LCA Blog

For the first time, the government of Yulin, China has pledged to take action to stop the barbaric Yulin Dog Meat Festival, where 10,000 dogs are ruthlessly slaughtered and eaten each year on the summer solstice. This is major progress, and follows massive global outcry including a long-running campaign and multiple groundbreaking investigations by LCA.

Undercover footage released exclusively today by LCA exposes the horrific abuse and torture endured by dogs inside slaughterhouses at China's Yulin Dog Meat Festival. LCA is the first organization to document the slaughter of dogs inside Yulin's slaughterhouses. The footage was shot prior to the June 21, 2016 start of Yulin's annual dog meat festival where an estimated 10,000 dogs are killed during the summer solstice.

California is closer than ever to passing a ban on cruel elephant bullhooks -- a move that would effectively block circuses with elephants from performing in the state. The bill, SB 1062, passed in the state senate on April 18, 2016, and now awaits a vote in the state assembly. With the assembly adjourning for summer recess July 1, 2016, the vote could happen at any time!

In a major win for the animals, the federal governemt of Australia has pledged to ban animal testing for cosmetics. Announced on June 3, 2016 by Assistant Minister for Health Key Wyatt and Federal Liberal Member for La Trobe Jason Wood, the ban is scheduled go into effect July 1, 2017.

Said Wood, “testing the ingredients of cosmetics like mascara and shampoo on living creatures is a completely unnecessary cruelty and it’s time Australia joined a growing number of countries by banning it.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just announced a major step toward ending the ivory trade and saving elephants from ruthless poachers. New restrictions will ban nearly all African elephant ivory sales in the United States!

Under the new regulations -- proposed a year ago and finally passed -- sale of African elephant ivory will be prohibited across state lines, with the exception of antiques more than 100 years old and items containing small amounts of ivory.  

On Wednesday, May 25, 2016, Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) introduced a non-binding resolution into the U.S. House of Representatives condemning China’s Yulin Dog Meat Festival and calling on the Chinese government to end the dog meat trade. House Resolution 752 acknowledges the “extreme animal cruelty” of the dog meat industry, citing its unpopularity with the Chinese people, its threat to global public health, and the countless stolen pets that are slaughtered each year.

by Cynthia Baseman

A few weeks ago in Yellowstone National Park, tourists transported a newborn bison calf in their car because they thought the animal “was cold.” After numerous unsuccessful attempts to reunite the calf with its herd, park rangers euthanized the animal.

Whether you live in a rural setting or a city, spring and summer seasons bring an uptick in baby wild animal sightings.  What do you do if you stumble upon a newborn wild animal? Leave it alone. 

Canada’s sealing industry is trying to fool the public into believing that their brutal hunt is necessary, when in fact it is an economic drain and causes immense suffering to the animals. It’s time to debunk some of the most common myths about the seal hunt:

Flash back to Easter Sunday, 1882.

At Madison Square Garden in New York City, P.T. Barnum introduced Jumbo, a large African elephant, into his act. Over the next 134 years, elephants became synonymous with the circus.

Flash forward to May 1, 2016.

After decades of protests by LCA and other groups, Ringling Bros. took a giant Pachyderm step in the right direction by permanently removing elephants from their circus acts. Ringling Bros. gave circuses around the world a loud wake-up call.

What’s wrong with elephants in captivity?

Over the last decade, scientists have discovered that elephants are among the most intelligent animals on the planet. Researchers have witnessed elephants using teamwork to find food, making tools to shoo flies, and expressing a range of emotions from triumph to grief.

Duanying Chen, who brutally tortured 5-month-old puppy Davey in Santa Barbara, CA, in May 2015 was finally banished from the U.S. and deported to his homeland of China on March 8, 2016. While this can never undo the unthinkable pain inflicted on Davey, it is a powerful victory in the fight for tougher penalties for crimes against animals.

LCA and activists including Diana Basehart, Gretchen Lieff and Lynnie Shaw fought relentlessly to achieve justice in this horrific case. Nearly 900 protesters attended the rally in Santa Barbara and the Davey's Voice petition demanding stiff punishment for Chen garnered thousands of signatures. Our voices were heard.

When a 9.0 earthquake shook Japan on March 11, 2011, the Earth shifted four inches on its axis. Then came the unexpected tsunami; a giant, three-story wall of water slammed into the shore, crushing seaside towns like matchsticks.

Radiation levels at the swamped Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant began their deadly spiral. Nearby, just shivering specks in the unthinkable rubble, were countless terrified, abandoned animals.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 marks the one-year anniversary of my good friend Sam Simon’s untimely death at age 59. Sam may be gone, but I will never forget his wit, great humor and incredible acts of kindness.

Sam, co-creator of The Simpsons television show, learned that he had late-stage colon cancer in 2012 and was told by doctors he had three to six months to live. Sam vowed to make the most of every day he had left, and focused all of his energy into easing the suffering of both humans and animals.

On February 19, 2016, cable channel Pivot aired an episode of their acclaimed docu-series Truth and Power  that focused on the nefarious link between the animal agriculture industry and the U.S. government. The episode, entitled “Activists or Terrorists?” details the ongoing struggle to expose animal cruelty on factory farms, especially since the passage of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) in 2006. This freedom-crushing legislation was promoted by the medical research industry to target the anti-vivisection movement and was fast-tracked through Congress without hearings, debates, or even an official vote.

