Subject of Sting—Involving Tens of Thousands of Suffering Rats, Sick and Dying Reptiles—Has History of Cruelty Going Back to 1985
For Immediate Release:
December 19, 2012
Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382
Lake Elsinore, Calif. -- Law-enforcement officials, who last week entered Lake Elsinore–based animal dealer Global Captive Breeders LLC (GCB), acted on evidence gathered during a two-month PETA undercover investigation that revealed severe neglect of and cruelty to animals on a massive scale. More than 18,000 rats and 600 reptiles were found suffering at the business. This rescue operation is the largest seizure of rats in U.S. history and the largest-ever seizure of animals in California. Video footage and photographs from PETA's investigation—the first images from inside GCB to be released—are available.
PETA's investigator documented a failure to provide animals with adequate space, food, and water; injured and sick animals deprived of veterinary care; and reptiles left to languish and die in filth-encrusted tubs, surrounded by their own waste and the maggot-ridden remains of other animals. GCB workers, including its manager, shot at rats with a BB gun, froze them alive, bludgeoned them with metal tongs and gun handles, and smashed them against hard surfaces in an attempt to kill them.
"GCB was a reeking hellhole for the rats, snakes, and other animals who were left to starve, drown, and die among the rotting corpses of other animals," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "The individuals responsible for this staggering cruelty must be prosecuted and banned from laying their hands on another animal."
When a team of veterinary experts from Animal Friends of the Valleys, PETA, the Marin Humane Society, the Colorado Reptile Humane Society, and others first entered GCB on December 12, they found thousands of suffering, dying, dead, and decomposing animals. An overwhelming stench of death, decay, and ammonia burned first responders' lungs and eyes as they found animal carcasses teeming with maggots, young rats confined by the hundreds to plastic containers without food or water, and mother rats confined with their newborn babies to drawers so small that the adults could not stand upright. Animals had drowned, and rats' bodies floated in flooded bins. Snakes and rats were also loose in the warehouse.
"By far, this is the most severe and large-scale single facility forcing animals to live in vile and horrific conditions that I have experienced in my nearly 30 years as an animal cruelty investigator," says Captain Cindy Machado, Marin Humane Society animal services director and an expert in investigations of cruelty to animals who assisted in coordinating and leading the response and investigative teams at GCB. "We found evidence of animals drowning; dying in enclosures; rotting and decaying in cages; living for days without water; deprived of simple, basic care; and living in high levels of contaminated air—by far exceeding the level of suffering we have ever encountered."
This is not PETA's first encounter with GCB owner and Orange County resident Mitch Behm. In the mid-'80s, when he was a college student, he videotaped himself throwing mice, rats, and rabbits into a bathtub with ferrets, who attacked and killed them. Behm admitted to conducting these unapproved "experiments" in part for his own "enjoyment," but the statute of limitations had expired by the time law-enforcement authorities discovered the video footage.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.