Mississippi Mess: 180 Dogs and Cats Rescued

Three rescue missions in three states over four days: That was the assignment of our Animal Rescue team over the past week. After rescuing 120 cats from a suspected hoarding situation in Tennessee and 90 dogs from a puppy mill in New Jersey on Saturday, HSUS staff headed straight to Mississippi, where 180 dogs and three cats needed reprieve from deplorable conditions.

Working with the Mississippi Animal Rescue League, United Animal Nations, the Tampa Bay SPCA and the Kemper County Sheriff's Department, we removed the animals from feces-ridden outdoor pens and a cramped, filthy home at Raven's Hope. It claims to be a nonprofit organization that takes in homeless animals and helps adopt them, but it skidded off course some time ago. The sheriff's department had received numerous complaints of suspected neglect and called The HSUS in for assistance.

Upon arrival we found that many of the dogs were suffering from skin conditions, eye infections, untreated wounds and other serious medical ailments. Some animals had already perished from the conditions. The place was beyond squalid—hard to believe people and animals could survive there for long.

The survivors are now receiving proper care and medical attention. As I write this, a majority are being transported to area partner shelters to continue their recovery and find adoptive homes, while our staff seek placement for the remainder and care for them at an emergency shelter. There is new hope for these animals—and the Tennessee cats and New Jersey dogs, and the thousands of other animals The HSUS and our allies have helped to rescue.

I've included below a few photos of the dogs in their previous predicament. You can see more images here, and also in this update.

 

 

Photos credit Kathy Milani/The HSUS

Talk Back: Farm Animal Advocacy

The HSUS takes on not just individual acts of cruelty, but large-scale, institutionalized forms of exploitation. For decades, The HSUS has witnessed with great distress the harsh turn Big Agriculture has taken toward animals. Whether it is on the factory farm or at the industrialized slaughterhouse, we are there advocating to curb the worst forms of animal mistreatment. Readers weighed in on some of my recent blogs on the subject.

On the impact and current priorities of The HSUS's factory farming campaign:

The HSUS has my full support on its factory farming campaign. I think that the work that you are doing, and the awareness you are creating, will help spur continuous victories throughout industry in the United States, though the struggle will be hard against old attitudes about animals raised for food production. Nevertheless, it's time for a new way of thinking, and acting. —Bonnie Shulman

I'm really amazed and pleased by the progress of the HSUS in curbing animal farming abuses. Here was an area of cruelty that NEVER seemed to find significant reform until now. Kudos again! —Sara N.

As a PROUD supporter of The HSUS I once again applaud the efforts and more importantly the results of your campaigns. While our enemies are many their foundation is built on greed and power, and history has told us that this is the weakest foundation of all. —Jonathan Gilbert

As a victory state in California with the passage of Prop 2, we are with you and acknowledge the HSUS was the major force in our success. As a volunteer at a sanctuary for farmed animals, I am deeply committed to this campaign because I see the ravages of battery cages every time I go to the farm. Battery caged chickens are brutalized. They suffer daily. By the time we ever get to rescue a precious few, they have very few feathers, their toes are mangled, they have arthritis, they are emaciated and they are infested with lice and mites. They do not know how to walk upright ... I could continue on about the horrors of the dairy industry, the pig farming industry and all other factory farming but please, Ohio, fight the mighty fight for those battery caged hens. No being deserves to live the way they are forced to. —Connie Pugh, Sunnyvale Calif.

