{"id":9982,"date":"2020-01-21T17:54:03","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T01:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/?p=9982"},"modified":"2020-02-03T18:30:47","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T02:30:47","slug":"llamas-and-ostriches-were-taken-from-an-exotic-meat-farm-was-it-theft-or-rescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2020\/01\/21\/llamas-and-ostriches-were-taken-from-an-exotic-meat-farm-was-it-theft-or-rescue\/","title":{"rendered":"Llamas and ostriches were taken from an exotic meat farm. Was it theft or rescue?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"list-inline\">\n<li><span class=\"tnt-byline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2020_llamas.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9994\" src=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2020_llamas-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2020_llamas-300x192.jpg 300w, https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2020_llamas-768x492.jpg 768w, https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2020_llamas.jpg 840w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"tnt-byline\">By Alex Wigglesworth<br \/>\nLos Angeles Times<\/span><\/li>\n<li>LOS ANGELES \u2014 Before sunrise one day in December, thieves sneaked into Anshu Pathak\u2019s exotic meat farm in Riverside County and pulled off a singular heist.\n<div class=\"subscriber-preview\">\n<p>Someone cut away a section of fence. The evidence, Pathak said, suggests that they backed a trailer into the gap and lured up to 30 llamas and 160 ostriches inside. Also, emus, lambs, goats, alpacas and geese.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Then, they were gone. Animal control officers and sheriff\u2019s deputies wrangled about 50 additional llamas and emus that had spilled into the street. Another emu was found the next day wandering near Highway 74.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Days later, against the backdrop of the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains, Pathak inspected the hastily patched gash in the barrier surrounding his Perris property. He was upset, sure. Yet he couldn\u2019t help but appreciate the Noah-like coordination it took to make off with such a large menagerie of animals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cIt must be organized, you know,\u201d Pathak said. \u201cThey planned it nicely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>The burglary was weeks in the making, coming after controversy over the 14-acre farm, which animal rights activists allege is keeping livestock in inhumane conditions. Pathak has denied this, and he has the backing of animal control officers who said they visited every day for weeks; each inspection revealed no sign of neglect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>But from the activists\u2019 standpoint, these weren\u2019t thieves who took Pathak\u2019s prized animals. They were liberators.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Animal rights organizations call these operations \u201copen rescues.\u201d They go undercover and shoot video of a location where they believe animals are being neglected or abused before entering the property, en masse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Such operations have a rich history in California.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>In 1985, a group called the Animal Liberation Front broke into scientific laboratories at the University of California, Riverside and took more than 450 animals, including a rare monkey, in what was described at the time as the biggest \u201crescue\u201d raid of its kind in history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>More recently, six activists with a Berkeley organization called Direct Action Everywhere were charged with felony theft, burglary and conspiracy offenses on allegations of seizing chickens during rescues at farms in Sonoma County in 2018. They have all pleaded not guilty and have preliminary hearings scheduled later this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Groups such as Direct Action Everywhere openly publicize their rescues, often livestreaming them on Facebook, and make no effort to conceal participants\u2019 identities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>No one has come forward to claim responsibility for the Dec. 30 break-in at Pathak\u2019s farm. But 10 days before it took place, a Sherman Oaks nonprofit called the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation issued a call for volunteers via Facebook.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cWe will be doing a mass rescue this weekend, and will need help from those local to Los Angeles,\u201d the post read. \u201cThere is a place in Riverside, where over a hundred animals are being kept. These animals are suffering, and appear to be housed on an abandoned lot. Animal Hope and Wellness has been investigating the scene, and due to the horrifying conditions have chosen to take action.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Video from the property shows emus and geese wandering around a collection of overturned buckets and wheelbarrows, skirting an armless mannequin and a discarded toilet. At one point, volunteers step gingerly over the decomposing carcass of at least one large animal that\u2019s partially buried in the dirt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cThere are well over a hundred animals. Geese, emus, donkeys, goats, alpacas, ostriches, dogs with no access to running water, dying and starving,\u201d the post read. \u201cIn addition to needing trailers and volunteers, we will need a place to take some of the animals.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>The organization did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Pathak is reluctant to attribute blame to an animal rights organization; he thinks it\u2019s more likely that the spotlight it turned on his operation attracted other, more criminally minded opportunists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cAn animal activist is an animal activist,\u201d he said firmly. \u201cA thief is a thief.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Pathak can\u2019t fathom why anyone would believe his animals need rescuing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cHave you ever seen any farm like this?\u201d he asked while leading a reporter on a tour of the property. \u201cHave you seen this open farm with this many birds happy, food, running around?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>One by one, he introduced them like relatives at a family reunion. There was a water buffalo named Gorgeous: \u201cShe\u2019ll come to you, she\u2019s very loving.\u201d An appaloosa llama, its snowy fur spotted with brown: \u201cThat\u2019s the most beautiful, that girl.\u201d A particularly impressive ostrich that stands 9 feet tall. A \u201cFrench beautiful chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Pathak says that any farm of a comparable size is bound to have livestock deaths, adding that male llamas and ostriches tend to fight with each other during breeding season and that his animals live with minimal human interference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cThey might kill me in front of you, you never know,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is real wild life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>But he strongly denies the allegations of neglect. Though he lives in Las Vegas, he says he visits the farm about twice a month and makes his workers send him time-stamped photos of the hose that connects to its well to make sure the water source is free of plankton and moths. The animals are fed 16,000 to 20,000 pounds of alfalfa and grain each week, he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cUnderstand one thing: I raise animals for meat,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if I don\u2019t feed my animals, how am I going to get the meat out of them?