Animal Rights Activists On Trial in Wisconsin
Next week three animal-rights activists go on trial for sneaking into a beagle-breeding facility in Wisconsin, filming the atrocities therein, and running off with three doggos. That was seven years ago, but now the Dane County district attorney is hauling the three before a judge.
The three defendants were on a seek-and-rescue mission for animal-rights group Direct Action Everywhere, known as DxE. The team rescued three beagles, Julie, Anna, and Lucy. Now the three human heroes are facing felony burglary and felony theft charges that could cost them up to 16 years behind bars.
The Wisconsin facility, Ridglan Farms in Mount Horeb, WI, is a beagle-breeding factory with about 2800 dogs on site, awaiting sale to experimental labs and all the attendant horror of that. Ridglan’s tagline, “Bred to be Better…Raised to be Best,” gives a hint to the creatures’ fate: purpose-bred beagles for biomedical research.
Journalist and animal-rights advocate Glenn Greenwald wrote about Ridglan last year, noting that “the majority of dogs bred and sold for experimentation are beagles, which are considered ideal because of their docile, human-trusting personality. In other words, the very traits that have made them such loving and loyal companions to humans are the ones that humans exploit to best manipulate them in labs.”
Of course, we have a particular fondness for beagles. Our beloved Atwood was among the 4000 rescued from the horrors of experimentation.
We believe experiments on animals for human benefit are at an inflection point because advanced technology is making the cruel practice obsolete. Powerful computational models, stem-cell research, non-invasive diagnostic imaging, and exotic techniques like “organs-on-chips” – living cells and tissues that mimic organ physiology – are among the technological advances that can replace a lot of animal testing.
For more info on the case and how to help, visit the Direct Action Everywhere website. The page includes a video of Julie’s dramatic rescue (includes some disturbing images), which is also documented here.
