Following PETA's undercover investigation into Triple F Farms, a massive ferret-breeding operation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has fined the company nearly $17,000 for violating at least eight regulations under the Animal Welfare Act.

A Bad Business

The violations were discovered during USDA inspections conducted in response to PETA's submission of video footage and other evidence.  

Documents recently obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division show that Triple F President Jack Fallenstein also agreed to pay 28 employees more than $28,000 in back wages to settle 38 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act following a federal investigation prompted by PETA's complaint to the agency.

Triple F: Failing Ferrets

PETA's investigation into the ferret mill lasted nearly four months and documented systematic and often fatal neglect and abuse of ferrets. We found that Triple F owners, supervisors, and workers left newborn ferrets for dead when they fell through wire cage bottoms 3 feet onto the filthy concrete floor, housed ferrets in severely crowded conditions, and deprived ferrets with bleeding rectal prolapses, gaping wounds, herniated organs, and other painful conditions of veterinary care or euthanasia. PETA's investigator also saw ferrets thrown into the trash—and into the facility's incinerator—while still alive.

Triple F sells ferrets to pet stores and laboratories around the world. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has had contracts worth more than $1.5 million with the company. The CDC signed even more contracts with this filthy factory farm after PETA shared its evidence and the USDA's findings with CDC brass. PETA has called on the agency to rescind Triple F's contracts and disqualify it from future contracts. The National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Navy have also had contracts with Triple F worth nearly $400,000.

What You Can Do

Please urge the director of the CDC's Procurement and Grants Office to stop the agency from funneling taxpayer dollars to Triple F.

Chadica| cc by 2.0

There's good news today in a case we told you about in May 2010: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hit the Texas Biomedical Research Institute—formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research—with a fine of more than $25,000 over serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act. The facility has repeatedly allowed primates to escape from their cages and injure themselves and others, including humans.

The stiff fine comes after PETA filed a formal complaint with the agency in 2010 after two baboons imprisoned at Texas Biomed escaped from their cages, injuring an employee in the process. The fine also covers an incident from 2009 in which a juvenile rhesus macaque monkey escaped from a cage and then spent the night in below-freezing temperatures. He suffered from hypothermia and had to be euthanized. 

But quite apart from the satisfaction of seeing these primate torturers pay at least a small price for their misdeeds, these penalties are an important reminder to heartless experimenters everywhere that abusing animals can cost them more than karma points. 

But since karma is on our side, let's keep the momentum going. Texas Biomed is notorious for being one of the last laboratories in the world that still torments chimpanzees in cruel and invasive experiments.

You can do your part to help protect primates—just click here to ask your congressional representatives to cosponsor and support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act today, which would end experiments on chimpanzees at Texas Biomed and elsewhere.  

After receiving damning reports from someone working inside the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) earlier this year. The USDA found, among other abuses, that sheep who had undergone invasive experimental surgeries (including one sheep who could not stand up afterward) apparently received no pain relief at all, that a goat died in surgery without proper monitoring during anesthesia, and that experimenters using ferrets in an infectious-disease study neglected to consult with veterinary experts. The USDA noted that experimenters failed to provide basic post-operative pain relief to animals who had been subjected to invasive surgeries—including allegedly leaving a dog who had tubes implanted during surgery to die without any treatment. The agency has cited UTMB for violating the minimum standards of the Animal Welfare Act. UTMB has "ongoing" problems with oversight, says the agency.

Please e-mail UTMB President David L. Callender and ask him to immediately discipline experimenters for their cruelty to animals.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

The just-released U.S. Department of Agriculture food guide, "MyPlate," turns the old food pyramid on its meaty, fatty head and replaces it with a dish loaded with fruits, veggies, and grains. Meat has been replaced with "protein," which includes beans, nuts, and seeds, and milk has been booted to the side, with soy milk suggested as an option.  

 
"We know that there are significant health benefits from consuming more fruits and vegetables, and that's an opportunity for us to sort of move away from some of the meals that we've been preparing in the past," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "It doesn't take a lot [of effort] to [fill] your plate with half fruits and vegetables." And vegetarians enjoy lower risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity than meat-eaters do, according to the American Dietetic Association.

Finally—some government nutrition guidelines that are easy to swallow! Learn more about filling your plate with healthy veggies by ordering a free PETA vegetarian/vegan starter kit.   

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow

This just in: In response to PETA's undercover investigation of animal experiments at the University of Utah (the U) and the complaint that we filed with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U has been cited for nine violations of federal animal protection laws, including the following:

• Causing a kitten to die from dehydration
• Keeping calves restrained for days at a time without the ability to properly stand up or walk
• Failing to provide adequate pain relief to a monkey after surgery
• Failing to properly treat injuries in pigs
• Allowing extreme crowding in guinea pig cages
• Socially isolating a monkey without approval and failing to provide him with proper environmental enrichment
• Performing surgery on a rabbit's eyes without proper approval

One whistleblower's powerful testimony about the abuse of pigs and calves in slaughterhouses throughout the country may bring about a serious overhaul in the U.S. government's monitoring of slaughterhouses.

Dean Wyatt is a veterinarian and supervisor of the Food Safety and Inspection Services (FSIS), which is a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Last week, Wyatt told the members of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that time after time, his warnings about unsafe slaughterhouse practices went ignored. Two of the slaughterhouses he worked with—one in Oklahoma that allegedly mishandled pigs and one in Vermont that he ordered to shut down three times for mistreating calves—ignored his directives to stop abusing animals. And a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday supports Wyatt's claims, admitting that the FSIS has a history of unsuccessfully regulating slaughterhouses and that it is lax in its enforcement of humane slaughtering standards:

Now governmental officials are saying that they will take steps to improve the agency's enforcement standards. So does this mean that we'll see more stringent enforcement anytime soon? We hope so. But in the meantime, there's no reason to support the massacre of animals or to jeopardize your health: Go vegan!

Written by Logan Scherer