PETA Exposé Reveals Filth, Feces, and Festering Wounds at Secretive Facilities Supplying Animals to Labs

Group Calls On Feds to Revoke Licenses of Oak Hill Genetics, Ruby Fur Farm, and Others for Chronic and Egregious Federal Animal Welfare Act Violations

For Immediate Release:
December 16, 2020

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA has obtained never-before-seen photographs and video footage taken by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors revealing deplorable conditions at facilities that operate out of public view and supply animals for use in the experimentation industry. The images show maggots crawling through animals’ food, green algae growing in water bowls, and animals left to suffer with open wounds.

At Ruby Fur Farm in New Sharon, Iowa, ferrets, raccoons, foxes, and skunks were held in dilapidated cages with broken wires and forced to drink out of water containers teeming with algae and insects. Temperatures reached as high as 122 degrees, and raccoons were found to be “in serious heat distress,” panting while “lying on their sides, backs, and abdomens with their legs splayed.” Numerous animals were denied veterinary care, including a ferret covered with ticks and skunks with extensive hair loss.

At Oak Hill Genetics in Ewing, Illinois, inspectors documented dogs and pigs held in feces-filled concrete stalls with no bedding and lame, sick, and injured pigs suffering without veterinary care, including six baby pigs who had “fluid filled swellings” on their ears. At Oakwood Research Facility in Oakland County, Michigan, about 4,000 domestic rabbits were kept in rusted cages coated with waste. Urine and feces dripped down the walls into the animals’ food containers below. A 2-month-old nonresponsive rabbit whose hind legs were covered with diarrhea was cold to the touch and eventually killed.

“These horrific findings show that the suffering of animals destined to be used in cruel experiments begins the very minute they’re born,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “These filthy facilities are yet another reason why experiments on animals must end, and PETA is calling on officials to cancel their licenses to operate.”

PETA’s exposé also reveals that at Moulton Chinchilla Ranch in Chatfield, Minnesota, federal inspectors found chinchillas with open, untreated wounds and collars embedded in their necks. When one collar was removed, inspectors noted that there was matted hair and open lesions and that a “putrid odor was noticeable.”

In response to the appalling findings, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—is urging the USDA to revoke these companies’ licenses for their abject failure to comply with the minimum provisions of the federal Animal Welfare Act.

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