Notorious Operator of The Farm at Walnut Creek to Pay $20,000 Federal Penalty

The Farm at Walnut Creek Exhibitor Settles Over 70 Alleged Animal-Welfare Violations

For Immediate Release:
April 10, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

PETA has learned that notorious animal exhibitor Henry Hampton has agreed to pay $20,000 to settle the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) administrative lawsuit alleging more than 70 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) between October 2013 and December 2017 at Hampton’s two facilities, The Farm at Walnut Creek in Sugarcreek and Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville, North Carolina.

The USDA’s complaint, made in September 2018, followed a PETA lawsuit filed in May 2018 challenging the agency’s unlawful automatic renewal of Hampton’s AWA license despite his long list of violations of the act. After years of pressure from PETA, the USDA is now considering following the law and ending its automatic license renewal for facilities such as Hampton’s.

The USDA’s complaint details Hampton’s repeated violations of the AWA, including for allowing dangerous unsupervised public contact with animals and authorizing the use of a tranquilizing drug that has no pain-relieving properties and can cause distress, paralyze respiratory muscles, and impede animals’ breathing, sometimes causing them to die of suffocation while fully conscious but immobilized.

Violations at The Farm at Walnut Creek that were identified in the USDA’s complaint include failing to provide sheep and goats with adequate veterinary care. One sheep had a pink mass protruding from her vulva, a ram had a golf ball–size mass on his chest that had a creamy discharge, and multiple sheep and goats were limping. Other citations include for failing to provide goats, sheep, zebu, lemurs, kangaroos, and other animals with access to potable water on multiple occasions.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.