The Hollywood Reporter Exposes Animal Cruelty in Hollywood

This week’s cover story in The Hollywood Reporter reveals that animal cruelty remains a deeply disturbing and widespread trend in Hollywood and US television.  What’s more, reporter Gary Baum has uncovered a pattern of widespread corroboration with this pattern by members of the American Humane Society, who play a key role by visiting sets and issuing their famous “No Animals Were Harmed During the Making of This Film” seal for producers to use in their end credits to alleviate viewers concerns. AHA representatives are not alleged to have committed abuse. Instead, Baum reports that multiple instances have occurred on the set of such films as Life of Pi and The Hobbit and HBO’s now cancelled show about horseracing, Luck and that AHA overseers have covered up or ignored blatant instances of abuse. As Baum notes, the pattern is pervasive across the industry.

Of course, Hollywood history is fraught with stories of animal abuse but many of us have come to see the AHA as a trusted organization that serves as a watchdog and protector of non-human animal rights.

Baum’s story “Animals Were Harmed: Hollywood’s Nightmare of Death, Injury and Secrecy Exposed,” appears in the Dec. 6 issue. Additionally, Baum has posted PDFs of the Research Documents used to write the story, offering some assurance of the validity of these startling claims.