For nearly 10 months in 2002 and early 2003, a PETA investigator worked undercover at Sinclair Research Center, a laboratory hired by Iams, and discovered a dark and sordid secret beneath the wholesome image of the dog- and cat-food manufacturer. Dogs had gone crazy because they were confined to barren steel cages and cement cells, dogs were left piled on a filthy paint-chipped floor after chunks of muscle had been hacked from their thighs, dogs were surgically debarked, and horribly sick dogs and cats were neglected and left in cages to suffer without any veterinary care.
Footage shows that Iams representatives toured the facility and witnessed dogs who were circling in their cells and sweltering in the summer heat. Iams knew the truth yet did nothing to protect the animals.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture investigated PETA's complaint and agreed that the laboratory had failed to provide veterinary care and pain relief to suffering animals, failed to provide animals with adequate space, and failed to train employees—along with nearly 40 other violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Sinclair Research Center paid a penalty of $33,000 for its violations.
After intense pressure from PETA and its supporters, Iams agreed to make the following significant changes in its testing program:
* Iams bowed to pressure and severed its ties with Sinclair Research Center.
* Iams ended all invasive and terminal experiments on dogs and cats.
* Iams agreed to begin conducting humane in-home tests for palatability studies.
According to Iams, about 70 percent of the animals now in its tests reside at home with their families. In these studies, people volunteer their companion animals to participate in food and nutrition experiments from the comfort of their own homes. The human guardians can easily be trained to feed the animals and properly collect fecal and urine samples for laboratory analysis to determine the quality of the animal's food. "In-home" studies have been shown to work and have strong scientific support, as shown by the successful PetSci program, which was developed by Dr. Charles Abramson and Dr. Timothy Bowser of Oklahoma State University.
Even so, Iams still keeps up to 700 dogs and cats in its Dayton, Ohio, laboratory for non-invasive nutritional studies. They claim that this laboratory provides a decent environment for the animals, but they refuse to allow a PETA representative to see inside. Iams claims that some studies are too complex for in-home programs, but PETA urges Iams to collaborate with veterinary clinics for studies such as these. Veterinary clinics regularly see patients who suffer from ailments that a particular dog or cat food might help alleviate.
Iams has also refused to end invasive experiments on species other than dogs and cats. For one study, Iams gave Purdue University nearly $200,000 to conduct a two-year study in which experimenters taped the tails of mice to the tops of cages to keep their hind legs suspended in the air. This was done to cause muscular atrophy—the wasting away of muscle tissue. When PETA protested, the experiment was cut short.
Iams has also fought the release of information from a public university that had conducted a study funded by the company in which a painful disease was induced in dogs. What was Iams hiding?
Iams has made progress, but as an industry leader, it must send an even clearer message: No animal deserves the fate of those who remain in their laboratories. Safe, healthy cat and dog food does not require harming cats and dogs.
PETA continues to press Iams to ban conducting and funding invasive or terminal experiments on all species and to adopt 100 percent humane, non-invasive, and cage-free "in-home" testing, as many of Iams' compassionate competitors have done.
The Investigation
PETA investigator videotaped Iams representatives touring the facility. They saw the sad, distressed dogs. They felt the sweltering heat and humidity in the kennels. Then they walked out. But the animals couldn’t.
An Iams veterinarian inspecting a group of dogs purchased from a USDA Class B dealer did nothing when he saw that a mother dog who had just given birth in a cement kennel had been provided with no bedding to rest on. A puppy and an adult dog from that group died during our investigation, most likely the result of neglect and temperatures that fell below 34 degrees in the building.
An Iams “behaviorist” saw dogs spinning in their cages out of madness and yet said nothing. An Iams cat dental researcher even overheard two employees talking about animals who were treated inhumanely at the facility yet Iams continued to conduct business there as usual.
Despite assurances in the Iams research policy that no animal would ever be killed, PETA investigator documented the destruction of 27 out of 60 dogs who underwent an invasive procedure that involved having huge chunks of muscle cut out of their legs. Two more of those dogs were found dead in their cages after the surgery; one had been suffering for 11 days prior to her death.
