Notorious Operator of Lazy 5 Ranch to Pay $20,000 Federal Penalty

Lazy 5 Ranch 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, Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville and The Farm at Walnut Creek in Sugarcreek, Ohio.

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 Lazy 5 Ranch that were identified in the USDA’s complaint include failing to provide the following animals with adequate veterinary care: a pregnant camel who had enlarged blood vessels in her eye, appeared to have difficulty breathing, and had a swollen head and feet; a deer with multiple wounds on the right side; and three limping sheep.

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.