Stolen for profit

"America's pets are disappearing. They are vanishing from neighborhood streets, yards and kennels in every town and city, in numbers that are startling." So begins Judith Reitman's stunning expose of the nationwide pet-theft syndicates, their ties to the medical research industry, and the powerful government agency that refuses to stop them. With the unspoken consent of the USDA, one of the federal government's richest agencies, the medical research industry is helping to ensure the continuing victimization of pets and their owners through pet theft - an illegal multi-million dollar business that leaves no state of the union untouched. Stolen for Profit tells the whole story of this industry: the puppy mills, dog-fighting rings and satanic cults who utilize it; the medical research companies who profit from it; the bureaucrats who ignore its existence; the animals who are tortured and exploited by it; and the pet owners who must confront it. In a shocking and compelling narrative, award-winning investigative reporter Reitman exposes the U.S. government's denial of wrongdoing on the part of one of their most powerful agencies; uncovers the government-condoned conspiracy that renders useless the continued pressure from hundreds of thousands of enraged victims across the country who want their legislators to do something; proves how the government has propagated the violations and the cruelty, bending to the will of the powerful medical lobby in Washington and creating agencies that camouflage the crimes and the criminals rather than exposing them; introduces us to the frontline fighters who put their lives on the line to stop what is an increasingly alarming problem from Maine to California; and most importantly, tells pet-owners how they can prevent their own pets from being stolen and themselves from becoming victims.