When PETA investigator reported that Humbug, an Iams dog, was limping, she was told by a vet tech that the laboratory had an x-ray machine that dated back to the 1960s but no film for it and that the director of the laboratory preferred to kill, rather than treat, animals with broken bones. In addition, Fifi and the other dogs used in Iams’ metabolic studies were bled by the laboratory in order to sell their blood to other companies even though the studies do not call for blood draws.
Finally, shortly before PETA investigator left, the lab director told the vet techs to debark all the Iams dogs as he was being disturbed by their desperate cries for attention. PETA investigator e-mailed Iams researchers in Dayton with this information, hoping that Iams would intervene. But all she got was the sickening sight of a lab technician covered in blood after a day of performing the debarking surgery.
When PETA investigator resigned, she told the Iams representative and the lab director that she was leaving because despite her best efforts, nothing was being done to enhance the desperately boring, lonely, harsh lives of the animals. The Iams representative admitted that both he and the lab director were from the “old school.
What PETA Investigator Found: Iams’ Den of Horrors
* Iams dogs dumped on cold concrete flooring after having huge chunks of muscle cut out of their thighs
* dogs and cats gone stir-crazy from confinement; dogs and cats in windowless, dungeon-like buildings
* a coworker who instructed her to hit the dogs on the chest if they quit breathing; another coworker who talked about an Iams dog found dead in his cage, bleeding from his mouth
* a dog who limped in pain from Lyme disease
* cruel studies done by Iams involving sticking tubes down dogs’ throats to force them to ingest vegetable oil
* Iams dogs with such severe tartar buildup on their teeth that it was painful for them to eat
* vet technicians with inadequate training and experience performing invasive procedures
* coworkers who talked about a live kitten who was washed down a drain
* coworkers who talked about how they had to go home because the ammonia fumes in the animal trailers were so overpowering that it made their eyes burn (try being one of the animals in those cages!)
* cats kept in a cinderblock room with crude wooden “resting” boards that had nails sticking out of them; one of the boards fell on a cat, crushing her to death, while PETA investigator was there yet the lab director did not remove the boards when the cat was crushed—he removed them when he was told that the lab was going to be inspected because he knew they were illegal
Videos:
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/prefs.asp?video=iams
Iams dog Fifi, her feet splayed on the steel slats of her cage flooring, nervously watches our investigator.
Iams dog Sally rises from the floor of her cage and cowers in fear.
Iams dog Gina looks out from the confines of her cage.
Iams dog Muffy lies on the steel flooring of her cage.
Iams dog Maisy cautiously greets our investigator while Maxine hugs the back wall of her cage.
The lighting was so poor in one of the buildings housing some of the Iams dogs that our investigator had to open the door to the outside in order to see.
Closeup of Prancer’s feet on the flooring of her cage.
Iams dog Prancer’s feet are splayed by the metal slats of her cage flooring. Dogs develop sores on their feet from this type of flooring.
Iams dogs, some awake and some unconscious, lie on the paint-chipped laboratory floor.
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Versione in italiano
Il caso IAMS
Dopo 9 mesi di indagini all¹interno di un laboratorio utilizzato dalla Iams, l'associazione americana PETA ha mostrato al mondo un video con immagini shock (aprile 2003). I documenti diffusi dalla PETA parlano di test su cani e gatti sottoposti ad ogni genere di maltrattamento. Si denuncia che nei laboratori sono stati trovati:
- cani e gatti rinchiusi in gabbie piccole e sporche, alcuni per più di 6 anni
- cani con le corde vocali chirurgicamente tagliate per impedirgli di abbaiare
- cani e gatti con infezioni agli occhi e alle orecchie non curate, denti marci, zampe ferite, piaghe su corpo e zampe (a causa del pavimento a sbarre delle gabbie)
- gabbie tenute senza alcuna protezione su pavimenti di cemento freddi e umidi
- animali innaffiati durante la pulitura delle gabbie
- animali terrorizzati e tremanti sul fondo delle gabbie, senza alcuna possibilità di socializzazione
- canili sottoposti a umidità e caldo torrido d'estate e temperature gelide d'inverno
L'OIPA ha intrapreso una campagna di protesta contro la Iams. L'OIPA partecipa anche alla campagna appoggiata da varie associazioni animaliste contro Friskies Italia. Abbiamo iniziato focalizzando la nostra azione contro questi 2 obiettivi, ma tutte le marche riportate nella tabella negativa sono da boicottare, sia perché direttamente o indirettamente compiono esperimenti di vivisezione su altri cani e gatti, che per la scarsa qualità dei propri ingredienti.
