You will never leave your dog alone in the yard
again.
The HBO documentary "Dealing Dogs," which debuts tomorrow at
10 p.m., puts an undercover camera lens on a sleazy world where beloved
household companions can be snatched up to be experimented on in cold
steel cages, and dogs are shot in the head as casually as you order a
"half-caff mocha macchiato."
Its lead character is C.C. Baird, a
good ole boy from Williford, Ark. A pastor at the Church of Christ, Baird
tended to a different flock most days: a compound of up to 600 dogs called
Martin Creek Kennel. Licensed as a Class B dealer by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, which allowed him to buy and sell animals, Baird supplied
universities and laboratories with dogs for medical
research.
Filmed surreptitiously by "Pete," a sunglass-wearing
animal-rights activist who worked at Martin Creek for more than six
months, the footage documents what he calls "a little bit of hell on
earth": The kennels are cleaned with high-pressure hoses, saturating the
freezing, sometimes malnourished dogs and sending excrement flying into
food bowls and water dishes. Housed four to a kennel, the cramped canines
fight each other, sometimes to the death; the stiffened corpses are tossed
on the "ex-dog" pile, then covered with a board.
In one scene, a
worker refuses to tend to a dying beagle because he had been late for an
Easter egg hunt; by morning, the dog joins the growing pile. In another
vignette, a Martin Creek employee explains how heartworm-positive dogs are
shot and gutted so the valuable worms can be sold to
researchers.
Last Chance for Animals, the animal-rights group that
undertook the investigation, visits the trench-lined field where the dogs
are butchered. (Actually, they trespass, not out of character for
actor-founder Chris DeRose, who has done jail time for entering
animal-research labs without permission.) A knife lies atop a
blood-stained table, the surrounding grass littered with internal organs.
In the nearby trench, maggots writhe over heaps of dead German shepherds
and beagles and Labs.
Through it all, a well-fed Baird swaggers,
haggling at Mississippi flea markets for dogs he buys for $15 and $20
each, then resells to biomedical researchers for $250. Here we meet
"bunchers," shadowy figures who obtain animals in questionable ways Baird
doesn't inquire about, though the Animal Welfare Act requires Class B
dealers to document the origins of animals they acquire.
"We have
quite a few ways of picking those pooches up," chuckles one buncher,
adding that rich residential neighborhoods are a favorite of some of his
colleagues. Responding to "free to a good home" ads in newspapers is
another.
If you manage to stomach "Pete's" video diary of blood and
neglect and general inhumanity, there is a karmic payoff: After the
Arkansas attorney general looked into the case - an investigation that
took years - Baird and his wife had their licenses revoked in 2005 and
were fined $262,700 - the largest civil penalty ever levied against a
Class B dealer under the Animal Welfare Act. Baird also surrendered 700
acres of property worth more than $1 million, including his home and
kennels.
But offscreen, there are plenty more places where outrage
deserves overnight parking privileges. While Baird was, in the words of
the scatalogically prone "Pete," "the biggest, baddest, -- B dealer in
America," he was hardly the only one. The budget-battered USDA is
hard-pressed to adequately inspect and monitor all the nation's C.C.
Bairds. "Pete" might again give up veganism in an effort to look the part
and infiltrate another Class B dealership, but he wouldn't have to if
federal oversight were anywhere near adequate.
The buck shouldn't
stop there, however. Class B dealers would not exist if they were not
meeting a demand. What of the universities and research organizations that
purchase these animals? Ethical arguments over animal experimentation
aside, shouldn't these corporate and educational institutions go so far as
to check and inspect the suppliers of their research animals? Don't they
have an ethical obligation to ensure that the dogs they are experimenting
on, and in some cases killing, are not someone's beloved
companion?
As for Baird, who has since resigned his pastorship, he
is due to be sentenced this winter on the criminal charge and faces up to
10 years in prison and a $1.2 million
fine.
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