach and clamp a critical blood vessel to their brains and administer experimental drugs. Animal records reveal baboons hunched over in their cages, unable to drink, chew, or lift their heads, and left without veterinary care.

• Monkeys with metal pipes surgically implanted in their skulls for the sole purpose of inducing stress in order to study the connection between stress and women’s menstrual cycles. One monkey, left alone to recover from the hideous implant surgery, was photographed with blood running down her face long after she had come out of anesthesia. The animals were given nothing but an aspirin after the anesthetics wore off.

• Twenty years of pumping nicotine and morphine into pregnant baboons who are strapped into backpacks full of instrumentation and tethered inside their metal cages. Their babies undergo surgery while still in utero. One baboon lost 40 percent of her body weight, and her severe bone infection was left untreated. Another baboon endured five surgeries—all approved by Columbia’s ineffectual Animal Care and Use Committee.
Take a few minutes to review this Web site and you will understand what the animals at Columbia face every day. Then, please take a few more minutes to find out to help end these crude, painful, traumatic, and wasteful experiments. Contact info below

 

The Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave. S.W.
Washington, DC 20201
202-619-0257
202-690-7203 (fax)
And don't leave out the person who is most concerned with raising funds for Columbia:
David Stern
Commissioner of the NBA
Chair of the Board of Trustees, Columbia University
Olympic Tower
New York, NY 10022
212-407-8000
212-826-6197 (fax)
dstern@nba.com

SAVE A SEAL BOYCOTT CANADIAN SEAFOOD



PETITIONS TO SIGN

Procter And Gamble Petition
Multi-national company Procter & Gamble (P&G) - brands include Daz, Fairy, Sunny Delight, Iams/Eukanuba, Pringles, Always, Head & Shoulders, Oil of Olay - continue to routinely vivisect & destroy thousands of animals in the development of their new products and ingredients. If you buy P&G products you fund animal torture.

 POUND SEIZURE

What Is Pound Seizure?
Pound seizure refers to the taking of cats and dogs from shelters and pounds to serve as models in biomedical research. The practice started many decades ago in small-scale projects, but exploded after World War II as funding for biomedical research zoomed upward.

When dogs and cats are acquired for research, their fates become uncertain. While some animals may die quickly, others may be earmarked for long-term studies. Once the pound or shelter releases the animal for research purposes, the animal is rarely protected by anti-cruelty laws.

Rationale Flawed
Pound seizure proponents rationalize that animals in the shelter are going to die anyway. After all, the argument goes, the animals were lost or abandoned as unwanted pets. Why not use them for research? Many humane organizations reject this argument, insisting that animals have a right to a safe and happy existence. Furthermore, the animals chosen for the laboratory are the ones most likely to be adopted - young, one to three years of age, healthy, friendly, and of medium size. Those who are rejected by researchers are the animals least likely to find adoptive homes.

Interestingly, the National Institutes of Health, the largest funded of biomedical research in this country, stopped using shelter animals in its own in-house research several years ago because they consider such animals unsuitable research subjects. Shelter animals are not fully known by the researcher as are purpose-bred animals. Nothing is known about the shelter animals' origins, health conditions, or age, and typically the animals lack conditioning for research. Further, it is more expensive to buy, treat, and condition shelter animals than it is to purchase animals purposely bred for research.

A Safe Haven For Animals?
By allowing pound seizure, we're placing a cheap price on animal life - allowing shelters to serve as discount warehouse suppliers for biomedical research laboratories. Shelters are intended to be protective havens for animals, not commodities brokers for laboratory resources.
Pound seizure is unfair to both companion animals and communities. It violates a public trust that shelters and pounds will provide shelter for animals and either a future with a new owner or a humane death. Citizens might be reluctant to bring in a stray to a shelter knowing that the animal might wind up in a medical experiment, often involving pain and suffering.

Current Law
Fourteen states currently prohibit the release of impounded animals to research facilities: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and West Virginia. Of these, Massachusetts is the only state which specifically prohibits the sale of pound animals brought in from other states as well. This ban has not collapsed biomedical research in that state nor has it run up costs. instead, the state continues as a leader in biomedical labs. Massachusetts law is a model for other states to adopt in their jurisdictions.

Release of impounded animals for research purposes is required in the District of Columbia, Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma (by pounds only; shelters may release animals for research), South Dakota, and Utah.

Release of impounded animals for research is allowed in Arizona, California, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin. All other states permit pounds or shelters to decide for themselves whether or not to provide animals for such purposes.

To the best of our knowledge South Florida Shelters and other Florida Shelters do not participate in Pound Seizures. Please contact your local shelters to ask if they participate in this practice and ask them to stop.

Please contact your elected officials to ask them to stop giving government funding for lab testing on companion animals for medical research.

Suggested Contacts
Please feel free to send this letter to different media contacts. You can send to TV stations, as well as newspapers. If you are sending a letter to the editor about "pound seizure," you must write an
original letter. The goal is to make sure the public is aware of "pound seizure."
Contact info for your local media: http://capwiz.com/congressorg/dbq/media/

SAMPLE LETTER:

"Pound Seizure"

To Whom It May Concern:

Some pounds, shelters and humane societies in the United States sell "surplus" dogs and cats to Class B dealers and/or research facilities. This practice is commonly called "pound seizure." Most people are not aware that this happens. We request that you cover this very important issue and help to educate the public.

Shelter animals are traumatized by losing their human companions and/or by ending up in a strange environment. They should not have to endure even more trauma by being turned into research tools. Shelters were not intended to be warehouses for research labs. With "pound seizure," no one can be certain their own beloved pet will never fall into the hands of researchers. A lost or stolen pet may not be located or rescued in time to prevent tragedy.

For more information on this topic, please visit:
http://www.savetheshelterpets.com/pound_seizure.htm

The public needs to know what is happening to these homeless, domesticated animals. Please help bring awareness to the animals' plight. We look forward to seeing your coverage of this issue.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

"If you can't save all the shelter pets, then save just one."

 

 

 

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