Actor Jenna Dewan Tatum has joined the more than 30,000 people who have signed PETA's petition calling for criminal charges to be filed against the owner and operators of Global Captive Breeders (GCB), where a PETA undercover investigation led to the largest animal rescue in California history.
In a letter sent today to Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach, Jenna calls for justice for the nearly 18,000 rats and mice and 600 reptiles who were found languishing in waste-filled cages, many of them starved, injured, gravely ill, and/or with no access to water, when rescuers entered GCB in mid-December.
“As an expectant mother, I was particularly heartbroken to see photos of ailing mother rats with open wounds on their bodies who stood guard protectively over their dead or dying babies,” Jenna writes. “I implore you … to take action and send the strong and compassionate message that cruelty to animals is taken seriously and will not be tolerated in Riverside County.”
PETA’s investigation uncovered routine, severe neglect at GCB, including scores of rats drowning on a near-daily basis because of a faulty watering system, rats dying of dehydration and eating each other alive in an effort to survive, mother rats confined to bins so short that they could not sit upright or even groom themselves or properly nurse their young, reptiles slowly wasting away over the course of weeks as a result of systemic deprivation, and more. PETA’s investigator recorded employees killing rats by slamming them against walls, shelves, and other hard surfaces and shooting them with a BB gun.
Jenna previously starred in a “naked” PETA ad, which called attention to the millions of snakes, lizards, alligators, crocodiles, and other reptiles who are killed for their skins every year in the name of “fashion.”
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
Source: PETA