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>What Pathak has taken to calling \u201cthe drama\u201d began in early December, he says, when an animal activist who lives in San Jacinto approached one of two caretakers who live on the farm full time and offered to gather donations for the animals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>But in soliciting the fundraising via Facebook, the woman made the situation seem desperate, \u201cas if we are poor and we don\u2019t have money to feed these guys,\u201d Pathak said. He believes she also used the encounter as an opportunity to covertly photograph and videotape his land.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Other activists then picked up on the claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>In mid-December, Kris Kelly, who runs a Beverly Hills animal rescue nonprofit called the Kris Kelly Foundation, posted on Facebook photographs taken from the street that showed emus and llamas standing near large puddles of water after a recent rain. She shared the farm\u2019s address and questioned why Riverside authorities weren\u2019t \u201cdoing anything to help these animals that are being STARVED and dropping dead left and right.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>The Riverside County Department of Animal Services was inundated with complaints, spokesman John Welsh said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cI bring up that post because it led to this onslaught of apparently some activism on social media,\u201d Welsh said. \u201cAnd it appears some people might have taken matters into their own hands.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>In a phone interview, Kelly said that she had never been to the farm but that someone sent her the photos in a private Facebook message complaining of the conditions there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cIt was just somebody, I don\u2019t know who they were,\u201d she said. \u201cThey just wanted me to post so they could get attention toward it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>About a week later, the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation posted the video with a call for volunteers. The well-known animal rescue nonprofit counts celebrities as supporters and reported nearly $2.1 million in gross receipts on its 2017 federal tax return, the most recent year for which a filing was available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>The post received 1,200 reactions and was shared 785 times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cSeven hundred and eighty-five shares,\u201d Pathak said, shaking his head. \u201cSo how many people think I am a bad guy?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Pathak was born in India and raised vegetarian as part of his Hindu Brahmin upbringing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Then he made the unlikely transition to a carnivore, moved to the U.S. and founded Exotic Meat Market in 1989 \u2014 selling everything from alligator to zebra, he says proudly. He has run the farm in Perris for the last seven years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>But his animals haven\u2019t always occupied the entire lot. The trash-strewn portion of the property where the video was shot doesn\u2019t actually belong to him; it\u2019s adjacent to one parcel he owns and a second that he leases, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>The previous tenants departed in a hurry, leaving behind remnants of an agricultural operation including a discarded drip irrigation system and a collection of ramshackle outbuildings, and the land became overgrown by weeds. Pathak says the landlord declined repeated requests to clean up the property or sell it to him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>So last January, he removed a fence separating his farm from the lot and let his animals graze in the area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cIf those weeds are here and if there\u2019s a fire, I don\u2019t want my animals to get burned like Australia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Riverside County Code Enforcement is working with Pathak and the landlord to clear up land-use violations related to four open cases, one each for excessive animals, excess outside storage, a non-permitted mobile home and an occupied recreational vehicle, county spokeswoman Brooke Federico said. Pathak also said that he\u2019s started spending some of his own money to clean up the space and that his landlord has promised to bring in some trash containers in the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>In the meantime, it is the cluttered front portion of the property that abuts busy Orange Avenue, so the animals grazing among the debris are the first thing that passers-by see.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>And there are a lot of passers-by \u2014 even more than usual since the claims against Pathak went viral on social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>On Jan. 8, a small throng of spectators had pulled their cars over to the shoulder of Orange Avenue to take pictures of the giant birds that clustered near the fence. Before long, a Riverside County Sheriff\u2019s deputy stopped to tell them to move along.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Inside the farm, an ostrich was chasing Officer Lupe Villa, of the Riverside County Department of Animal Services, through an open area for the birds to run that the caretakers call \u201cthe danger zone.\u201d One of the caretakers was trying to wave off the large bird with an even larger stick.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>Villa had been called to the property to investigate yet another complaint, a daily occurrence since the controversy took root last month. He\u2019ll continue to come as long as people keep calling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cWe are a complaint-driven organization that responds to allegations of abuse,\u201d Welsh said. \u201cBut I can\u2019t stress enough that we have not seen any level of neglect or abuse on this property.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>As for the missing animals?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subscriber-only\">\n<p>\u201cEverybody has their own story,\u201d Pathak said. \u201cThe real story is something else.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Alex Wigglesworth Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES \u2014 Before sunrise one day in December, thieves sneaked into Anshu Pathak\u2019s exotic meat farm in Riverside County and pulled off a singular heist. Someone cut away a section of fence. The evidence, Pathak said, suggests that they backed a trailer into the gap and lured up &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2020\/01\/21\/llamas-and-ostriches-were-taken-from-an-exotic-meat-farm-was-it-theft-or-rescue\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9982"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9996,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9982\/revisions\/9996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}