Wisconsin cops were forced to use rubber bullets and teargas to fend off a horde of 1,000 animal rights activists who stormed a local beagle research facility to try to free the dogs, authorities said.
The wild Saturday morning storming of Ridglan Farms in Blue Mounds saw activists scale fences and barriers and block local roads, and landed the animal advocacy group’s leader in handcuffs, the Dane County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
Officials did not say how many were arrested and no serious injuries were reported.
“It was clear from the beginning that this was not going to be a peaceful protest,” Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said in the post. “The DCSO response to the active break-in attempts by hundreds of protesters was appropriate and proportionate to the behaviors observed.
“With the assistance of our partner agencies, we were able to maintain order without anyone being seriously injured,” Barrett said. “We care about the welfare of all animals in our Dane County community. Resorting to crime, chaos, and violence is not the solution.”
The sheriff said his deputies were caught off guard by the Coalition to Save the Ridglan Dogs, which had scheduled a demonstration outside the facility for Sunday morning — but instead showed up shortly before 9 a.m. on Saturday when police weren’t ready.
More than 17 county and state agencies had to be called in to quell the unrest, the office said.
The arrest of the group’s leader, Wayne Hsuing, was posted on his X page, claiming the “peaceful animal advocates” stormed the lab to serve the beagle facility with a lawsuit.
However, the sheriff’s office said they showed up with sledgehammers, prying tools and chainsaws — while one protestor allegedly drove a pickup truck through the front gate.
“Handcuff keys and tear gas were also seized from activists,” the office said. “Additionally, during the attempted break-ins, activists attempted to divert resources by overwhelming Dane County’s 911 center and inundating the sheriff’s office with phone calls.”
Ahead of the wild protest, the activists promised to use “every nonviolent means” available to free 2,000 beagles from the farm and preemptively labeled any police intervention as “illegal.”
The research facility has been at the center of various animal abuse scandals and has been ordered to surrender its state breeding license by July 1, so that it can no longer sell dogs to outside researchers.
Last year, a former employee alleged that the dogs were being mistreated, with some undergoing invasive procedures like eye surgery without general anesthesia.
A special prosecutor appointed to investigate the claim determined that the surgeries violated state veterinary standards and constituted animal mistreatment.
Ridglan Farms claims on its homepage that it is a biomedical research facility, with 95% of the work at the lab “aimed at improving veterinary medicine.”
“No credible evidence of animal abuse, cruelty, mistreatment or neglect at Ridglan Farms has ever been presented or substantiated,” it said. “Ridglan Farm operations are subject to strict government regulations and both state and federal regulators … have closely inspected Ridglan Farms facilities for years.”
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