Following a complaint from PETA alleging the painful and horrific deaths of two monkeys at the hands of pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has not only confirmed the allegations and cited the company for egregious violations of the Animal Welfare Act but also took the additional rare step of fining the facility $2,625 for the violations. 

Playing Fast and Loose With Animals' Lives

PETA submitted the complaint to the USDA after a whistleblower reported that a monkey and a rat had been scalded to death at a Bristol-Myers Squibb laboratory in New Jersey when their cages were run through the high-pressure cage washer with the animals still inside. The trapped animals endured intense agony and terror as the blistering-hot water burned their flesh.

The whistleblower also reported that another monkey strangled to death after she was attached to the front of her cage—apparently by some sort of tether—then left unattended. PETA's complaint asked the agency to investigate these deaths and to hit the corporation where it hurts—in its bank account.

How You Can Help

We hope the fine has gotten Bristol-Myers Squibb's attention, and PETA—which holds stock in the company so that it can raise these issues with the board and stockholders—will continue to push for an end to relying on cruel and unreliable animal tests by switching to superior, modern non-animal methods. Please ask Bristol-Myers Squibb to make sure that these recommendations are implemented.

In the midst of World Week for Animals in Laboratories, we have exciting news to share. After more than three decades of PETA action, Harvard will be shutting down its deeply controversial primate-testing facility in 2015.

This victory is 30 years in the making. In fact, some early-day PETA members took part in a headline-making demonstration outside the laboratory on April 25, 1983, almost 30 years ago to the day. Since then, we've kept the public informed about the cruel and deadly experiments going on at the facility and filed numerous federal complaints against it. Now, we will urge the center to fund the retirement all of its captive primates to existing sanctuaries or build a place suitable to retire them. 

PETA's director of laboratory investigations, Justin Goodman, made this announcement:

The almost defunct New England Primate Research Center is one of eight such dedicated federally funded primate prisons across the country. Other similar facilities are located in Oregon, Georgia, Wisconsin, Washington, Texas,  California, and Louisiana. We need your help to empty all of their cages. Please ask Congress to divert public money away from experiments on animals in favor of humane, relevant, and lifesaving non-animal research.  

I am reminded of a famed Victor Hugo quote: "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." Thank you, PETA supporters. And congratulations. 

Update: In March, PETA reached out to Hainan Airlines, and representatives from the airline confirmed that its policy remains firm: It still does not ship primates to laboratories. In the written statement, Hainan Airlines representatives said that they "fully agree" with PETA on this issue and that they support our "effort in the protection of animal rights."

The following was originally posted on February 24, 2012: 

Exciting news! Two more air carriers, TAM and Hainan Airlines, have announced that they will no longer transport primates for use in cruel laboratory experiments! PETA and other animal protection organizations put the pressure on the airlines after it was revealed that they were recently handling shipments of monkeys to laboratories in North America.

Richard Fisher | cc by 2.0

Now we're that much closer to stopping the transport of primates for use in experiments once and for all—but we're not there yet.

How You Can Help Keep Animals out of Laboratories

Please continue to tell the few remaining airlines that ship primates to laboratories—including Air France, China Eastern Airlines, and Continental Airlines—that cruelty should be grounded.

We have very exciting news to share. Earlier this week, a representative from United Airlines phoned PETA to say that the airline will no longer transport primates for use in experiments anywhere in the world! In order to ensure that animal experimenters get the message loud and clear, United even posted the new policy on its website, and it leaves no one in doubt: The airline "do[es] not book, accept or transport primates to or from medical research facilities."

United's compassionate stance means that there isn't a single commercial airline based in North America that is willing to transport primates to a cruel death in laboratories. This will make it much more difficult for experimenters to get their hands on primates in order to lock them away from their families and poison, cut up, and kill them.