I am so GLAD that Wal-Mart is going cage-free with their private brand. That is definitely good news! When I see those hens in those cramped cages it just makes me sick to my stomach. I just do not get it! How any farmer can treat their animals this way is very disheartening. HSUS, thank you for working so hard to end this. I NEVER realized how our poor hens are treated. —Karen Wagner

And in response to last week's Congressional hearing on enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, where Dr. Dean Wyatt, public health veterinarian for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, spoke about the resistance and retaliation he faced when attempting to report humane handling violations:

Wayne, thank you so much for all the work that you do, day in and day out. I forwarded this last email to about 25 people and asked them to please join in to stop this horrific slaughter of animals! It is so unjust the way they are treated and the people that are doing these hideous things need to be fired from their jobs at once! All of God's creatures need to be respected. I can't look at the videos because they tear me apart but I will sign on for everything that will help alleviate these animals’ pain and suffering. —R Lewis

Horrific video. Thank you for posting. I shared this on Facebook and Twitter. People need to address the cruelty they are supporting every time they sit down at the dinner table. —Sara N.

Wayne, after reading your testimony, as well as Dr. Wyatt's, I can only imagine what these workers do when they leave work. … Not only should these companies be shut down for an extended period of time, possibly, permanently, those abusive [workers] should be heavily fined and thrown in jail. That should be applied to those in charge who allow the abuse, as well. —Barbara Fleming

Dogs of Valor: Vote for the People's Hero

Last month I asked you to vote for your favorite dog who has appeared in film or television, with a lucky participant getting a chance to win tickets to the 24th Genesis Awards, which is scheduled for March 20 in Beverly Hills (tickets are still available). Today I’d like you to do some additional voting—for the dog who has exhibited the most heroic behavior to help a person.

Homer and Shar Pauley
Calamity Jane, one of the Dogs of Valor
finalists. Vote for your People's Hero>>

Now in its third year, The HSUS’s Dogs of Valor awards celebrate the human-animal bond by honoring dogs who have engaged in remarkable acts of altruism, courage, and intelligence. Dogs are our friends, but they can also be our saviors, and the list of 100 nominees provides plenty of support for that proposition.

We’ve now narrowed down the list to 10 finalists who did everything from alerting their families to fires, gas leaks, or medical emergencies, and even helped out to blunt a frightening home invasion.

Enjoy this year’s stories and, before 5:00 p.m. ET this Friday, March 12, be sure to vote for the one dog who you think is most extraordinary. When you do, you’ll be entered to win a $100 certificate to our online store Humane Domain. Stay tuned to humanesociety.org/dogsofvalor where this Sunday we’ll announce the winners. We’ve enlisted a panel of dog-loving judges, including film and TV star Kristin Bell who appeared on the hit show “Heroes,” Sally Pressman of the Lifetime series “Army Wives,” and Jay Kopelman, a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel whose books “From Baghdad With Love” and “From Baghdad to America” recount his struggles to bring a stray puppy home to America and their efforts to adjust to life after Iraq. The judges will decide on the Valor Dog of the Year award and two runners up.

As in the past, I was touched to learn that many of this year’s nominees were former discards, adopted or rescued by their families. Inspired by each animal’s heroic actions, our judge Sally Pressman told us, “These stories made me tear up, gasp and just have all new respect and appreciation for all dogs. I'm so glad to be a part of this.”

With the Assist: The HSUS Helps Save 200 Dogs and Cats

The HSUS provides more hands-on care to animals than any group in the nation, and that work was in evidence this past weekend, when we joined with local humane organizations on rescues of dogs and cats in dire straits in New Jersey and Tennessee. By Sunday, more than 200 companion animals had been given a second chance at life.

See a video report from the Tennessee cat rescue.

Often times, when local humane organizations do not have enough resources to handle major cases of cruelty, The HSUS comes in to assist. Our Tennessee state director Leighann McCollum and members of our Animal Rescue team coordinated with the Grainger County Humane Society to remove 120 cats from a suspected hoarding situation. We’d been called in to assist after the county sheriff found the cats living in crowded, unsanitary conditions at the home (see video from the scene).

In New Jersey, HSUS state director Heather Cammisa and staff with our Wilde Puppy Mill Task Force helped to remove nearly 90 dogs from deplorable conditions at a puppy mill operation. We joined forces with a Maryland County Animal Response Team, the New Jersey SPCA, Cumberland County SPCA, Gloucester County Animal Shelter and a local animal control officer to rescue these dogs—many of them suffering from skin conditions and severe dental infections.

