At a hearing Wednesday in Dane County circuit court, Scott Gilbertson testified about his experience working at Ridglan Farms, a dog breeding and research facility in southwestern Dane County, from December 2021 to January 2022. The hearing before Judge Rhonda Lanford was held to present evidence in support of a petition filed by animal rights activists seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor to weigh whether the facility, home to more than 3,000 beagles, should be charged with violating state animal cruelty laws.
Gilbertson recalled being one of just two or three employees in a building that housed perhaps 500 dogs. He said it was so loud he had to wear ear protection. He described how the dogs would routinely get into fights and spin frantically in their tiny cages. He also talked about taking part in a surgical procedure called cherry eye removal. Cherry eye is a not-uncommon condition that occurs when the tear gland in a dog’s third eyelid becomes swollen and protrudes from the membrane. Gilbertson explained how workers at the facility dealt with this problem.
“I was told to hold the dog as tight as I could so they wouldn’t wriggle around,” he said. Then a coworker, who was not a veterinarian, “would take a scissors and also sort of hold the dog down and cut at the eye,” snipping off the protruding gland. “Immediately afterwards, the dog would be thrashing around in pain, often yelping and crying out. And then we’d just put them back in the cage.”
No anesthesia was given beforehand or pain medication afterward, so far as he had ever seen. Asked about the dogs’ bleeding, he said “there would usually be a puddle on the floor, a pretty good-sized puddle.”
Gilbertson was one of six witnesses who testified at the all-day hearing, which was live-streamed and posted on YouTube. The petition before the court, based on a state law that allows judges to look into filing criminal charges in cases where prosecutors refuse to act, was brought by the local groups Dane4dogs and the Alliance for Animals as well as Wayne Hsiung, a San Francisco-based animal rights activist.
Hsiung was until earlier this year facing criminal charges for entering Ridglan Farms in April 2017 and removing three beagles. He and two others who took part in that action, all affiliated with the nonprofit advocacy group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, were each charged with felony burglary and felony theft, and faced up to 16 years in prison.
But on May 8, ten days before the case was slated to go to trial, the Dane County District Attorney’s Office asked that the charges be dismissed, at the urging of the “victims in this case,” Ridglan Farms, who claimed to have received “multiple death threats” as the trial date approached. (A police report obtained by Isthmus documented a single instance in which a death threat was made but not seriously investigated.) Circuit Court Judge Mario White tossed the case over the objections of two of the defendants, Hsiung and Paul Picklesimer, who had hoped to use the trial to call attention to the conditions they observed at Ridglan Farms.
Wednesday’s hearing presented another opportunity to do so.
Hsiung, in his testimony, said that even though he had taken part in “a few dozen” prior animal cruelty investigations, he had never seen conditions as bad as what he saw at Ridglan Farms. “The behaviors we saw at this facility were not just abnormal, they were psychotic.”
During the hearing, the petitioners’ attorneys, Kristin Schrank and Steffen Seitz, introduced as evidence videos taken by the activists who entered the facility as well as inspection reports from the USDA and state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP), many documenting recurring problems involving cages that injure dogs’ feet, accumulated excrement, and excessive noise.
A Sept. 16 inspection report from DATCP flagged problems of the sort that have been documented in other inspections at Ridglan Farms over the years by DATCP and the USDA. It noted that one of the beagles housed in tiny cages “was limping while moving through the enclosure, not bearing any weight on the right front leg,” which had visible puncture wounds and swelling. The injury had apparently not been noticed by staff.
The report also described finding piles of fecal matter throughout the facility — under cages, on the concrete floors, in “stagnant pools of moisture,” and in the gaps between coated wire flooring panels. Even the facility’s wall-mounted exhaust fans “were coated with organic material, restricting air movement,” contributing to “inadequate air circulation.”
Seitz, a litigation fellow at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, has noted that the Sept. 16 inspection was a follow-up to a June 6 routine visit that identified some of the same deficiencies.
“This is appalling,” Seitz told Isthmus. “Even as it faces a potential criminal prosecution, and, in the case of the September inspection, even when it knows an inspection is imminent, Ridglan Farms can’t clean up its act and avoid violating cruelty laws.”
Under state law, DATCP has the authority to suspend the license of a facility when there is “evidence that an act of animal cruelty” has been committed. Agency spokesperson Sam Go told Isthmus in early October that the matter “has been referred to our compliance team for assessment and decisions on next steps” but did not respond Wednesday to a request for an update.
In addition to Gilbertson, the court heard testimony from former-employee-turned-whistleblower Matthew Reich, who worked at the facility from January 2006 to August 2010. Reich gave a similar account of cherry eye removal surgery, saying the dogs “would bleed profusely for several minutes, sometimes it was even pouring on my hand.” He also took part in the routine devocalization of dogs, 30 to 40 at a time every few weeks, to make it harder (but not impossible) for them to bark.