©iStockphoto.com/luxiangjian4711  

YOU helped make this possible! Last year, after we organized demonstrations against the airline at its offices around the world and purchased stock in the company with the intention of introducing a shareholder resolution this year, we encouraged our members and supporters to contact the company. Hundreds of thousands of you flooded United's inboxes and Facebook wall with messages demanding that the airline stop profiting from cruelty to animals. One supporter even interrupted a United senior vice president at a trade conference, took over the microphone, and announced to attendees that United was the last U.S. airline that was still transporting primates to be abused and killed.

United's new policy means that only four major international airlines remain in the world that are willing to shuttle primates off to years of torment in exchange for a few dollars in revenue. Let's make that number zero. Please take a moment to tell Air France, China Eastern Airlines, Philippine Airlines, and Vietnam Airlines that you won't be flying with them until primates don't either.

Some exhilarating news from our neighbors (aka "neighbours" or "voisins") to the north: The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) will allow Air Canada to ban shipments of primates destined for pain and misery in laboratories. 

This leaves United Airlines as the only North American airline—and one of the few left in the world—to continue this bloody business.)

Following pleas from PETA, other organizations, and members of the public, Air Canada first sought the CTA's permission for the ban last year, stating that the proposed ban was "both to align our policies with those of many other major international carriers and in response to widespread public concern." Following objections from animal experimenters, the CTA initially did not approve the ban and scheduled a hearing on the issue. PETA immediately filed comments as a "party of interest," which were included in the official record, in support of Air Canada's proposed ban.

The CTA just released its decision in this matter, ruling entirely in favor of Air Canada and against the animal tormenters. In its lengthy decision, the CTA pointed out that the airline had received "over 47,000 letters from the public protesting its practice of transporting non-human primates for research purposes" and that Air Canada "cannot ignore the overwhelming volume of letters in opposition to the transport of non-human primates destined for research."

What You Can Do

As the CTA decision makes clear, this victory was made possible because of the appeals of concerned people—including the almost 19,000 PETA supporters who took action through this website. That's why it's so critical to make sure that your voice is heard—please join PETA in urging the few remaining airlines still willing to ship primates to laboratories to stop contributing to this cruelty.

PETA's Air Cruelty campaign has flown from success to success, and it's still soaring—three top cargo shipping companies have joined the still-growing list of carriers that refuse to transport any animals to be burned, blinded, poisoned, and cut up alive in laboratories!

iStockphoto.com/EcoPic 

Compassion Takes Wing

As reported in Nature magazine, after talks with PETA, UPS adopted a worldwide ban on transporting animals destined for laboratory experiments. FedEx (already our hero for its role in helping Ben the bear get his freedom) and DHL have also confirmed to PETA that they have policies in place that ban the shipment of live animals to laboratories.

To give you an idea of how big a development this is, FedEx and UPS are the world's top two largest cargo airlines, and DHL is close behind. They join the majority of major airlines—including Cathay Pacific, Korean Airlines, Qantas, and others—that won't transport any animals destined for experiments.

What You Can Do

Animals aren't safe from being caged, neglected, and tortured as long as even one airline will deliver them into experimenters' hands. Please urge holdout airlines such as Air France and United to step up and refuse to ship primates to laboratories.

For more than two decades, experimenters at the National Institute on Aging (NIA, part of the National Institutes of Health) and the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison) starved caged monkeys—depriving them of a whopping 30 percent of needed calories—to see if this would increase their longevity. Now, the vivisectors at NIA have announced that the extreme, prolonged deprivation had no effect on the monkeys' life span.

Hungry, Lonely, and Scared

The NIA studies, funded by taxpayers, started in 1987, and the UW–Madison studies began in 1989. At both facilities—and also at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, where similar experiments are being conducted—the monkeys, in addition to being kept chronically hungry in a semi-starved state, were imprisoned in tiny barren cages and condemned to a lifetime of isolation, without even the simplest benefit of any cage mates. As journalist Gina Kolata described in The New York Times:

For 25 years, the rhesus monkeys were kept semi-starved, lean and hungry. The males' weights were so low they were the equivalent of a 6-foot-tall man who tipped the scales at just 120 to 133 pounds. The hope was that if the monkeys lived longer, healthier lives by eating a lot less, then maybe people, their evolutionary cousins, would, too.

