Courtesy of the Humane Society of the United States
Washington DC

HSUS Celebrates National Farm Animals Awareness Week with the Farm Sanctuary Animal of the Year Contest

What do an abandoned donkey, a neglected sheep, and an abused horse have in common? What about a pig bound for the slaughterhouse or a factory farm laying hen? The Answer: They have all found permanent, loving homes at one of the more than 50 farm animal sanctuaries across the United States.

Farm sanctuaries rescue abused and neglected animals, and assist in disasters by securing homes and transportation for the animals. Disasters can be natural, such as floods or hurricanes, or man-made, like when a factory farm closes its doors for financial reasons.

Thousands, or perhaps millions, of animals need help in those instances, and while farm sanctuaries cannot save every animal, they network to rescue as many as possible. Many farm sanctuaries open their doors to the public in an effort to educate people about the horrors of factory farming. At the sanctuaries, adults and children alike can see cows, pigs, chickens, and other farm animals exhibiting their natural behaviors in spacious surroundings.

On the Farm Sanctuary Animal of the Year site, you can look at photos of the animal contestants and read their heart-wrenching stories. In all, 20 animals have been nominated by 10 different sanctuaries from around the country, including sanctuaries in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, California, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Maryland.

The stories behind these animals are as amazing as the creatures themselves. Each one has his or her own survival tale: One cow literally jumped a slaughterhouse fence on her journey to freedom. A breeder rooster actually survived a starvation diet. A pot-bellied pig couldn't stop raiding the refrigerator and soon found himself with no owner. These, and many other inspiring stories, can be found on the contest site.

Here's how the contest works: You cast your vote by forwarding the animal's "postcard" to a friend. For every person you send the postcard to, the animal receives one vote. Between now and September 27, you can return to the site as many times as you like to see how your favorite contestant is doing.

To find the farm sanctuary closest to you, contact The HSUS's Farm Animals and Sustainable Agriculture section at farmanimals@hsus.org. And if you live in the area, please visit Green Haven Animal Sanctuary in Coventry, Connecticut or Lighthouse Farm Sanctuary in Salem, Oregon. Both sanctuaries will be hosting open houses in honor of National Farm Animals Awareness Week.

Also, contact The HSUS for our new Kids' Activity Book for National Farm Animals Awareness Week; the book has fun facts and animal hero stories in addition to puzzles, games and coloring pages.

The Trade in Exotic Pets, A Very Sad Business The trade in exotic pets has generated some unflattering stories of late, and The HSUS's Director of Captive Wildlife, Richard Farinato, has been taking notes. Farinato reports not only on the fallout from the monkeypox outbreak earlier this year, but also on the ease with which the average citizen can purchase a chimp, or even a tiger cub, over the Internet.

The trade in captive wildlife is big business, worth billions a year, but the costs to the animals and to the people who purchase them can be even higher. Get the full picture in Farinato's report.

By: Richard Farinato

Allow me for a second to open my album of statistics and anecdotes, and provide you with some snapshots from the captive exotic-animal front:

In early August 2003, I found several tiger cubs available to the public via the Internet from a dealer in Arizona. Other cats, primates, small mammals, birds, and reptiles were available for sale, too. Tigers were priced from $900 to $7,000 each, depending on sex and color type. A baby chimp, however, would cost $50,000.

The number of individual captive tigers living in the United States is estimated between 5,000 and 7,000. About 10% of the tigers are kept in professionally run zoos and sanctuaries. The rest of these cats live in roadside menageries, circuses, traveling shows, big cat rescues, and backyards (where people keep them as pets). (By contrast, between 5,000 and 7,000 individual tigers are left in the wild, where the picture is pretty bleak for these large predators. Loss of habitat, conflicts with humans, and poaching continue to threaten the remaining populations.)

Right now, 26 tigers in New Jersey await relocation to a sanctuary in Texas after lengthy legal proceedings against their owner. In California, 39 tigers await placement in as yet undetermined locations after the state filed 63 charges against the animals' owners, including 17 counts of felony animal cruelty.

In the last five years, nine people have been killed by tigers. Each year, 90,000 people are treated for salmonella infection contracted from reptiles. Since 1975, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned the import and sale of turtles under the size of 4 inches because of the salmonella threat to small children. This July, the Department of Health and Human Services indefinitely shut down the import and sale of African rodents for the U.S. pet trade after an outbreak of monkeypox, a human health threat traced to Gambian rodents that subsequently infected native prairie dogs being sold as pets.

A federal bill to prohibit the interstate trade in big cats for pets is making its way through Congress. The House version was approved by the Committee on Resources, while the Senate version was approved by the Environment and Public Works Committee. If enacted, the bill could slow the exotics trade since it would limit the sale of big cats to buyers within a seller's particular state.

I recently went to a county fair near our office, and listened to a trainer tell me how wild tigers need help and how the tigers in the ring are actually contributing to saving wild tigers by jumping through hoops and rolling over on command. He called what he does conservation education. If I were an 8-year-old in the crowd, I might have wanted to have my own tiger, just like his.

And the scary part is, if I were an 8-year-old, I very likely could get one. When I grew up.

All these seemingly disconnected statements and anecdotes are anything but disconnected. The business of exotic and wild animals as pets in the United States is conservatively estimated to be worth $15 billion annually. The trade in wild animals worldwide is worth many billions of dollars; one quarter of this trade, including the poaching to tigers and elephants, is estimated to be illegal. This illegal trade in exotics and their parts is often described as the No. 2 moneymaker on the black market, behind drugs and weapons. What does this all mean?

It means that people have easy access to an amazingly diverse and dangerous array of animals who are supremely unsuited to life as a pet. For more information please visit HSUS website at http://www.hsus.org.