JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – An animal rescue group based mostly out of Jacksonville is at the moment collaborating within the largest canine rescue operation in US historical past.
Florida Pressing Rescue (FUR), which relies out of Jacksonville, is certainly one of greater than 60 animal rescue organizations helping the US Humane Society’s efforts of transporting the animals to safer shelters throughout the county the place they are often put up for adoption.
FUR President Mike Merrill stated 4,000 beagles had been devoted by the Dept. of Justice.
“They haven’t all been eliminated but. That is a part of what is going on on as we communicate,” Merrill stated.
The group is utilizing massive vehicles to move 60 canines to secure areas in Wyoming, Tennessee and Jacksonville the place they are often put up for adoption — 10 are headed to Wyoming, 45 are on their option to animal rescue in Tennessee and 5 are coming to Jacksonville .
“As a common rule, we do not deliver canines to Florida, however on this case, it is a kind of expectations. We’re bringing 5 again. They’re all very unsocialized. These canines have by no means been allowed to be canines earlier than. They spent their complete lives in cages,” Merrill stated.
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The beagles that had been all set got here from the Envigo breeding facility in Virginia that offered canines to varied laboratories throughout the US to be experimented on.
A federal choose accepted a plan to have the canines transferred to shelters throughout the US after the power was accused of quite a few animal welfare violations.
Often, when the FUR takes half in a rescue operation, the group usually is aware of a variety of details about the animals they’re rescuing… Nonetheless, this time is completely different.
“Now we have no medical historical past on any of those canines aside from their vaccination standing. These canines do not even have names. All they’ve is a quantity tattoo of their ear,” Merrill stated.
US Humane Society Shelter Outreach Director Lindsay Hamrick says the Dept. of Justice documented canines on the breeding facility both as dying, being sickly or injured.
“Someplace round 25 puppies had died from chilly publicity inside just a few weeks interval. There have been wounds on a few of the canines as a result of they had been housed in such shut quarters and they also may get right into a combat over meals, for instance. Then canines which have medical situations ought to have been handled at Envigo,” Hamrick stated.
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Whereas it’s authorized to breed canines for analysis, the welfare of the animals on the breeding facility must be as much as par and provide passable situations.
“I am not used to seeing a large-scale operation like this that’s supposed for revenue. That is the one motive these canines had been there. The one motive they had been bred is for revenue in order that they could possibly be offered for analysis experiments,” Merrill stated.
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