PETA Bus Ads Fume at Notorious Chinchilla Mill

For Immediate Release:
June 22, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

PETA wants owner and operator of Moulton Chinchilla Ranch (MCR) Dan Moulton to shut down his chinchilla-breeding operation, so the group is running ads on eight area buses rallying people to help the animals suffering there. A PETA undercover video investigation found that the nearly 1,000 chinchillas in Moulton’s custody were confined to exposed wire cages and denied veterinary care for abscesses, swollen, pus-filled eyes, exposed bones, severe matting, and other painful injuries.

“Sick and injured chinchillas languished in pain and died at Dan Moulton’s hellhole,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is urging the public to join us in demanding a reprieve for the long-suffering animals still held there.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—notes that MCR has a nearly decade-long history of dozens of animal welfare violations. Chinchillas have died there in terrible ways, including one who was attacked by Moulton’s dog and left to suffer overnight without care and another who died after suffering for weeks from a raw and bloody open wound. Moulton has also admitted to killing chinchillas by crudely breaking their necks.

Based on PETA’s evidence, Rochester Community and Technical College’s veterinary technician program ended its class field trips to the mill. Atlas Pet Supply near Minneapolis has dropped MCR as a supplier and is reevaluating its sale of any chinchillas after its CEO called conditions there “entirely unacceptable.”

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