Who’s to Blame for Half of All Animal Testing?

If rats, mice, dogs, and monkeys were choosing public enemy number one, they would probably go with Charles River Laboratories (CRL), which breeds and sells millions of animals every year to laboratories around the world, supplying half of all the animals used in experiments. CRL is the second largest U.S. importer of nonhuman primates sold into experimentation slavery, importing more than 7,000 monkeys in 2010 alone.
 

A PETA “mouse” and “monkey” protest CRL’s animal abuse at the company’s annual meeting.

 
CRL also performs torture-for-hire for other companies, in which dogs, monkeys, rabbits, rats, and other animals are force-fed poisonous compounds, have their skin burned off with chemicals, and are forced to inhale toxic substances. The animals may endure severe abdominal pain, convulsions, paralysis, and bleeding from their orifices before they die or are killed.

With a sordid history of violating the regulations of the Animal Welfare Act, CRL has failed to do even the bare minimum for animals in its laboratories. Shoddy surgical methods resulted in the protracted misery and eventual death of a dog, and sick and injured animals are routinely denied veterinary care, including rabbits with skin lesions that were more than 4 inches deep. CRL workers sent a cage—with a monkey inside—through a high-temperature cage washer, which boiled the monkey alive, and CRL cooked 32 monkeys to death as a result of negligence.

To help animals abused by CRL and other laboratories, see PETA’s tips on fighting animal experimentation.

 
Written by Michelle Sherrow