Were llamas and ostriches stolen or rescued?
LOS ANGELES — Before sunrise one day in December, thieves sneaked into Anshu Pathak’s exotic meat farm in Riverside County and pulled off a singular heist.
Someone cut away a section of fence. The evidence, Pathak said, suggests that they backed a trailer into the gap and lured up to 30 llamas and 160 ostriches inside. Also, emus, lambs, goats, alpacas and geese.
Then, they were gone. Animal control officers and sheriff’s deputies wrangled about 50 additional llamas and emus that had spilled into the street. Another emu was found the next day wandering near Highway 74.
Days later, against the backdrop of the snowcapped San Bernardino Mountains, Pathak inspected the hastily patched gash in the barrier surrounding his Perris property. He was upset, sure. Yet he couldn’t help but appreciate the Noah-like coordination it took to make off with such a large menagerie of animals.
“It must be organized, you know,” Pathak said. “They planned it nicely.”
The burglary was weeks in the making, coming after controversy over the 14-acre farm, which animal rights activists allege is keeping livestock in inhumane conditions. Pathak has denied this, and he has the backing of animal control officers who said they visited every day for weeks; each inspection revealed no sign of neglect.
But from the activists’ standpoint, these weren’t thieves who took Pathak’s prized animals. They were liberators.
Animal rights organizations call these operations “open rescues.” They go undercover and shoot video of a location where they believe animals are being neglected or abused before entering the property, en masse.
Such operations have a rich history in California.
In 1985, a group called the Animal Liberation Front broke into scientific laboratories at the University of California, Riverside and took more than 450 animals, including a rare monkey, in what was described at the time as the biggest “rescue” raid of its kind in history.
More recently, six activists with a Berkeley organization called Direct Action Everywhere were charged with felony theft, burglary and conspiracy offenses on allegations of seizing chickens during rescues at farms in Sonoma County in 2018. They have all pleaded not guilty and have preliminary hearings scheduled later this year.
Groups such as Direct Action Everywhere openly publicize their rescues, often livestreaming them on Facebook, and make no effort to conceal participants’ identities.
No one has come forward to claim responsibility for the Dec. 30 break-in at Pathak’s farm. But 10 days before it took place, a Sherman Oaks nonprofit called the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation issued a call for volunteers via Facebook.
“We will be doing a mass rescue this weekend, and will need help from those local to Los Angeles,” the post read. “There is a place in Riverside, where over a hundred animals are being kept. These animals are suffering, and appear to be housed on an abandoned lot. Animal Hope and Wellness has been investigating the scene, and due to the horrifying conditions have chosen to take action.”
Video from the property shows emus and geese wandering around a collection of overturned buckets and wheelbarrows, skirting an armless mannequin and a discarded toilet. At one point, volunteers step gingerly over the decomposing carcass of at least one large animal that’s partially buried in the dirt.
“There are well over a hundred animals. Geese, emus, donkeys, goats, alpacas, ostriches, dogs with no access to running water, dying and starving,” the post read. “In addition to needing trailers and volunteers, we will need a place to take some of the animals.”
The organization did not respond to requests for comment.
Pathak is reluctant to attribute blame to an animal rights organization; he thinks it’s more likely that the spotlight it turned on his operation attracted other, more criminally minded opportunists.
“An animal activist is an animal activist,” he said firmly. “A thief is a thief.”
Pathak can’t fathom why anyone would believe his animals need rescuing.
“Have you ever seen any farm like this?” he asked while leading a reporter on a tour of the property. “Have you seen this open farm with this many birds happy, food, running around?”
One by one, he introduced them like relatives at a family reunion. There was a water buffalo named Gorgeous: “She’ll come to you, she’s very loving.” An appaloosa llama, its snowy fur spotted with brown: “That’s the most beautiful, that girl.” A particularly impressive ostrich that stands 9 feet tall. A “French beautiful chicken.”
Pathak says that any farm of a comparable size is bound to have livestock deaths, adding that male llamas and ostriches tend to fight with each other during breeding season and that his animals live with minimal human interference.
“They might kill me in front of you, you never know,” he said. “This is real wild life.”
But he strongly denies the allegations of neglect. Though he lives in Las Vegas, he says he visits the farm about twice a month and makes his workers send him time-stamped photos of the hose that connects to its well to make sure the water source is free of plankton and moths. The animals are fed 16,000 to 20,000 pounds of alfalfa and grain each week, he says.