Feds Slap Mobile Zoo With 14 Violations Following PETA Complaint

Animals Forced to Live in Filth, Pelted With Peanuts, and Denied Vet Care

For Immediate Release:
July 1, 2014

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After visitors to The Mobile Zoo reported squalid, abusive, and dangerous conditions for animals, PETA sent an urgent complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in May alleging multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). PETA has just learned from the newly released inspection report that the USDA cited the unaccredited roadside facility for 14 violations of the AWA, including for having rotting food, swarming flies, and cages littered with feces. Just last year, the USDA cited the zoo for 29 AWA violations and placed it under investigation. And in April, following another PETA complaint, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources cited the facility for illegal possession of gopher tortoises, bobcats, a fox, and a coyote.

“State and federal animal-protection laws were created to stop precisely the kinds of horrors that animals at The Mobile Zoo are subjected to every day of their lives,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel Delcianna Winders. “No one who loves animals should ever go near this despicable place.”

The following are just a few of The Mobile Zoo’s recent AWA violations:

• Failing to provide a bear, who still had her winter coat and was “panting and salivating excessively,” with adequate veterinary care
• Failing to alleviate extreme temperatures in the bear den (USDA inspectors could feel heat radiating from the metal ceiling, which reached a sweltering 150 degrees.)
• Apparently allowing members of the public to throw peanuts at Joe, the solitary chimpanzee locked in a tiny, virtually barren enclosure (Joe also displayed aggression, a common result of the frustration of captivity.)
• Having rusted and broken fencing in the leopard enclosure that created a risk of escape and having holes in the fence line of the bears’ and tigers’ primary enclosures
• Having an abundance of feces in the fox and the macaque monkey enclosures
• Leaving animals with rotting food and allowing flies to swarm around strewn trash

For more information and to see the USDA inspection report, please see PETA’s blog.