Feds File Charges Against Buffalo Beals Animal Park for Welfare Violations

PETA Complaint Over Filthy Enclosures, Solitary Chimpanzee, Failure to Provide Veterinary Care, and More Leads to Rare Action

For Immediate Release:
December 4, 2014

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

After filing complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the routine neglect of animals at Buffalo Beals Animal Park—including a chimpanzee who was locked in solitary confinement for more than a decade before he was finally rescued and sent to a sanctuary—PETA learned that the agency has now filed formal charges against Buffalo Beals for its long history of violating the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). These charges could lead to the permanent revocation of the roadside zoo’s license.

The USDA’s complaint lists more than 100 AWA violations at Buffalo Beals since 2009, including those mentioned in a 2010 PETA complaint that led to citations for, among other violations, failing to provide two lame goats and a lame lamb with adequate veterinary care, allowing the public to have dangerous direct contact with approximately 50 animals, allowing animals’ waste to build up in the enclosures, and failing to provide seven primates, who were kept in harmful solitary confinement, with adequate psychological enrichment, leading a baboon to develop neurotic behavior such as head-tossing and circling.

“With these charges, Buffalo Beals’ days of flagrantly violating the laws designed to protect animals are numbered,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel Delcianna Winders. “PETA’s motto reads, in part, that ‘animals are not ours to use for entertainment,’ and the extreme neglect and suffering on display at Buffalo Beals are examples of why.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.