Feds Slap Local Tiger Exhibitor With Animal Welfare Complaint After Tip From PETA

For Immediate Release:
November 21, 2022

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Following an investigation request from PETA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just filed a formal federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) complaint against Lisa Lopez, the operator of All Things Wild, for exhibiting tigers without a valid license and failing to maintain sufficient distance and/or barriers between animals and the public at the Alabama and Georgia state fairs in 2020. The USDA could now pursue civil penalties, animal confiscation, and license suspension, termination, or revocation. Lopez has a long and tawdry history of falling afoul of the law. Most recently, in March, Fort Worth city officials canceled her planned appearance at a fair after PETA pointed out that the display would have violated local laws prohibiting the possession of tigers and other wild or exotic animals.

At the time of PETA’s complaint, Lopez was exhibiting the animals under the license of another animal exploiter, Michael Todd. Later that year, the USDA terminated Todd’s license, and Lopez—who was denied her own license in 2017—has since exhibited the tigers under her daughter’s license, under the name Genesis Shur-Path Inc. Lopez’s business partner, Marcus Cook, had his own license to exhibit tigers permanently revoked in 2012 after he was charged with nearly 100 AWA violations, including for using an electric prod on a tiger.

“Lisa Lopez carts tigers from pillar to post in cramped cages to stick them in front of noisy crowds who are put at risk by her carelessness and her violation of the law,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Welfare Debbie Metzler. “PETA is urging the federal government to throw the book at this brazen animal exploiter and get the tigers to an accredited sanctuary.”

Last year, after PETA notified officials that Lopez had offered paying customers photos with tigers at a flea market in Liberty, the USDA cited her and ordered her to stop illegally exhibiting the big cats without a license.

PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and its motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment.” For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.