Undercover Expose Of International Drug-Testing Company Reveals Multiple Violations Of American Animal Welfare Act
Monkeys in Virginia Lab Repeatedly Choked, Struck and Left Without Vet Care; PETA US Files 253-Page Complaint With the USDA
For Immediate Release:
17 May 2005
Contact:
PETA 020 7357 9229
Harrogate – At a news conference in Washington, DC, today, PETA US revealed the findings of an 11-month undercover investigation into Covance – the billion-dollar Princeton, New Jersey-based company that owns one of the world’s largest contract animal-testing laboratories. PETA Europe, along with outraged animal activists from across the UK, will screen the undercover video during a protest at Covance’s laboratory in Harrogate:
Date: Wednesday, 18 May
Time: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Place: Covance Laboratories, Beckwith Knowle Office Park, Otley Road, Harrogate, North Yorkshire
At the laboratory, in Vienna, Virginia, PETA US secretly videotaped repeated violations of the US federal Animal Welfare Act by Covance workers, including the following:
• Punching, choking and taunting injured monkeys
• Recycling sick monkeys into new experiments
• Failing to administer veterinary care to severely wounded monkeys
• Failing to provide euthanasia to monkeys in extreme distress
• Failing to properly oversee lab workers, who roughly tear monkeys from their cages and violently shove them into restraint tubes
• Performing painful and stressful procedures in full view of other animals
• Monkeys with chronic rectal prolapses resulting from constant stress and diarrhoea
• Daily bloody noses caused by dosing small monkeys by forcing large tubes up their nostrils and into their stomachs
• Monkey self-mutilation resulting from failure to provide psychological enrichment and socialization
In 2003, an investigation of Covance’s Münster, Germany, primate facility revealed abuses similar to the ones videotaped in PETA US’ current investigation.
“The tape shows experimenters using their power over the monkeys to torture and torment them while lab supervisors stand by or even join in”, says PETA US President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “The US Department of Agriculture is empowered to stop this type of abuse, yet its inspectors only enter these monkey prisons once a year, and everyone at the labs knows which day that is.”
In the US, a 253-page complaint has been filed with the Department of Agriculture, asking that the laboratory be shut down until a thorough investigation can be conducted.
For more information about PETA US’ investigation into Covance, please visit CovanceCruelty.co.uk. Broadcast-quality video and still photographs are available on request and will be available at the protest.
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