Group Calls On Federal Agency to Launch an Investigation Into Triple F Farms, With Which It Has $1.5 Million of Taxpayer Funds in Contracts
For Immediate Release:
September 2, 2011
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Atlanta — Following its nearly four-month-long undercover investigation, which documented systematic and fatal neglect of ferrets at Sayre, Pa.–based Triple F Farms, Inc., PETA has sent a letter to Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), calling on the agency to launch its own investigation into Triple F immediately. Since 2006, the CDC has signed contracts with Triple F worth more than $1.5 million for live ferrets used in experiments. PETA has already turned its evidence over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has conducted an inspection. Results of that inspection are expected soon. Bradford County District Attorney Dan Barrett's office is also investigating. Triple F also sells ferrets to other government agencies as well as to laboratories worldwide and pet stores nationally.
PETA found that Triple F's supervisors and workers left ferrets with bleeding rectal prolapses, gaping wounds, painful mammary gland infections, and ruptured, bleeding eyes to suffer and die without veterinary care. Triple F forbade workers to rescue thousands of newborn and young ferrets—who had fallen through wire cage bottoms 3 feet to the concrete floor below—from accumulated piles and puddles of waste, where they were left to perish. Click here to view footage from the investigation.
"Federal laws and state cruelty-to-animals laws are on the books to protect animals from the kind of abuse and neglect that these ferrets experience every day at Triple F Farms," says PETA Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. "Taxpayers have no say when federal agencies spend money on abusive mills like this one, so we look to the government to be extra diligent in its investigation."
The following are more of PETA's findings:
- Ferrets were denied food and water and were confined to filthy, severely crowded cages in stifling-hot barns.
- Ferrets were stepped on, buried in feces, and thrown into an incinerator alive.
- Triple F employees cut organs and anal sacs out of inadequately anesthetized ferrets, who cried out in pain.
PETA is calling for appropriate administrative penalties and criminal charges. PETA has also filed complaints with federal and state agencies regarding Triple F's routine exposure of live ferrets to ferret carcasses, storage and use of controlled substances, and apparent violations of worker safety and compensation laws.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.