NEWSBYMICHELLE HODKIN

The first rumblings of trouble at the Hempstead, NY animal shelter began last November, when three volunteers alleged that they witnessed shelter workers beating some of the homeless animals and leaving others to die in their cages. The Nassau County District Attorney launched a "criminal probe" to investigate. Nothing has come of it, and the shelter banned all volunteers from the premises for their trouble.

Then, the outcry intensified when it was revealed that the shelter maintains an annual budget of 7.1 million dollars, and only accepted 3,498 animals last year. For comparison, the admittedly underfunded, and poorly managed, New York Center for Animal Care and Control operates on a budget of 7.1 million, and accepted 38,000 animals last year. Why so expensive? Well, nine shelter employees out of twenty-nine earn over $100,000 per year. And there isn't a single veterinarian among them.

Something is rotten in Hempstead, NY. And now, it's only getting worse.

An undercover PETA investigation, prompted by a whistleblower report, unearthed the sickening abuse and neglect of over 300 cats being kept in storage units at the so-called Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary (SVAS) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

The "sanctuary," is located in an industrial area, and is blocked from view by a church. No signs exist to alert potential adopters of the existence of the cats. The operator, Elizabeth Owen, reportedly employs no staff. PETA's investigation demonstrates that she cannot afford to pay for veterinary care for the dozens of sick, injured, and dying animals, but when she was provided an opportunity to obtain free veterinary care and to have many of the cats adopted out, she rejected it.

Meanwhile, about 300 cats are crammed and stacked into wire crates. There are usually two to four cats per crate, with one litter box overflowing with feces and clumped urine. The cats with no room to stretch their legs or engage in natural behavior are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones have developed open sores, festering wounds, blindness, and other terminal illnesses due to their environment.

Heartstick euthanasia, otherwise known as intracardiac injection, is inhumane. At best, it involves a sodium pentobarbital-filled syringe being jabbed through a sedated animal's chest wall into the heart. At worst, the animal is fully conscious, or the technician misses the narrow chest wall and punctures sensitive nerve endings or a lung instead.

And it's being practiced at the Miami-Dade Animal Shelter, one of the largest facilities in the Southeast.

On January 25th, WSVN News broke the story, which included video footage of a shelter employee euthanizing animals by heartstick in a-ward, the shelter's euthanasia room. The footage is hard to stomach. An assisting technician, Grace Avila, who witnessed the procedure, told the network that the animals in the video were not sedated. "It would have taken twice as long if they were." She didn't stay until the procedure was finished, though. Why? Because the animals were "screaming."

After receiving over 1,100 emails from Change.org members, it looks like Lipton lovers can now drink easy: as of this month, Lipton's parent company, Unilever, issued a press release, stating that it is "committing to no animal testing for our tea and tea-based beverages, with immediate effect."

The company says the commitment is part of their "leadership" in environmental sustainability and ethical sourcing of their teas, but the announcement comes after a December report from the United Kingdom's People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA UK), stating that tea companies PG tips, Lipton and Lyons had been testing their products on animals in some pretty gruesome experiments that were decidedly not "100% natural."

The Bump bills itself as a site aimed at giving "first-time parents the lowdown on fertility, pregnancy, birth, and babies with stage-by-stage advice, stylish ideas, local resources, and interactive tools." In a monthly informational email sent to subscribers, the company sent an email to mothers of seventeen-month-olds, which included the following text:

"By now your toddler has tons of new tricks, like opening every cabinet door in the house, chucking his toys across the room, stripping off his diaper, and shrieking like a banshee. You might also find that he is either terrified of dogs and strangers or shows absolutely no fear at all. Either way is fine, as long as you offer support and supervision — and steer clear of pit bulls."

I was tempted to laugh when I read this, and would have, if the misinformation they're spreading hadn't been so insidious. It's an informational email targeted to new mothers to help them navigate their child's development. A mention of pit bulls doesn't belong here, much less a warning. This type of misinformation not only leads to family dogs losing their homes, but it's also dangerous for the toddlers.

Audrey Julian, a long-time community member of The Bump, felt the same way. "The statement about pit bulls in this email is unnecessary and untrue," she said. "Any dog can bite, and it is up to the parent to watch their child around all animals. This email is misleading, and what's more — dangerous. To insinuate that parents should be 'steering clear of pit bulls' could lead to a perception that it's perfectly okay to leave a child unsupervised with other dogs."