The HSUS
One of nearly 90 dogs rescued from the New Jersey puppy mill.

Now safely removed, these animals are receiving necessary medical attention and will begin the transition to becoming family pets. The Grainger County Humane Society will prepare the cats for adoption, while the puppy mill dogs have been placed with several shelter and rescue groups throughout New Jersey who are partnering with The HSUS to oversee their recuperation and placement.

It’s an honor for us to assist law enforcement agencies and to offer our resources to the staff and volunteers who work so hard to serve the animals of their community. The HSUS is unrelenting in its efforts to help animals—whether by working on the large-scale problems that affect animals, or focusing on individual animals in crisis and in need of help right now.

The Case Against Captive Whales

The HSUS has warned the public for years about the risks for orcas and their handlers in holding the world's biggest predators in captive settings for SeaWorld acrobatic performances. Dawn Brancheau was the third person killed by Tilikum, a 30-year-old male killer whale, and SeaWorld has subsequently expressed an interest in seeing the animal continue to perform, albeit with new restrictions on interactions with his handlers.

Orca Home
An orca in the wild.

The HSUS's Dr. Naomi Rose studied orcas in the Pacific Northwest for her dissertation research, and she's spoken out in a measured way on all manner of marine mammal protection issues in her professional capacity. Since the attack 12 days ago, she has appeared on Larry King Live, ABC's Nightline, and other settings and she's now recommending to SeaWorld's ownership group that Tilly be retired to a sea pen in Iceland, in order to provide him a more suitable environment.

Orcas in captivity do not live nearly as long as orcas in the wild, and in captive settings, they do not live in the tight family groups or find the stimulation or behavioral opportunities they get in natural habitats. We were pleased to see the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times associate itself with the idea that it's time we stopped the orca acts. It's worth a careful read.

A postscript: Marine mammal protection and the captive display industry were also in the spotlight last night when "The Cove" captured the Academy Award for Best Documentary. This gripping film, which exposes Japan's horrific dolphin slaughter and its role in the captive display and swim-with-dolphin industry, is also a nominee at our 24th Genesis Awards. 

Action Needed to Better Enforce Humane Slaughter Act

The star witness at yesterday’s Congressional hearing before the House Oversight Committee’s Domestic Policy Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, was a tall, mild-mannered public health veterinarian who has been employed with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for more than 18 years. The son of a former federal meat inspector who died on the job, Dr. Dean Wyatt has in recent years worked at two slaughter plants—Seaboard Farms, a hog slaughtering plant in Guymon, Okla., and Bushway Packing, a veal calf slaughter plant in Grand Isle, Vt. When Wyatt attempted to report humane handling violations and fulfill his federal duty, higher-ups at USDA, particularly under past administrations, largely ignored, downplayed, rewrote or undercut his enforcement actions. In fact, his superiors, often in district offices hundreds of miles away, told him to cut back on time spent on humane handling and threatened him with a series of retaliatory actions, including a forced choice to be transferred or terminated.

The HSUS
See footage from our investigation of Bushway Packing in Vermont.

It was information that Dr. Wyatt reported in his official capacity about abuses of animals that led The HSUS to conduct an undercover investigation (unbeknownst to Wyatt) at the Bushway plant last year. One of our investigators was hired as a floor cleaner at the plant, and he obtained hidden camera footage of baby calves being tormented—repeatedly shocked, kicked, and even having a hoof cut off while conscious and being skinned alive. After The HSUS shared the footage with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, USDA shut down the plant and asked the Office of Inspector General to conduct a criminal investigation.

“Food integrity and humane handling whistleblowers should not have to rely on an undercover video investigation in order for USDA supervisors to take their disclosures seriously,” Dr. Wyatt told the subcommittee yesterday. “It seems almost unbelievable to me,” he said, “but I have been ignored by my own people and have suffered physically, emotionally, and financially in the process. More importantly, animal welfare and food safety have suffered as well.”

