Feds Cite Local Exhibitor After PETA Flags Video Showing Mistreatment of a Young Tiger

For Immediate Release:
May 27, 2021

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After PETA alerted the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to Facebook Live videos posted by animal exploiter Larry Wallach showing him electroshocking a juvenile tiger named Sheba, keeping her in a rundown enclosure, and handling her in a dangerous and inhumane manner, the agency cited Wallach for numerous violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. They include failing to follow veterinary instructions for treatment of Sheba’s broken toe, confining her to an enclosure with broken floor boards, putting her and a wolf at risk of injury by allowing them to interact, and not having adequate fencing to prevent her from escaping.

However, despite a regulation explicitly stating that physical abuse shall not be used to handle animals, the USDA did not cite Wallach for shocking Sheba with the electric prod, thereby sending the message that he can continue to use the torture tool with abandon and without consequences.

“Animals are in danger every minute they spend in the custody of this sadistic exhibitor,” says PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Michelle Sinnott, Esq. “PETA is now calling on the feds to terminate his license and on the public to help end such cruelty by avoiding backyard animal-exploiting enterprises like the plague.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—notes that the USDA had previously cited Wallach for a litany of animal welfare violations, including for confining a cub to a kennel in his cluttered garage, not feeding an appropriate diet to cubs, and allowing the public to interact with juvenile tigers, which is dangerous.

PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.