Fifi is one of 19 Iams dogs who were shuttled between barren cement kennels and cold, hard, stainless steel cages for six years at this laboratory.

Thanks to your calls and letters to Iams, Fifi and her fellow “met” dogs, Maisy, Sally, Mickey, MadDog, Maxine, Christmas, DJ, Phoebe, Muffy, Humbug, Oreo, Mae-Mae, Gina, Major, Mir, Prancer, Gumby, and Bologna, have been removed from the laboratory in question and are now in Iams’ Dayton, Ohio, facility, which the company has refused to allow PETA to see.

These 19 dogs, as well as hundreds of other dogs, cats, and kittens used by Iams in this facility, were never given so much as a toy, never let out for group exercise or play, and never socialized with humans. That is, until PETA came onto the scene. Despite Iams’ and P&G’s October 2001 promises, more than a year later our investigator was allowed to make only the most minimal changes to these animals’ miserable living conditions during her nine months undercover. Iams dragged its feet, reneged on promises, and made sorry excuses to her (not knowing she worked for PETA) as to why the animals shouldn’t be given such meager considerations as a place to rest off the concrete floor. Click here to view other photos of the animals.

The laboratory director explained Iams’ attitude to our investigator: “You have pain. You want a solution no matter what it costs. As time goes [on], the pain gets forgotten. No more pain means you aren’t willing to pay as much for that and that’s what’s happening here. [Iams] got hit by animal rights, now they did some dealing and made some promises—now the animal rights are cooling off, now the pain is gone. Now, they start looking at things [with] a much cooler head …” Not to mention a stone-cold heart.

Our investigator videotaped Iams dogs being dumped on cold concrete flooring after having huge chunks of muscle cut out of their thighs; a coworker instructing her to hit the dogs on the chest if they quit breathing; another coworker talking about an Iams dog found dead in his cage, bleeding from his mouth; a dog limping in pain from Lyme disease; cruel studies done by Iams involving sticking tubes down dogs’ throats to force them to ingest vegetable oil; Iams dogs with such severe tartar buildup on their teeth that it was painful for them to eat; vet technicians with inadequate training and experience performing invasive procedures; two coworkers conducting a pregnancy test on a terrified dog lying on top of a cart with wheels that moved every time she struggled; dogs and cats gone stir-crazy from confinement; dogs and cats in windowless, dungeon-like buildings; coworkers talking about the live kitten who was washed down a drain; coworkers talking about how they had to go home because the ammonia fumes in the animal trailers were so overpowering that it made their eyes burn (try being one of the animals in those cages!); and cats kept in a cinderblock room with crude wooden “resting” boards that had nails sticking out of them. One of the boards fell on a cat, crushing her to death, while our investigator was there. The lab director did not remove the boards when the cat was crushed but he did remove them when he was told the lab was going to be inspected because he knew they were illegal. Click here to view video.

Our investigator also videotaped Iams representatives touring the facility and seeing the animals’ condition with their own eyes and feeling with their own sweat the overpowering heat and humidity in that place on a summer’s day, knowing that the animals can’t sweat. Unfortunately, the dogs can’t walk out as the Iams guy did. An Iams veterinarian, who came to see the first group of 49 Labrador retrievers the company had purchased for testing from a USDA Class B dealer, saw that one of the dogs had given birth in a cement kennel and that she had been provided with nothing to rest on to nurse them. Did he do anything? No! One of the puppies and an adult Labrador died shortly before our investigation ended—perhaps because the temperature in the building had fallen to 34 degrees. An Iams “behaviorist” saw dogs spinning in their cages out of madness and yet said nothing. An Iams cat dental researcher even overheard two employees talking about animals’ being treated inhumanely at the facility yet Iams continued to conduct business there as usual.

As for Iams’ & P&G’s promise that animals in their studies would never be euthanized, PETA’s investigator documented the destruction of 27 of the 60 dogs whose muscles were hacked out of their legs. Two more of those dogs were found dead in their cages several days after the muscle surgery—one of them had been suffering for 11 days prior to her death. Her dead animal form read: “pyometra [infection of the uterus] possible, bloody discharge from vulva—foul odor present. Lethargic, not eating well, dehydrated.”

When our investigator reported that Humbug, an Iams dog, was limping, she was told by a vet tech that the laboratory had an x-ray machine that dated back to the 1960s but no film for it and that the director of the laboratory preferred to kill, rather than treat, animals with broken bones. In addition, Fifi and the other “met” dogs were bled by the laboratory in order to sell their blood to other companies even though the metabolic studies do not call for blood draws.

Finally, shortly before our investigator left, the lab director told the vet techs to debark all the Iams dogs as he was being disturbed by their desperate cries for attention. Our investigator e-mailed Iams researchers in Dayton with this information, hoping against hope that Iams would respond and say, “No! You may not debark our dogs!” But all she got was the sickening sight of a lab technician covered in blood after a day of performing the debarking surgery.

When our investigator resigned, she told the Iams representative and the lab director that she was leaving because despite her best efforts, nothing was being done to enhance the desperately boring, lonely, harsh lives of the animals. The Iams representative admitted that both he and the lab director were from the “old school.”

To learn more about Iams and this investigation, click here.