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, who has been on the job for about a year, is very attentive to enforcement issues and seems determined to turn this situation around. That’s critical, and long overdue for an agency that has become dangerously close to the industry it is charged with regulating. The meat industry has forever called the shots at USDA, and profits handsomely from an array of federal subsidies. But it is essential for animal welfare and food safety that the USDA take an independent and principled approach to enforcement of humane handling rules at the slaughter plants, and really focus on the details, in order to prevent the horrible cruelties that The HSUS has documented at Bushway and at the Westland/Hallmark slaughter plant in Chino, Calif.

Dr. Wyatt’s experiences highlight how some District Office managers at the FSIS are themselves a major part of the problem, as they undermine inspectors’ efforts to enforce humane slaughter rules. The culture throughout FSIS must shift to acknowledge that humane treatment is a core, ongoing responsibility, not just something to address when an undercover investigation shines a spotlight on the issue. Industry typically reacts to investigative findings by treating them as just a few bad apples, but wherever we have looked we have found serious abuses. I underscored that point yesterday in testimony I delivered after Dr. Wyatt spoke.

Also supporting the major findings of The HSUS’s testimony was the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which released a report yesterday sharply critical of the USDA system for failing to adequately enforce the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA). The GAO found that the USDA “does not have a comprehensive strategy for enforcing HMSA” and therefore “…is not well positioned to improve its ability to enforce HMSA.”

The GAO stated that enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act is inconsistent, in part due to a lack of clarity in the guidance the USDA provides to its inspectors. It also cited inadequate training, finding that inspectors at half of the USDA-inspected slaughterhouses were not able to correctly identify basic facts about signs of sensibility in animals.

This is not the first time the GAO has urged the USDA to make improvements. In January 2004, the office recommended that the USDA establish clear, specific, and consistent criteria for enforcement when a slaughter plant repeatedly violates the law. The GAO now reports that the UDSA headquarters in Washington, D.C., has not yet responded effectively to this recommendation.

Secretary Vilsack has made strong statements about humane slaughter enforcement and taken swift action to suspend operations at Bushway. Now it is time for him to demand a zero-tolerance policy for lax enforcement and supervisor interference at all of America’s slaughter plants.

Leapfrog: States Respond to Threat of Turtle, Frog Trade

So many of the bad things that happen to animals occur below the radar screen of the American public, or even fairly well-informed animal advocates. When people learn of “canned hunts,” Internet hunting, or the other obscure forms of cruelty, they are often shocked that such things even occur in our day. People have long known about dogfighting, but after the Michael Vick case came to light, they were shocked by the prevalence of the activity in urban communities.

I think you’ll be shocked to know how many frogs and turtles are killed for human consumption, right here in the United States, or captured here and exported to Asia. It’s in the millions, and these hapless creatures are destined often for live animal markets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and other major urban centers. Some native animals are unlucky enough to be shipped across the globe to be eaten in China.

alanvernon/ / CC BY 2.0
Red-eared slider turtles in a California pond.

Yesterday, the California Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously to prohibit the importation of non-native turtles and frogs into the state for sale at live animal markets. It’s a practice that a determined number of advocates, including staff from The HSUS, have worked against for years. And yesterday was a great outcome, and another step in the process to halt this cruelty globally.

California imports roughly two million live American bullfrogs and hundreds of thousands of live turtles, mostly red-eared sliders and spiny soft shell turtles, for the live food markets in the state. They are captive bred or captured in Louisiana, Arkansas, and other states. Those not eaten are sometimes released into the wild, and if introduced, they can threaten native frogs and turtles by spreading disease, outcompeting them for resources, breeding with them and creating hybrids, and even preying upon the native species. Turtles and frogs imported for sale are shipped and held in extremely inhumane and cramped conditions, and countless animals die in the process.

