By Ian Smith
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA(RushPRnews)12/09/08-—With its ongoing Home 4 the Holidays campaign, the Iams Company has presented itself as an advocate for animals. Yet the company keeps nearly 700 dogs and cats out of homes, locked for years in its laboratory for nutritional studies.
These animals—who are denied real homes with loving families—are no different from the dogs and cats whom the Iams Home 4 the Holidays campaign purportedly aims to save.
By keeping dogs and cats confined to laboratories, Iams actually contributes to the companion animal overpopulation crisis by repopulating its laboratories with dogs and cats from commercial breeders. Eventually—after years—these animals will need to be adopted out, taking homes away from dogs and cats in shelters—many of whom will likely be euthanized because of a lack of good homes.
In this way, Iams makes animals suffer twice over: first, by confining dogs and cats to a laboratory and denying them loving homes and, second, by contributing to the overpopulation crisis that inevitably leads to the deaths of healthy dogs and cats.
Iams’ history is even worse.
During a 2003 undercover investigation of a laboratory hired by Iams, a PETA employee found dogs and cats confined to barren steel cages and cement cells; dogs left piled on filthy paint-chipped floors after having chunks of muscle cut from their thighs; dogs surgically debarked; and horribly sick dogs and cats languishing in their cages, neglected and left to suffer with no veterinary care.
Only after intense pressure from PETA and its supporters did Iams agree to sever its ties with this laboratory, end all invasive and deadly experiments on dogs and cats, and conduct some humane nutrition studies with volunteers’ companion animals in their homes.
Despite these improvements, Iams still refuses to end its support for 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. Fortunately, when PETA protested, the experiment was cut short.
Iams could resolve all these issues by simply transitioning to exclusively in-home food-testing practices and ending invasive experiments on all species. When Iams does this, its Home 4 the Holidays campaign will ring less hollow.
For more information, please visit IamsCruelty.com.