In response to a series of significant animal welfare violations and complaints filed by PETA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken the rare step of fining the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) almost $12,000 for repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. ONPRC imprisons, sickens, terrorizes, and mutilates thousands of monkeys each year in experiments with impunity, so it's good to know that the facility will be punished for causing animals to suffer more by failing to uphold even minimum standards.

A Record of Recklessness

The violations, which took place in 2009, included the escape of nine monkeys from the facility as well as the deaths of five other monkeys from a variety of causes, including from dehydration, being injected with unapproved compounds, and improper procedures performed by an inadequately trained employee. Following the escape, PETA called on the USDA to investigate and issue a fine to ONPRC.

In 2007, PETA conducted a shocking undercover investigation, which exposed horrific laboratory conditions at ONPRC. The next year, the USDA issued an "official warning"—the precursor to a fine—to ONPRC. Internal documents obtained by PETA had revealed that a sick pregnant monkey died after being denied veterinary care, that a surgical sponge was left in a baboon—causing an abscess—and was discovered only after he was killed for an experiment, and that experimenters mistakenly performed surgery on the wrong monkey. After repeatedly finding negligence and callous disregard, federal investigators are finally speaking the only language that ONPRC understands: dollars and cents.

What You Can Do

Take a stand for the animals imprisoned at ONPRC. Ask the National Institutes of Health to stop funding cruel and useless nicotine experiments on animals at ONPRC and elsewhere.

You don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar to know that all mammals need water to survive, yet this basic biology principle is apparently lost on the clever folks at Harvard. For the second time in three months, a monkey has died of dehydration at the Ivy League institution: On Sunday, an elderly cotton-top tamarin was euthanized at Harvard Medical School (HMS) after it was discovered that the monkey's cage had no water bottle, an inexcusable oversight that led the university to suspend new experiments at its New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC).

The monkey's death came on the same day that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made public an inspection report that revealed three other incidents involving the neglectful endangerment of monkeys at the facility in the past three months, including another monkey's death. This recent series of deaths has prompted PETA to call on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend all funding to HMS and NEPRC and to demand a refund of any grant money spent on activity that violated federal animal protection laws, which is required by federal grant guidelines.

Milo was imprisoned at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC), a facility where PETA conducted a shocking undercover investigation

A History of Violations

The USDA has cited HMS and NEPRC for more than 20 violations of the Animal Welfare Act during the past two years, including the following incidents involving serious injuries and deaths:

• In January of this year, two primates became severely dehydrated and one died. In another incident, a primate suffered two broken bones when his leg was smashed in a heavy cage door. Another primate suffered serious foot injuries after he and others escaped from improperly secured cages.

• In December 2011, a staff member caught an escaped primate with a net, performed an imaging procedure on him, and upon returning the animal to his cage, discovered that he had died.

• In July 2011, a primate had to be euthanized after he was given an overdose of an anesthetic that caused acute kidney failure.

• In June 2010, a primate was found dead in a cage after it was run through a scalding-hot mechanical cage washer.

What PETA is asking for isn't unprecedented. Other universities, including the University of Connecticut and the University of Michigan, have had to return thousands of dollars in grant money after PETA and others uncovered animal welfare violations. After all, it seems only reasonable that our hard-earned tax dollars shouldn't be paying for activity that violates the law.

How You Can Help

While the recent deaths of monkeys at Harvard appear to have resulted from carelessness, HMS and NEPRC confine 2,300 other primates and deliberately commit unspeakable horrors against them, such as drilling holes into their skulls and subjecting them to cocaine addiction experiments. Ask the NIH to stop funding this cruelty at Harvard and elsewhere.

In a dreadful experiment that sounds like a cross between Frankenstein and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, stem cells from multiple embryos were fused to create so-called "chimera" monkeys containing genetic material from all the embryos used. Vivisectors at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) cut into dozens of female rhesus monkeys to impregnate them, allowed their fetuses to develop, and then cut them open to kill the unborn monkeys and dissect them. Only two of the female monkeys were allowed to carry the babies to full term and give birth. Like their mothers, these babies now will serve a life sentence at this monkey prison, where two PETA undercover investigations have exposed the horrific abuse of primates.