Reptiles and amphibians can also carry salmonella that can be transmitted to humans and cause life threatening complications. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that reptiles and amphibians account for 74,000 cases of salmonella in the United States each year—6 percent of all salmonella cases, and an even higher percentage of cases in children. In addition, federal health regulations prohibit sales of small turtles (with shells less than four inches long) nationwide.

Just last year, at The HSUS’s urging, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recognized the urgent need to address this issue by passing a rule banning the commercial trapping and sale of freshwater turtles in Florida which ended the shipment of thousands of pounds of wild Florida turtles each week to overseas markets. In addition, the Commission previously prohibited the import, sale and possession as pets of red-eared sliders.

California’s victory was a long fought battle, spanning numerous years. Thanks to our friend Eric Mills of Action for Animals who persistently battled on the issue and pushed the California Fish and Game Commission year after year to take action. Many others worked on it as well, and our thanks go to them, too.

We must continue to build on this momentum.

Legacy of An Early HSUS Leader: John Hoyt

Forty years ago, in a selection that would forever change the trajectory of the organization, a small, Washington, D.C.-based not-for-profit group recruited a 38-year old Presbyterian minister as its president. The organization was The HSUS, with about one dozen employees, a few thousand members, and an operating budget of under $500,000. The minister was John A. Hoyt, who left his position as senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Fort Wayne, Ind. in April 1970, to become The HSUS’s fourth chief executive since the organization’s founding sixteen years earlier, in 1954.

The HSUS
John Hoyt, HSUS president from 1970-1996.

Four decades later, it is impossible to overestimate John Hoyt’s imprint on The HSUS. In 27 years of dedicated service, he put together the team that made a good organization a great one, and he established a standard of excellence and hard work that continues to motivate and inspire. He and Paul Irwin, who was Hoyt’s deputy and then his successor, laid the foundation for the heightened operational success of the organization, which has continued to prosper and grow even more effective and feared by our opponents in the last few years.

The HSUS had been operating just a decade and a half when John accepted his position, and had already accomplished a great deal under the leadership of Fred Myers, Robert Chenoweth, Oliver Evans, Mel Morse, Marcia Glaser, Coleman Burke, Pat Parkes, and other staff and board members. They helped secure passage of the Humane Slaughter Act (1958) and the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act (1966), laws that vice president Patricia Forkan and board member Robert Welborn and others would continue to make a major focus of their work in later years. They conducted pioneering investigations into cruelty. They established branches throughout the country, and they stayed true to The HSUS’s founding mission of tackling the large-scale cruelties beyond the reach of local humane societies.

It takes nothing from the legacy of those pioneers in our organizational history to note that John Hoyt took The HSUS to another level.

A man of charm and grace, John was also an accomplished institution builder who understood the value of a well-developed and professional organization working for animal protection at the national level. He had a serious mind, and he attracted professional campaigners, scientists, and movement strategists, including my friend Ed Duvin. He recruited board members who have helped to lead the organization over the last 30 years and who continue to do so today, including K. William Wiseman, Joe Ramsey, Dr. David Wiebers, our current board chair Anita Coupe and our vice chair Dr. Jennifer Leaning. He was determined, as he once observed, that The HSUS under his leadership was “to be relevant without being compromised, to be ethical without being arrogant, to be caring and sensitive without being sentimental.”

The HSUS
HSUS executives Paul Irwin, John Hoyt and Patricia Forkan.

John was new to the movement in 1970, but he knew plenty about concern for animals from his paternal grandmother, a West Virginia farmer whose example and influence taught him the importance of kindness. And he brought his experience with the church, an institution built on ethical principles, to his work with The HSUS, which he viewed as a kind of “ministry” that would benefit people and animals.

John’s basic framing of the animal protection issue has commanded my admiration for a long time. Throughout his career, he underscored his view that in caring for animals, we are showing respect and care for ourselves, and that, in helping animals, we are ennobling ourselves. Humaneness, he observed, needs to have both human and non-human animals as its focus. It’s a timeless tenet, and one I hold dear.

