The CCF tries to make it seem like solving the animal homelessness crisis is as simple as setting up huge kennels in which to keep all the sick, dying, and unwanted animals. Even if money could buy good homes and even if PETA could build cages sky-high, warehousing animals does nothing to stop the root of the problem—uncontrolled breeding.
We are committed to ending the dog and cat overpopulation crisis, but PETA also saves and improves the lives of animals who are suffering on factory farms and fur farms, and in laboratories, circuses, and other abusive industries.
For example, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was slapped with the largest penalty of its kind in U.S. history for abusing elephants and lions after PETA urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take action against Ringling and presented indisputable evidence of the circus's animal abuse, including beatings, the death of a lion, lame elephants forced to perform despite chronic pain, and a baby elephant who died during a training routine.
Professional Laboratory and Research Services (PLRS), where PETA documented laboratory workers screaming obscenities at animals, violently slamming cats into cages, and kicking, throwing, and dragging dogs, closed down and four PLRS employees, including a supervisor, were indicted on precedent-setting felony cruelty-to-animals charges. More than 50 cats and nearly 200 dogs were surrendered, including Buddy and Copper, who are healing at a sanctuary and will be adopted into loving, permanent homes.
PETA's undercover investigation inside laboratories at the University of Utah revealed that more than 100 cats and dogs from animal shelters were sold to the university each year for use in invasive, painful, and deadly experiments. After our investigation, the state of Utah amended its archaic law that forced government-run animal shelters to sell dogs and cats to laboratories.
Following vigorous campaigning by PETA, the Army ended cruel and outdated monthly training exercises at Aberdeen Proving Ground in which monkeys were poisoned with a drug overdose. Countless monkeys have been spared from violent seizures and bleak lives in a cage as a result.
More than 26,000 mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids were saved after PETA revealed horrific abuse at the major pet-trade supplier U.S. Global Exotics, Inc., including animals confined to severely crowded and filthy soda bottles, milk jugs, litter pans, cattle-feeding troughs, and barren wire cages as well as employees putting hundreds of sick, injured, and dying animals in a freezer to die slowly and painfully.
PETA exposes egregious abuse on factory farms, such as the Aviagen Turkeys facility in Lewisburg, West Virginia. Evidence gathered by PETA undercover investigators revealed workers breaking turkeys' necks, stomping on their heads, and shoving feces and feed into their mouths. The horrific video footage led to 19 indictments, including 11 felony charges, against three former Aviagen workers, marking the first time in U.S. history that factory-farm employees have faced felony cruelty-to-animals charges for abusing birds.
The progress we are making in these areas makes companies that profit from these cruel industries fear for their bottom line—so much so that many have resorted to paying the CCF to attack our work.