Test all'istituto Waltham
Un¹indagine della BUAV (British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, una delle più importanti associazioni animaliste inglesi), ha portato alla luce alcuni degli esperimenti compiuti su cani e gatti presso l¹istituto Waltham per l¹alimentazione degli animali domestici, di proprietà della Mars.
Test sul funzionamento del colon: 24 cani
… A 6 cani conformi a requisiti di robustezza ed altri 6 conformi a requisiti di delicatezza viene somministrata una razione di cibo Pedigree quindi, dopo averli sottoposti a clistere, vengono inserite manualmente attraverso il retto, per circa 10 cm, delle sacche per dialisi. L¹operazione dura circa mezz'ora.
… 6 cani conformi a requisiti di robustezza e 6 conformi a requisiti di delicatezza vengono sottoposti a colonscopia con biopsia dei tessuti. Al sesto giorno di test vengono inserite sacche per dialisi, al trentesimo giorno viene somministrato il cibo Pedigree, al trentaquattresimo giorno ricomincia il ciclo con colonscopia, biopsia ed inserimento di sacche per dialisi.
Test per la produzione d'idrogeno: cani
… Ad 1 cane viene messa indosso una pompa per la produzione d'idrogeno, inserita dentro una sacca, per un periodo fra le 4 e le 6 ore. Questo esperimento causava ansia ed angoscia e per questo la Waltham consigliava al suo staff di controllare gli animali almeno ogni mezz¹ora.
Induzione di lipidosi epatica: 15 gatti
… I gatti vengono sovralimentati fino a raggiungere il 40% in più del peso normale. A 7 gatti viene inserito un tubo nello stomaco e somministrata una dose di cloruro di ammonio. Tutti i gatti vengono quindi messi in isolamento in gabbie minuscole fino a 6 settimane e tenuti a digiuno. Risultato: i gatti hanno perso dal 26% al 40% del loro peso corporeo, hanno sviluppato una grave forma di dissipazione muscolare, danni al fegato, letargia, anormalità nel sangue e disidratazione. A fine esperimento inoltre 11 gatti dovettero essere nutriti a forza tramite tubi. Questi test vennero in parte finanziati dalla Alpo, detentrice di marche come Felix e Friskies sotto la Nestlé.
Studi sullo stato della vitamina D: 4 test sui gatti
… In 1 di test a 9 gattini appena svezzati è stata somministrata una dieta priva di vitamina D. 4 gattini sono poi stati confinati in un luogo buio e privo di esposizione alla luce, mentre 5 sono stati messi dentro una gabbia di fil di ferro senza alcun punto in ombra, totalmente esposti alla calura del sole estivo, 3 ore al giorno per 5 giorni. Ad 1 gattino era stato tosato tutto il pelo sulla schiena per esporre direttamente la pelle al sole.
Conclusioni
Evitate di comprare le marche della lista negativa e rivolgetevi a quelle della lista positiva (se trovati verranno aggiunti nuovi nomi). Ricordatevi che per gli snack valgono gli stessi discorsi fatti sopra. Privilegiate le linee biologiche, tenendo conto che è necessaria la certificazione di un ente riconosciuto. Sommergete le aziende di lettere di protesta e diffondete il più possibile questo articolo. Quando possibile cucinate per il vostro cane o gatto, tenendo presente che le sue esigenze sono diverse dalle nostre: da evitare i cibi conditi, bene di tanto in tanto riso, pasta, uova sode o alla coque, carote e zucchine bollite.
Fonte: OIPA
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