Since John’s retirement in 1997, he has remained engaged with our work, and continued to advise and serve the organization. John was one of the first to congratulate me on my appointment as president of The HSUS, and he made a point of mentioning that he was about the same age at the time of his selection. He was optimistic and encouraging about the energy and devotion a young person could bring to the leadership role at The HSUS. In that moment, his words provided great encouragement, and coming from someone who had blazed just such a pathway, they were all the more meaningful.

With a few exceptions, perhaps, the men and women who chose John Hoyt to lead The HSUS as its president are no longer with us. But John is, thankfully, and for those of us who have served with him, it’s an honor to reflect on his legacy. We can all look back and say that his arrival on the scene signaled a new era of hope and resolve, and the decisions he made throughout his tenure at The HSUS are still being felt every day within the walls of the institution.

A Picture of Our Work, Protecting All Animals

When I heard the siren of a fire engine screaming down the street this morning, I felt a pang of anxiety. I always do. Someone is in trouble. Maybe a family’s house is ablaze. Maybe there was a bad car accident. Maybe someone had a heart attack.

Firefighters, after all, don’t just fight fires. They answer our emergencies.

Paul Turner
In the field, we rescue animals in distress.

I’m reflecting on this just now because the staging lot at our headquarters building is primed with our own fleet of emergency vehicles—our rescue trucks, trailers and other mobile equipment. Most of these vehicles are painted with our proud logo depicting a collage of 19 animals—creatures that symbolize for us the whole of the animal kingdom. When a convoy of these trucks heads out on an emergency mission and passes you on the highway, you can feel a pang. Somewhere, animals are in trouble.

What animals? That’s the point I’m leading toward. It could be that we’re racing to join with law enforcement in a raid against criminal dogfighters. Perhaps we are answering the call of local crisis officials in a natural disaster where cats and dogs and other pets are in desperate need. Or a local humane society in a distant city has summoned our experts and equipment to end the suffering of hundreds of dogs at a puppy mill. It could be we are coming to the aid of starving and neglected horses, or delivering life-giving food to farm animals trapped in a flood, or in a blizzard.

The Humane Society of the United States doesn’t help just one kind of animal. We’re in business to protect them all, and we’ve been dedicated to that principle since the day of our founding—Nov. 22, 1954. When animals suffer needlessly, that’s an emergency, no matter what kind of animal or what kind of trouble—and that’s why we exist.

During my more than two decades in this cause of humane work, I have met all kinds of “animal people.” There are dog people, and cat aficionados, and horse lovers. There are individuals devoted to the welfare of elephants, and people who are crazy about parrots. Heaven help you if you cross a turtle fancier. But no matter what animal has a hold on their hearts, these people share a common trait: They abhor cruelty and mistreatment. That’s the reason why 11 million Americans have pledged their active support to The Humane Society of the United States. That’s why our logo is built from the images of many animals.

Unfortunately, there is a corollary that unites those who exploit animals.

They stand together in loathsome alliance, hoping to look stronger as they do their best to steer us off course. When radicals in the trophy hunting community, for instance, object to our campaign against shooting animals inside pens in the name of “sport,” cockfighters are only too willing to rally. When we confront the puppy mill industry in Missouri, the factory farmers line up by their side, just as they did when we took on cockfighting in the Show Me State more than a decade ago. Their alliance never deterred us, but only served to show the electorate that for our opponents, it was a moral race to the bottom and they were quick to defend any and all types of abuse.

Kathy Milani
Our major campaigns target the inhumane treatment of animals.

My real purpose today is to remind everyone about the importance of transparency and symbolism. The 19 animals on our logo signify something real—a deeply held belief that we wish to shout from the rooftops: All animals deserve protection. And when you see an HSUS truck on the road, when you receive a letter from us in the mail, when you see one of our TV ads, when you visit our website humanesociety.org, or when somebody hands you a business card with a map of the United States rendered in 19 animals—you can be assured of two things: There are animals in need. And we are there to fight for them.

