BROWNSTOWN — A pack of PETA supporters will rally outside the office of Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Chalfant on Thursday, urging him to file animal neglect charges against The Veterinarians’ Blood Bank (TVBB). This locally based operation denied sick animals veterinary care.
The protest will be held at noon on Thursday at the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, 111 South Main Street, at South Sugar and East Walnut Street in Brownstown.
It has been more than five months since authorities received evidence from PETA’s undercover investigation into TVBB, which confines 900 dogs and cats to barren kennels and crowded pens and takes their blood every three weeks—even from animals with infections and cancer. But Chalfant’s office still hasn’t taken any action, and dogs and cats remain locked up and used for blood collection at TVBB.
PETA’s investigation revealed, among other horrors, that TVBB failed to provide veterinary care to cats with painful conditions, including Fox, a 13-year-old cat with bloody diarrhea who a manager admitted had “been going down a lot,” and a tiny cat named Vivi who cried out in pain from an excruciating mouth infection that management had known about but failed to address for over nine months. PETA’s investigator was eventually allowed to adopt both cats and seek treatment for them. Fox was euthanized due to gastrointestinal cancer, and Vivi’s mouth was in such poor condition that all her teeth required emergency removal.
“Nearly 1,000 dogs and cats are confined day and night in this miserable prison-like warehouse, where ailing cats were deprived of adequate care and left to suffer in agony,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is urging Prosecuting Attorney Chalfant to hold this cruel, crude operation accountable.”
An Indiana State Board of Animal Health inspection of TVBB confirmed many of PETA’s findings. State veterinarian Dr. Jodi Lovejoy photographed a whiteboard listing the names of more than a dozen cats in need of dental care—nine of whom had been on the list for nearly five months.
BluePearl Pet Hospital, VCA Animal Hospitals, and PetVet Care Centers— nationwide networks of veterinary hospitals—all dropped TVBB as a supplier following PETA’s investigation. More than 50,000 PETA supporters urged BluePearl, VCA, and their parent company, Mars Inc., to implement a policy against obtaining blood from captive animals.