“Vivisectors call anti-vivisectionists ‘terrorists,’” says LCA founder Chris DeRose. “But who is it that is inflicting pain and death in procedures too awful for a sane person to imagine?”

Last Chance for Animals' Special Investigations Team witnessed nightmares during the June 21st Yulin Dog Meat Festival, a brutal "celebration" to mark the summer solstice. Piles of dead dogs, skin scorched to a crisp; puppies awaiting death in festering cages; and butchers hacking up the corpses of former pets. Puppies begged for attention, only to be bludgeoned and sold as meat. 

But despite the heartbreaking scene, new hope exists. People across the globe spread the word about the horror via social media, and more than 400,000 people signed LCA's petition to shut the Yulin Dog Meat Festival down. Due to this public outcry, an estimated 20 percent fewer dogs were killed for the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in 2015. Chances are better than ever of shutting next year's festival down entirely.

With our anti-carriage ad banned by the MTA, Last Chance for Animals had to get creative. LCA's current billboard — placed between New York City council members’ offices and City Hall, urging officials to outlaw horse-drawn carriages — is set to come down at the end of the month, and the MTA will not allow LCA to change the copy or extend the ad.

But LCA does not give up that easily. Working with NYClass, we printed out a full-size version of the censored ad for volunteers hold up at City Hall. LCA and our fellow activists are determined to drive home the point that carriages are a danger to horses and humans alike. As the ad states, a dozen horses have lost their lives in ugly traffic incidents. With the public also at risk, it makes no sense to allow this dated and dangerous industry to continue in New York City.

As summer rolls in with warm winds and longer days, your dog is probably glued to the door, hankering to burst outside into the explosion of summer life. Now imagine that you can't let him outside for fear he could be kidnapped, killed, and eaten. Dog owners in China face this fear – especially in the days leading up to the Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

The summer solstice festival turns thousands of innocent dogs into meat, including treasured household pets. Dog meat suppliers ransack Chinese streets in search of any dog they can find. They “package” poor animals for the haul to the Yulin market by tying them up, stuffing them into wire cages, and piling them into trucks like potato sacks. Many animals die on their way to the market, which is almost a mercy; nightmares await the survivors.

In a small town called Citilcum on the Yucatan peninsula, residents revel in an annual animal bloodbath known as Kots Kaal Pato. Townspeople stuff animals into vibrant paper-mache statuettes to create living piñatas which they ruthlessly demolish. Even children giggle as they prowl the streets, hunting for iguanas and opossums doomed to fill their barbaric piñatas. Once residents seal the animals into their paper tombs, they hang them up in the town square.

You can probably guess what happens next...

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has enacted a sweeping ban of ads across New York City. According to the MTA’s new policy, any ad deemed “political” will be censored, and barred from any MTA property. As a result, Last Chance for Animals’ own ads -- which decry the safety hazards of horse-drawn carriages -- are being hidden from the public eye. But LCA is fighting back, because our important message must be heard.

At the yearly Suwori Harvest Festival in Assam, India, barbaric elephant fighting is the main attraction. Crowds go wild as riders hoist themselves onto elephants’ backs and beat their heads with sticks until the peaceful animals charge. They collide violently until one elephant forces the other out of the fighting ring; the winner is then cruelly branded to mark the “victory.”

Sadly, the abuse goes well beyond the fight itself. Owners starve and confine the elephants to turn them into fighters. Some even attack the animals with iron hooks to alter their gentle personalities and make them more aggressive. Without social interaction, intelligent elephants suffer from mental anguish and a host of physical ailments like tuberculosis and arthritis. Captivity can decrease an elephant’s lifespan by decades.

Working undercover at the Pel-Freez plant in Rogers, Arkansas, LCA’s investigator spent four grueling weeks as a “blood catcher” to bring you the truth about the rabbit-meat industry. Warning: the reality is disturbing. Zero standards exist for these animals’ welfare, and USDA inspectors stand idly by despite the illness, injury and torture they see.

This is the truth about Pel-Freez, the largest rabbit slaughterhouse in America.

Their rabbits are sick.  

Bald patches and half-healed wounds covered many of the rabbits. Sores sealed their eyes closed. Some males had painfully swollen and blackened testicles from botched castration. LCA’s investigator never heard one word about medical treatment for the sick and wounded.

They slaughter live rabbits.

Workers haphazardly hit rabbits with the flat side of a knife just before slaughter. Their careless blows leave many rabbits awake as the killer breaks their legs, hangs them from a hook, and decapitates them. The conscious rabbits emit tortured screams as they’re ripped apart like rag dolls.

Dull knives make decapitation excruciating.

Pel-Freez knives become more blunt with every decapitation. Workers often have to saw vigorously to remove the rabbit’s head, drawing out a torturous death.

We can help stop this torture by bringing Pel-Freez to justice. Sign this petition to urge prosecutors to press charges against Pel-Freez for their cruel treatment of rabbits. Share on social media, and urge your friends to do the same.