Judge Orders Special Prosecutor to Investigate Dog Breeder
Today, a judge in Dane County, Wisconsin, appointed a special prosecutor to investigate and potentially prosecute criminal animal cruelty at Ridglan Farms, one of the last two remaining large breeders of dogs for animal experimentation in the country. Advocates say this is a rare opportunity for accountability at a facility that has a lengthy record of unlawful cruelty violations. They also say that such cruelty is inevitable at facilities like Ridglan, which they call “factory farms for dogs.”
“When you cage thousands of dogs in a warehouse, never let them outside, and provide them essentially no social interaction, all in order to sell them to animal experimenters for profit, cruelty is baked into the business model,” said Steffen Seitz, a litigation fellow with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. “Dogs should be home with family, not locked in cages or treated like test tubes.”
The appointment of a special prosecutor follows years of documented cruelty at Ridglan, by both state and federal agencies, animal activist investigators, and former-employee whistleblowers. Despite years of repeated violations on USDA and Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP) inspection reports, Ridglan has never been held liable. As detailed last Fall in Isthmus, violations found during the most recent routine DATCP inspection, in June 2024, prompted a follow-up inspection in September. Shockingly, Ridglan incurred twice the number of violations in September as it had in June, even when it knew a follow up inspection was imminent.
Ridglan is one of only two large breeders of dogs for experimentation in the U.S. In 2022, a third such breeder–Envigo–was shuttered, after federal agents seized dogs in need of immediate medical care, then levied the largest fine in history for animal welfare violations. Given the horrific animal welfare records at Ridglan and Envigo, animal advocates say there is no better example of the reality of how dogs are treated in the experimentation industry.
Read the decision here.
Seitz and the AALDP represent Dane4Dogs, and are joined by co-petitioners Alliance for Animals, represented by Kristin Schrank, and animal rescuer Wayne Hsiung of The Simple Heart, in the request for a special prosecutor.