This procedure, Reich testified, was also performed by non-veterinarian staff without anesthesia beforehand or pain meds afterward. They would hold the dogs down, pry open their mouths, and “reach down the throat with a scissors [and] cut the vocal cords,” which were then thrown on the floor to be washed away later. He also said dogs at the facility had foot problems “all the time,” including sores on the top of and between their toes that would “spread their toes apart.”
Reich described two incidents he said were “burned into my memory.” One was of finding a dead dog in a cage and then, while in the process of removing it, having his hand go into its chest cavity; the other dogs had been eating it. “There were ribs missing, there were organs missing.” The other incident was seeing that one of the dogs in a bag of dead puppies being collected by a coworker was still alive. Reich pointed this out to the coworker, who “very callously said ‘It’s not going to make it.’”
Also testifying were three experts, all of whom reviewed the videos and inspection reports. Marc Bekoff, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, assessed that the dogs at Ridglan Farms are “highly stressed, anxious, experiencing a lot of fear.” He said it was beyond anything he had ever seen “over decades of watching dogs.”
Lowell Wickman, a Wisconsin-based veterinarian, said he was “deeply disturbed by what happens at Ridglan Farms,” where dogs are poorly housed, deeply traumatized and not getting appropriate care. “I believe they’re suffering immeasurably, physically and mentally.” Wickman stressed that it is not legal or appropriate for surgeries to be performed by non veterinarians or without the use of pain management medication.
The final witness, veterinarian Sherstin Rosenberg, agreed, saying the way things are done at Ridglan Farms is “extremely dangerous.” She noted that cherry eye removal is “not a normal and accepted practice” and likely to produce extreme pain, given how “exquisitely sensitive” eyes are: “Think about if you get an eyelash in your eye or a little grain of sand.” She also said that this, as well as devocalization surgery, constitutes “mutilation.”
Eric McLeod, an attorney representing Ridglan Farms, was in court for part of the six hours of testimony but left before it concluded. A message asking for a comment from Ridglan Farms was not immediately returned.
In business since 1966, Ridglan Farms provides “purpose bred” beagles for researchers across the country, including UW-Madison. (Beagles are researchers’ dogs of choice, due to their docile and trusting nature.) The farm, according to its website, has “a full-time staff veterinarian/facility manager who oversees animal health and well being.”
Ridglan Farms’ closest competitor in terms of size, a Virginia-based operation called Envigo, was shut down in 2022 after being cited for multiple serious violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act; most of its 4,000 beagles were placed in homes across the country. Last month, Envigo agreed to pay a $35 million fine, the largest ever for an animal welfare case.
The petition seeking to appoint a special prosecutor alleges that Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne has failed to bring enforcement action against Ridglan Farms, despite being presented with evidence of “criminal conduct” at the facility. At the hearing, the attorneys detailed multiple efforts to get the DA’s office and others to at least investigate, without success.
Last November, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Nia Trammell found probable cause that a primate research center at UW-Madison broke animal cruelty laws, but declined to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue charges. She said “it would be difficult for any prosecutor to meet their burden of proof and obtain a conviction.”
In 2010, Judge Amy Smith also found probable cause that nine researchers and officials at UW-Madison had violated animal cruelty laws and appointed a special prosecutor to investigate. That prosecutor, David Geier, ultimately did not find that those employees broke the law.
In June, Ridglan Farms filed a 150-page pleading with a state appeals court seeking a supervisory writ against Lanford for refusing to allow the facility to take part in the hearing. But a three-member panel of the court of appeals unanimously backed Lanford, saying the judge was “complying with her duty” under the law to not allow Ridglan Farms to take part. It also denied its request that the hearing be closed to the public and the court record sealed.
In a hearing on Sept. 12, Lanford sided with an attorney for Ridglan Farms in quashing a subpoena that sought records from the facility managers, agreeing that this would be premature and “inappropriate” before the decision on whether to appoint a special prosecutor was made. The hearing concluded with District Attorney Ozanne telling the court that “we have not received a referral or a charging decision request regarding the actions of Ridglan Farms.” He later clarified this to mean it had not gotten a request from law enforcement, which is not a requirement under the law that allows for the appointment of a special prosecutor. Ozanne did not attend or send a representative to Wednesday’s hearing, despite being invited to do so, as the law allows.
In their closing remarks, Seitz and Schrank argued that the evidence that Ozanne refused to take action regarding Ridglan Farms was “overwhelming,” as was the evidence that the facility committed prosecutable crimes under Wisconsin state law. “Given all of the evidence that we’ve presented here today,” Schrank said, “we’re respectfully asking your honor [to] just help hold Ridglan Farms accountable for these crimes that they’ve committed against these dogs.”
Lanford did not issue an immediate ruling, saying she wanted the petitioners to file post-hearing briefs laying out each sought criminal charge and the “specific evidence” that supports it. She also wants to be briefed on the specific efforts that were made to get the authorities to take action. The petitioners were given until Nov. 8 to file briefs, after which, Lanford said, “I promise you, I will make a prompt decision.”
