The Iams truth is harder to swallow

Please allow us to respond to the statements that Iams spokeswoman Judith Russell conjured up to defend the company’s cruel laboratory testing on animals (“Iams has nothing to hide over tests”, MW February 17).

The only things “transparent” about Judith Russell’s assertion: “We are transparent about how we carry out our feeding studies” are the lies that Iams expects the public to swallow. No matter what its spokespeople may say in a statement, or on its website, the truth is Iams knowingly subjects dogs and cats, just like the ones we share our homes with, to immense suffering and death in their contract laboratories.

What doesn’t lie is the video footage we have of an Iams testing facility. For nearly ten months during 2002 to 2003, a PETA investigator went undercover at a contract laboratory in the US that performed “nutritional” tests on animals for Iams and discovered terrified, unsocialised animals cowering in small cages in dungeon-like rooms; dogs who had gone insane from intense confinement; dogs left piled on a filthy paint-chipped floor after having chunks of muscle hacked from their thighs; dogs force-fed vegetable oil through

tubes inserted down their throats; and dogs and cats left to suffer without veterinary care.

Also uncovered in this investigation, was the fact that Iams blatantly disregarded their hyped “no kill” policy when 27 dogs used in its experiments were killed for pet-food tests that are not required by law.

Unlike Iams, other companies manufacture nutritious food without harming animals. Please buy from these companies, and not from Iams. For a list of companies that don’t test, and to learn the truth behind Iams, please visit IamsCruelty.co.uk.

Yvonne Taylor

Campaigns co-ordinator

PETA Europe

London SE1