Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:36 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 26 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, are officially informed of their freedom. The anniversary was officially celebrated in Texas and other states as Juneteenth. On June 17, 2021, Juneteenth officially became a federal holiday in the United States:
On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
(Citations omitted.)
Ridglan Farms’ remaining beagles will soon be released to canine rescue groups in other states. As a matter of animal treatment, but also our state’s reputation, a facility conducting medical testing on beagles has been a disaster for Wisconsin. While medical testing is necessary, all testing depends on contexts, and among those contexts are the subjects of that testing. Some contexts simply cannot be overcome; no level of advocacy can overcome popular revulsion. Reporters from around the world have covered this story. Michael Sainato of The Guardian reports on the upcoming release of the five-hundred remaining dogs:
A beagle breeding and research facility in Wisconsin that has been the focus of animal rights protests is shutting down, and a rescue group in Florida is taking in the remaining dogs.
“Not one dog will remain,” Lauree Simmons, founder of Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Florida, said in a press conference announcing the news on Monday. “No more breeding, no more testing, no more anything.”
[…]
Protesters descended on the Ridglan Farms breeding and research facility in March and April in an attempt to free the beagles there. An estimated 1,000 activists clashed with police in April in another open rescue attempt for the dogs, resulting in 29 arrests, according to the Dane county sheriff’s department.
“Before the open rescue, activists called upon law enforcement, prosecutors, the governor [of Wisconsin, Tony Evers], humane officers, licensing boards, and judges to protect the dogs from Ridglan’s established, lengthy record of cruelty – without success,” said a statement from Chris Carraway, staff attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
After the April protests, Big Dog Ranch Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy announced they reached an agreement with Ridglan Farms to buy 1,500 of the 2,000 beagles at the facility for an undisclosed price.
Animal rights attorneys then sought a court order to protect the remaining 500 beagles at the facility.
Ridglan Farms in October had reached an agreement with a special prosecutor to resolve criminal animal abuse allegations against the facility. That settlement required the facility to surrender its license to sell and breed dogs – but did not require any changes for the dogs remaining at the facility.
See Michael Sainato, Hundreds of dogs to be sent to rescue as US beagle research facility shuts down, The Guardian, June 16, 2026.
The principal concern is, of course, the humane treatment of living animals, with reputational concerns being only secondary to the principal issue of treatment. And yet, and yet, of that secondary reputational concern one can confidently say that building a testing facility for thousands of beagles was among the worst possible ideas — simply a dunce’s idea of cleverness.
The animals, and Wisconsin, are now better off.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.
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