Circuit Judge Rhonda Lanford's order says activists presented enough evidence to pursue felony and misdemeanor charges against Ridglan Farm for conducting medical procedures on dogs without anesthesia and failing to provide the animals with appropriate living conditions. Specifically, Lanford wrote, staff lowered the volume of their barking by 'mutilating' their vocal flaps. Describing the surgery to the dogs' vocal cords, 'The dogs mouths were pried open and held in place by a contraption, and a Ridglan employee would then reach down their throat with a sharp tool and sever the flaps in the back of their throat'. Landford stated that animals were given a drug to paralyze them, but not any anesthesia or pain medication.
CHRIS RICKERT: In a rare move, a Dane County judge said she will appoint a special prosecutor to pursue animal mistreatment and cruelty charges against a Blue Mounds dog breeder after local officials, including the district attorney, declined to take action against the facility despite years of complaints from animal-rights activists.
Circuit Judge Rhonda Lanford’s 23-page decision and order says activists presented enough evidence to pursue felony and misdemeanor charges against Ridglan Farm for conducting medical procedures on dogs without anesthesia and failing to provide the animals with appropriate living conditions.
Specifically, Lanford wrote, staff removed protruding glands from dogs’ eyes to prevent a condition called “cherry eye” and lowered the volume of their barking by “mutilating” their vocal flaps. Describing the surgery to the dogs’ vocal cords, Landford wrote that testimony provided in an Oct. 23 hearing alleged that animals were given a drug to paralyze them, but not any anesthesia or pain medication.
“The dogs mouths were then pried open and held in place by a contraption, and a Ridglan employee would then reach down their throat with a sharp tool and sever the flaps in the back of their throat,” she wrote. Dogs subjected to the eye procedure often bled profusely, Lanford wrote, and according to testimony “‘would be thrashing around in pain, often yelping, crying out.'”
As for the dogs’ living situation, Lanford described a facility where feces and urine would collect and putrefy below the animals’ cages, creating an odor so bad it can harm animals’ nasal passages and causing injuries including large cysts on their paws. She also said the evidence presented showed that, with fewer than 20 full-time employees and some 3,200 dogs, Ridglan could provide each dog with no more than a few minutes per week of socialization with humans.
“When you cage thousands of dogs in a warehouse, never let them outside, and provide them essentially no social interaction, all in order to sell them to animal experimenters for profit, cruelty is baked into the business model,” Steffen Seitz, a litigation fellow with the University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, said in a statement. “Dogs should be home with family, not locked in cages or treated like test tubes”…
According to Lanford’s decision, plaintiff Wayne Hsiung testified that since May 2018, he had contacted the Dane County District Attorney’s office at least seven times with video and other documentary evidence of conditions at Ridglan Farms, including meeting with DA Ismael Ozanne on April 18.
Among the evidence he provided were “multiple reports from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the U.S. Department of Agriculture documenting conditions at Ridglan” from October 2016 through September of last year, “each time noting specific aspects of Ridglan’s facilities that fell below the standards required by law,” Lanford writes.
Ozanne’s office also received 983 emails requesting an investigation of Ridglan, according to testimony described in her decision. The Dane County Sheriff’s Office and the Animal Services division of the joint Madison-Dane County public health department were also provided with evidence of the alleged mistreatment. SOURCE…
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