“Little Horatio,” whose name has been changed to protect him and his family, has endured beatings so brutal that he will forever have to wear goggles to protect him from bright sunlight. His abuser? The son of his former elderly owner, who brutalized him to manipulate her.

Thankfully, the human domestic violence victim managed to escape her son and tormenter, and more miraculous still, she managed to rescue Little Horatio from him, too. She is now living with her other children, who had no idea what was happening, and her dog is now living with Kathy Cornwell, a victim advocate for the Pinellas-Pasco Area Agency on Aging.

Ms. Cornwell and Jane Occhiolini, a retired victim advocate and friend of Cornwell’s, were inspired to approach Senator Mike Fasano (R-New Port Richey) and encourage him to file a proposal that would protect canine victims of domestic violence in Florida.

ABC News recently reported that allegations of neglect have been made against NYC’s shelter system, New York City Animal Care and Control (NYCACC), the largest shelter in the Northeast. The video shows footage of cats sitting next to food dishes that contain food mixed with litter, dogs lying on bedding soaked with urine and feces, and animals in cages that are covered in filth. Once upon a time, I worked in a city animal shelter. I never saw anything like this.

The footage was taken by shelter employees, whose identities were hidden because of threats of reprisal made by the shelter to the workers. “On a daily basis you can walk into the shelter and find these conditions in the places that aren't visible to the public,” one shelter worker said.

The New York City Department of Health slashed NYCACC’s budget by one and a half million dollars in the last two years, a move that has crippled the shelter, which is a nonprofit agency contracted by the Department of Health to operate three shelters in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Manhattan. As if that weren’t enough, then the volunteer program was suspended for months while it was revamped. The result? Sometimes dogs aren’t walked for up to three days.

I’ve been to the NYCACC’s Manhattan branch, and it’s not a pretty place. It’s a shelter on an island with five million pets. But that’s no excuse.

Kentucky is having job problems, like the rest of the country. Its solution? Build an ark.

An article in the New York Times states that Kentucky has “promised generous tax incentives to a group of entrepreneurs who plan to construct a full-size replica of Noah’s ark, load it with animals and actors, and make it the centerpiece of a Bible-based tourist attraction called Ark Encounter.”

There’s a lot wrong with this picture. But I won’t get into the Constitutional and First Amendment issues here, or talk about how most of the jobs that would be created by this theme park would be low-wage, at best. I’m most concerned about the animals right now, and you should be, too.

Anonymous for Animal Rights, an Israeli nonprofit dedicated to exposing cruelty in factory farms, has done something truly revolutionary. Instead of sending in an undercover volunteer to collect horrific footage at slaughterhouses and Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), the group has installed a web camera at an egg farming facility to stream the cruelty live. Live.

And because factory farms are so enormous and indistinguishable, the farmers can’t find the camera.

This ingenious move is part of a larger, ongoing campaign by Anonymous to outlaw battery cages for egg laying hens in Israel. These cages mean that hens spend their entire lifetime in a space smaller than even a page of a trade paperback book—about 550 square centimeters.

Click on the link and you’ll see the daily life of egg laying hens, crammed three (or more) to a cage. They can’t spread their wings, bathe in dust, forage, fly, run, or engage in any of their natural behaviors. They don’t even get to stand on solid ground — their feet poke through the gaping wire mesh they’re forced to stand on, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. You don’t have to take my word for it, or even the group’s. You can see it for yourself.

The town of Bluffton, South Carolina, is considering allowing horse-drawn carriages to operate within its limits. But they shouldn’t be.

“Lameness and hoof deterioration are inevitable” in horses who pull carriages, says veterinarian Holly Cheever, because the animals are forced to walk on hard pavement and cobblestone streets for nine hours a day, seven days a week. “The problems are worsened by the inexperience of the gross majority of the owners and drivers, who are either incapable of recognizing lameness or are unwilling to suffer financial loss by removing a horse from service for a few days.” Adding insult to injury, because horses walk with their heads lowered, carriage horses live a “nose-to-tailpipe existence,” according to Cheever.

But Alan and Kay Ulmer, the owners of Buckingham Plantation Stables who want to open the Old Town Carriage Company in Bluffton, don’t really care about all that. Because letting horse-drawn carriages into the town would only boost their bottom line.