ONPRC is touting the births of the three genetically manipulated rhesus monkeys, but one has to wonder what the primates used in these experiments have been forced to endure in a facility with a long history of abuse. During a 2007 undercover investigation at ONPRC, PETA documented monkeys in constant fear and so traumatized by miserable laboratory conditions, including confinement to small, barren cages, that they paced ceaselessly and pulled out their own hair. And that's not even including the horrors intentionally inflicted on the animals during the experiments themselves.

In 2008, PETA obtained internal documents from ONPRC detailing further abuse and neglect, including that experimenters had accidentally performed surgery on the wrong monkey, repeatedly inflicted a painful procedure called "electro-ejaculation" on male monkeys, and refused to perform a Caesarean section on a sick monkey during a difficult labor (leading to the death of both mother and baby).

PETA's subsequent complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) led the agency to cite ONPRC for three violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Since then, further USDA inspections have led to repeated citations. So why is ONPRC still being given millions of taxpayer dollars  to create chimeras and conduct other cruel and pointless experiments on these intelligent, sensitive animals?

Please click here to tell the National Institutes of Health that it's time to get out of the torture business by withdrawing funding from animal experiments at ONPRC.

Now that a debt-ceiling compromise has been reached in Washington, Congress faces the task of slashing more than $1 trillion in spending over the next decade. So which government-funded programs should get the ax? PETA is suggesting cutting the $16 billion spent annually on animal experiments.

A good place to start would be the cruel "Mr. Potato Head" experiments on baby monkeys conducted by Kevin Grove at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, which have cost taxpayers more than $8 million, including an additional $94,000 in support from the Obama stimulus package. This Vivisector of the Month awardee spends his days terrorizing baby monkeys with things that scare them, such as Mr. Potato Head dolls, to see if babies of monkeys fed unhealthy, high-fat diets are more scared than those of monkeys who ate healthy diets. Hello--does anyone not know by now that junk food is bad for you?

You can see the ridiculous and cruel experiments for yourself in this never-before-seen video footage that PETA has obtained from ONPRC:
 

 
PETA has written to several key members of Congress, including those charged with appointing members to the super committee that will study where to make spending cuts, to suggest that the government could save billions every year by halting funding for these and other cruel and pointless experiments.

You can help by e-mailing your senators and representatives and asking them to spend your money on something other than tormenting animals.

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow

We're betting that when that shameless front for the cruel animal experimentation industry, the Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR), started putting up a series of misleading and offensive billboards, it wasn't expecting them to get a makeover:
 

Click picture for larger image

 
While daredevils have been giving FBR a piece of their minds, PETA has our own new – and more honest – ads which are going up in cities around the country.  
  

Written by Michelle Sherrow

PETA's exciting new national anti-vivisection ad campaign tells it like it is: If you call it medical research, you can get away with murder. And April's nominees for Vivisector of the Month are a case in point. They are also so close in heinousness it's going to be a tough fight to call. Here are these baby-animal abusers in all their gory … I mean, glory:

Kevin Grove at the Oregon National Primate Research Center abuses monkeys to try to show that pregnant women should eat healthy foods and that not doing so can be bad for their babies.

Grove confines monkeys to cramped cages and stuffs them with unhealthy foods until they are obese. He then impregnates the monkeys and gives some of them healthy foods and others fatty foods. Some of the mother monkeys from each group are killed and cut open, and their brains and fetuses are removed and examined. The monkeys who aren't killed give birth and have their babies yanked away from them almost immediately, which is traumatic to both mother and baby. Grove and his team then terrorize the babies to see if the ones from mothers who ate unhealthy foods scare more easily.

Grove's junk science has recently been criticized by students, scientists, and compassionate people around the country. And did we mention that the cost of these stupid and inhumane experiments has totaled $3.4 million in taxpayer money since 2007? Is it just me or would that much money be better spent on educational programs teaching pregnant women about good nutrition?
 

And in the other corner, Jason Coleman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spends his days (and our tax money) tormenting and killing baby mice. In experiments funded by the National Institutes of Hell Health, he and his team cut the edges off the eyelids of baby mice and sew the lids together until they fuse to each other and the babies are unable to open one eye. Then they drill holes into the babies' skulls, implant electrodes into their brains, and stab the mice in the eyes with needles to inject drugs. After recording their brain activity, they kill the mice and cut out their eyes and brains.

