Don't let the USDA hide animal abuse.
 | | Don't let the USDA hide animal abuse. | Dear Aaaaaaa,
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is supposed to investigate animal-welfare violations, but last year, it removed public online records related to puppy mills, laboratories, roadside zoos, traveling animal shows, and other enterprises that exploit animals—scrubbing its website of critical information on violations that occurred, including where they happened and who was responsible for them.
After a vigorous legal challenge by PETA and other organizations, some records have been restored online, but thousands of USDA inspection reports—and the instances of abuse that they document—remain hidden.
Please give today and help provide our legal team with the resources that it needs in order to keep abusers from getting away scot-free. We're working to raise $100,000 by March 30, and your gift—even as little as $5—will push us closer to our goal. | | | | Your support today will help PETA's legal team stop new federal efforts to shield animal abusers. | | | | It took a lawsuit—and the support of more than 100 members of Congress from both sides of the aisle—to compel the USDA to rescind (even slightly) its online report blackout. While the agency has put some of the deleted records back online, access to many reports is still only available through a sometimes years-long bureaucratic process that, in the end, may produce partially or entirely blacked-out documents.
Denying or delaying public access to records of inspections is bad enough, but what if inspections never took place at all? The USDA is proposing to conduct fewer and less-thorough inspections—and when asked how it currently determines the frequency of its inspections, it refused to answer. PETA filed a records request that's gone ignored for more than two years. The agency is required under the Freedom of Information Act to provide this information, so this month, we filed a lawsuit asking the court to order the USDA to reveal its current method for determining the frequency of inspections.
Under current federal law and practice, USDA officials conduct unannounced inspections of puppy mills, laboratories, roadside zoos, and other regulated businesses to ensure that they're complying with the bare-minimum federal standards for the treatment of animals. The new plan being considered by the agency may allow not only accreditation by notoriously unreliable third-party businesses but also inspections to be announced—a move that would give abusers a chance to "clean up" their cruelty before an inspector even sets foot in a facility.
We need your support—and all the financial resources that we can muster—in order to stop animals' enemies in their tracks.
You know that PETA is a determined force for the rights of all animals. Our investigative work has led some to dub PETA "the unofficial, effective USDA" and "the organization that does the USDA's inspections for it." That would make us better qualified to be the third-party inspector than the pro–animal experimentation organization that's currently being considered for the position. After all, we've filed hundreds of complaints that have resulted in investigations, citations, closures of cruel enterprises, changed practices, and fines against people and businesses that abuse animals.
We need your support to bring even more power to our campaigns—to build on our momentum, increase our reach, open more people's eyes to the suffering, and persuade them to join us in our vigorous work to end it.
Please help PETA's legal team do more for animals by donating online today so that we can reach our $100,000 goal.
Very truly yours,
Ingrid E. Newkirk
President | | | |
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