Major Hollywood Animal Supplier’s Animal Mistreatment Exposed by PETA US Investigation
Major Hollywood Animal Supplier’s Animal Mistreatment Exposed by PETA US Investigation
London – PETA US has released a damning undercover investigation into Atlanta Film Animals – a branch of notorious Hollywood-based supplier Birds & Animals Unlimited (BAU) that has provided animals for Disney, Netflix, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros productions and whose trainers’ credits include Cruella, Lady and the Tramp, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Strays. The video reveals that workers warehoused animals in cold, barren cages; withheld food from them to make them compliant; and denied sick animals veterinary care.
A worker was recorded admitting that the company restricted food for cats used for Will Trent, explaining that if they aren’t “hungry”, they’re “not gonna work”. Another worker admitted that trainers “basically starve” birds. A 60-year-old cockatoo named Cookie – who was kept confined to a barren cage with nothing to do and often with only a single toy – plucked her feathers out due to anxiety and was called a “f*cking whore” and a “bitch” by a worker. The same staffer admitted to punishing another cockatoo by leaving his food within sight but out of reach. The two birds were caged alone for more than 23 hours a day and only allowed to interact for a few minutes while staff cleaned the cages.
The investigator also documented that pigs were denied veterinary care for a painful abscess and overgrown hooves that made it difficult to simply walk and that chickens with scaly, swollen, and bloody legs and feet were also denied adequate care, despite a worker admitting that the birds had “leg mites”. Monkeys who were held in waste-strewn enclosures had no access to water for several days after pipes froze and drank voraciously when occasionally provided with it. An old, ailing dog with heart failure (who was apparently used in Strays) was kept in an unheated garage in which temperatures dropped to approximately 1°C, and other dogs were left outside in -10°C weather; a cat was routinely kept crated all day, sometimes with a filthy litterbox, and pigs were fed mouldy, putrid food, which was apparently also eaten by rats.
“Any production that partners with an abusive operation whose workers cage vulnerable animals, practice food deprivation, and yell and swear at them should be blacklisted by viewers, reviewers, and the entire Hollywood machine,” says PETA US Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “In this day and age of CGI, visual effects, and other 100% humane forms of technology, PETA urges the entertainment industry to think long and hard before hiring Atlanta Film Animals or any other cruel animal supplier.”
As a 2017 PETA US investigation revealed, BAU has a history of denying animals veterinary care, confining them to filthy enclosures, and restricting their food during training.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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