Both of these vivisectors are a mother's worst nightmare, but which one would you most like to see get K.O.'d by one of our UFC PETA pals? Will it be Kevin "Gravedigger" Grove or Jason "Heart of Coal" Coleman? After you've made your pick, send an e-mail to your representatives and senators asking them cut funding for cruel and deadly animal experiments.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Just when you thought experiments on animals couldn't get any more cruel or absurd, the good folks at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) managed to come up with an experiment on baby monkeys that's so cruel and ridiculous it might even give Harry "Monster Mother" Harlow pause.

ONPRC experimenter Kevin Grove is spending $750,000 in taxpayer money per year to make monkeys fat and play mind games with their babies. First he feeds pregnant monkeys unhealthy high-fat diets. After the babies are born (many preterm babies are cut out of their mothers' wombs and immediately killed so that their brains can be dissected), he attempts to scare the bejeezus out of them by putting things in their cages that he knows they are afraid of, including Mr. Potato Head dolls. Yes, you read that right. If that doesn't do the trick, he engages the baby monkeys in staring contests. Yes, you read that right too.

The breathtaking conclusion of this baby-bullying in the name of science? Monkeys who are born to mothers who ate high-fat diets are more easily stressed and frightened than babies born to mothers who ate healthy diets. Gee, couldn't he have hung out at the local McDonald's and learned the same thing? 

Written by Alisa Mullins

current.com / CC

Back in March, we told you about the USDA's investigation at Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC). The investigation came about as a result of a PETA complaint exposing that a monkey had been operated on by mistake; that a sick, pregnant monkey had been denied veterinary care; and that other abuses had taken place. The USDA backed up our findings, citing ONPRC for violations of the Animal Welfare Act and issuing the facility a warning. And let's not forget what we found during our undercover investigation.

Well, it's been barely seven months, and ONPRC is in hot water again. According to a lawsuit filed by InVivo Therapeutics—one of the companies that hired ONPRC to torture experiment on monkeys—ONPRC so severely neglected seven monkeys whose spinal cords it had surgically severed that four of the monkeys had to be euthanized.

Of course, the lawsuit is a lose-lose for the monkeys. InVivo had paid ONPRC to paralyze the animals so that researchers could implant them with a device developed by InVivo in order to see if they would regain any movement. In the lawsuit, InVivo alleges that early in the research period, more than one third of the monkeys provided by ONPRC suffered illnesses or injuries such as bladder problems because ONPRC failed to provide the proper post-surgery care or a medical device necessary to keep their bodily systems functioning. InVivo also alleges that at least one monkey developed "a debilitating staph infection" as a result of bacteria at ONPRC.

The publicity surrounding the case has shined another spotlight on abuses at ONPRC as well as the inadequacy of the federal law that is supposed to protect animals in laboratories.

If you have a strong stomach, go to StopAnimalTests.com to find out more about the cruel, redundant, and archaic experiments conducted on primates at ONPRC, and then dash off a letter to the National Institutes of Health, urging it to stop funneling your tax dollars to ONPRC.

Written by Alisa Mullins

On the "even the little guy sometimes gets a break" front, we recently received news that nine monkeys had escaped from the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC). The monkeys apparently made a break for it when a laboratory worker left their outdoor cage unsecured (great idea—lab workers reading this please take note). Sadly, all the monkeys were eventually captured, but freedom tasted good while it lasted, didn't it, guys?

Perhaps those monkeys were reading The PETA Files? Just last month, we reported that ONPRC had been cited for three violations of the Animal Welfare Act and slapped with a formal warning from the USDA, which told ONPRC that if it didn't shape up, it could face civil or criminal penalties. This after PETA repeatedly brought to the USDA's attention abuses such as botched surgeries, the forced separation of infant monkeys from their mothers, and the deaths of monkeys who had been denied veterinary care. PETA also told the USDA about how monkeys at ONPRC were forced to eat food out of waste-filled trays, blasted with high-pressure hoses in their cages, and much more.

Even though we were rooting for the escaped monkeys to catch a freight train out of there forever, we have filed yet another complaint with the USDA. We pointed out that the USDA had told ONPRC that if it screwed up again, it was going to be in serious trouble. So, USDA, please stand by your word. ONPRC has been given more than enough opportunities to clean up its act, and it has failed. If only the 4,000 monkeys who are imprisoned at ONPRC could receive as many "second chances." There is nothing good in their future, we fear.

Written by Alisa Mullins