New PETA Video Alleges Animal Cruelty in Hollywood

By Travis Johnson

Fair warning – the embedded video is pretty distressing.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released a new video yesterday, accusing major Hollywood productions of using animals that are subjected to cruelty by their carers. Their specific target is animal supply company Birds and Animals Unlimited, who have provided creatures used in the likes of The Hangover, Harry Potter, Marley & Me, Pirates of the Caribbean, Game of Thrones, and Zoo. 

The list of accusations is pretty appalling. Among them:

• Animals were denied food during training. Two cats who staff said were used in the upcoming film Benji were denied food for several days because a trainer said that they were “fat,” causing them to lose 5 percent of their bodyweight in five days.
• Three pigs were severely underweight, including one who staff said appeared in College Road Trip and was denied licensed veterinary care for multiple, often bloody sores on her sides.
• Dogs, including one who staff said was used in Hotel for Dogs and others who staff said were used in the upcoming film The Solutrean, were left outside overnight without any bedding, even when temperatures dropped to 6 degrees celcius.
• BAU told the USDA that a kangaroo had “returned” to Texas, but a manager admitted that the animal had died at the facility after sustaining a broken jaw and being unable to eat.
• Enclosures housing birds of prey—including an owl who staff said was featured in the Harry Potter films—contained droppings that hadn’t been cleaned up for at least six weeks.
• By the time the eyewitness left BAU, the facility had apparently not had an attending veterinarian for approximately one month.

Perhaps most heartbreaking is the assertion that dogs were adopted from rescue shelters under the false pretense that they were going to new families, and then effectively pressganged into service, being sheltered in “pound-like” conditions without bedding.

PETA has lodged a complaint with the US Department of Agriculture and Birds. Animals Unlimited’s website is down at the time of writing, although they did issue a lengthy statement to The Hollywood Reporter denying the allegations point by point, and decrying the PETA video as manipulative and extremely selective in what it shows.

Barring an official investigation, it’s a case of he said/she said, but it does raise an important point: if a movie can do without actual animal actors, should it? Recent developments in CGI technology have demonstrated that it’s possible to make photo-realistic animals for film and television – go look at The Jungle Book for a textbook example. While such techniques might be out of reach to many productions due to their cost, at the upper echelon there is surely room in the budget for these kinds of effects, mitigating the necessity of using actual animals. At the very least, the case can be made that this option should be pursued for non-domestic animals (your lions, tigers and bears) wherever possible. And it’s not like, at this point in the history of the medium, actors aren’t used to reacting against things that aren’t there – the staggering prevalence of CGI and digital backlot being used in tentpole productions has been well established.  It’s quite possible the next Lassie will be a chunk of code housed in a server somewhere -and perhaps that’s as it should be.