When the studies at UW–Madison were first made public in 2009, PETA filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the university's egregious violations of the Animal Welfare Act. In addition, PETA complained to the UW–Madison Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, but our concerns were dismissed.

Failing Animals, Science, and Humanity

Now, after decades of condemning intelligent, sensitive monkeys to protracted suffering, the vivisectors have admitted that their experiments not only failed to make their point but also were poorly designed: The monkeys were fed a diet that was 28.5 percent sucrose (i.e., empty calories). So, in addition to being ethically inexcusable, the experiments were scientifically nonsensical.

But no matter what the experimenters were trying to prove, it was wrong to cage and starve these monkeys. All so-called "calorie-restriction experiments" (that's vivisector lingo for "starving animals") should be banned now. Primates are extremely intelligent animals who form intricate social relationships, experience the same wide range of emotions that we do, and exhibit a capacity for suffering similar to ours. Rhesus macaque monkeys have been shown to use tools, count, and communicate complex information. Monkeys can also express empathy, and they possess a sense of fairness—something that many experimenters seem to lack.

Ssppeeeeddyy|cc by 2.0

What You Can Do

We each have a role to play in helping monkeys and other primates suffering in laboratories. Please urge the federal government to stop wasting our tax dollars on cruel and pointless experiments on animals.

A primate at a Covance primate testing lab.

Update: After receiving PETA's request for an investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that Bristol-Myers Squibb was to blame for the hanging death of the monkey and cited the company for violating the Animal Welfare Act.

 As if being locked inside a laboratory and treated like a living test tube weren't torture enough, a whistleblower informed PETA that a monkey and a rat were recently scalded to death at pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb's laboratory in Pennington, New Jersey. Their cages were run through the high-pressure cage washer with the animals still inside, causing the trapped animals intense agony and terror as the blistering-hot water burned their flesh.

Also according to the whistleblower, another monkey strangled to death after she was attached to the front of her cage, apparently by some sort of leash, and then left unattended. All three of these tragic deaths, which reportedly occurred over a six-month period, could have been easily prevented. So what's going on at Bristol-Myers?

A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection report substantiates the whistleblower's report of a monkey dying in the cage washer, and based on this, PETA suspects that the other allegations are also true. But it's Bristol-Myers Squibb's turn to be in hot water now: PETA has submitted complaints to the USDA and the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, asking both to investigate and hit the multibillion-dollar company where it hurts—in its bank account—if these allegations are true.

But what the pharma giant really must do is stop subjecting tens of thousands of dogs, rabbits, mice, rats, and monkeys to imprisonment, pain, and death. PETA, which holds stock in Bristol-Myers Squibb specifically for the purpose of addressing the company's board and stockholders, has submitted a shareholder resolution urging it to reduce the company's reliance on animal tests by switching to modern, non-animal methods and to provide greater transparency of its animal testing practices. Please, click here to ask Bristol-Myers Squibb's CEO to take personal responsibility for making sure that these recommendations are implemented.

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.

Ssppeeeddyy | cc by 2.0

A bit of good news from the Great White North: After years of pressure from animal rights activists—and after hearing from PETA recently—Air Canada, one of only two major North American airlines that still fly primates to laboratories, is taking steps to end the shipments. The airline has requested permission from the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) to enact a ban on transporting primates destined for experiments, a practice that the CTA currently requires Air Canada to engage in. PETA had been in contact with Air Canada about its policy as part of an international campaign to stop airlines from transporting primates to laboratories, where they will be caged, experimented on, and killed. 

Recently, PETA exposed appalling cruelty to monkeys at one of the largest importers of primates in the U.S.—Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL) in Everett, Washington—after being contacted by a distraught worker there. The photos and video footage recorded by the whistleblower show sick, distressed monkeys suffering after being injected with chemicals and subjected to violent handling.

Please support the growing number of compassionate and progressive airlines—including Delta, American Airlines, and British Airways—that are saying "No" to primate abuse, and click here to ask the Canadian Transport Authority to grant Air Canada's request to ban the shipment of primates to labs.