If you want to see the real thing and not just the symbols, let me direct you to our new app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Go to Apple’s App Store and search for HumaneTV. It’s free. Here, you can see short news videos of our staff and volunteers in action. Among the recent headlines are these: Suspected Cockfighting Ring Busted; HSUS, Actors Take to Hill for Horses; HSI and Haitians Working Together; Cruelty Free Shopping; North Carolina Animal Rescue … There’s lots more.

The app is new, but not what it shows—not about the needs of animals or our determination to help. Back in the late 1950s, decades before the age of the Internet and before anyone could imagine the technological wizardry that goes into producing an iPhone, HSUS printed this mission statement on its membership cards: “Every Field of Humane Work—EVERYWHERE."

Toxic Neighbor: Families Suffer Near Egg Factory Farm

California voters approved Proposition 2 in November 2008, phasing out the use of small cages for laying hens, breeding sows, and veal calves. And while that measure does not take effect until 2015—in order to allow producers to transition to more humane production systems—The HSUS is still closely monitoring the behavior of factory farms that violate environmental laws. In the run-up to the vote on Prop 2, we were particularly appalled by the harm caused to the community by an egg factory farm in the state’s Central Valley. The complete disregard for the rights of the neighboring property owners struck us as dishonorable and harmful—putting the lie to the argument that these factory farms are a valuable component of California or its agricultural community. Here is a report on our work from Jennifer Fearing, our California senior state director.

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Drummond Buckley
Larry Yepez, neighbor to the egg factory farm,
has endured rank smells and fly problems.

I sat with rapt attention as 79-year-old widow Lita Galicinao told me stories about how her beloved husband liberated her hometown in the Philippines during the war, and then brought her (his “GI Bride” she said several times while blushing) to America to fulfill their dreams of owning some land where they could farm. Back in the early 1950s, they pooled their money with several other families to buy 72 acres of residential and agricultural land in Lathrop, Calif. not far from Interstate 5, and set to the task of starting a new life and raising their families in true village style.

Along with Lita, I sat that day with Larry, Lynda, and Wayne Yepez. Lynda’s mother raised her and her siblings in this tiny community and then Larry moved in and their son Wayne was born. While Larry, who earned a Purple Heart for his bravery as a Vietnam soldier, was often away from home fighting fires in Yosemite, Lassen and other national parks, Lynda and he struggled to understand the cause of young Wayne’s near-constant battle with respiratory ailments.

Stepping out onto Lita’s porch, you’re immediately overwhelmed by what’s likely causing Wayne’s health problems and what has undermined the efforts of this group of neighbors to live comfortably on this land.

Google Maps
An aerial view of the Lathrop, Calif. facility.

Not far from their homes sits a massive cesspool of manure and urine—about 13 acres in size—produced by the nearly 700,000 hens who are trapped in an egg factory farm that sits only feet from the end of their road. Small children were trying to play outdoors just a stone’s throw from the noxious swamp. The air quality was putrid. I didn’t want to spend another minute there; it’s hard to fathom spending one’s entire life there.

That seemed to be a feeling shared by a reporter with the Associated Press, who joined us to meet the neighbors that day. He’d taken an interest in these neighbors’ plight, The HSUS’s lawsuit on their behalf, and recent violations issued to this producer by the local Air Pollution Control District. Add it all up, and you have what strongly appears to be a callous disregard for animals, people, land, soil, air and the law. Jason Dearen’s wire story and the accompanying photos document it well. Ironically, the day before this story ran, the judge presiding in this case sanctioned the defendant for spoiling evidence by dredging out manure sludge from the massive cesspool with an enormous backhoe shortly after learning that The HSUS planned to measure the air pollution at the facility.

I’m deeply proud of the work that my colleagues in the Animal Protection Litigation section are doing to represent the interests of these neighbors, which align so clearly with improving the welfare of animals on these factory farms. The root cause of both the neighbors’ and the hens’ suffering is the cramming of as many birds as possible into the smallest amount of space. I hope justice is realized for all the victims in the end.