James C. Foster Is One of the Worst CEOs in America for Animals in Laboratories
For Immediate Release:
February 21, 2008
Contact:
Alka Chandna, Ph.D., 757-622-7382
Wilmington, Mass. -
PETA has compiled a list of the 10 worst CEOs in America for their companies' treatment of animals in laboratories, and James C. Foster, CEO and chair of Charles River Laboratories, has come in at number two. Joseph Herring, CEO and chair of Covance, has placed first. "Winners" were chosen based on four criteria: the company's violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, the number of animals killed in their laboratories, the pain levels of the experiments, and the company's refusal to make improvements in animal welfare.
Under Foster's leadership, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited Charles River Laboratories for 22 violations of the Animal Welfare Act in a single year. The violations included inadequate veterinary care, failure to provide pain relief to suffering animals, and inadequate housing -- which caused a high incidence of injuries in dogs. Twenty-one animals at a Charles River lab were found near death and in abysmal conditions during one USDA inspection and had to be euthanized.
Despite the company's dismal track record and failure to abide by the single federal act that protects animals in U.S. laboratories, the company has announced its expansion to China, where regulations are nearly non-existent and where, according to a recent article in Forbes magazine, "Scientists are cheap and plentiful and pesky protesters [are] held at bay." The company is also building a large animal testing facility in Reno that local citizens are protesting.
"Charles River's laboratories are torture chambers, and CEO James Foster pockets a fat paycheck at the animals' expense," says PETA Director Kathy Guillermo. "While progressive testing companies are embracing more effective non-animal methods, Charles River's cruelty spans the globe."
Rounding out the list of fat-cat pain profiteers are Wyeth's Robert Essner, Merck's Richard T. Clark, Huntingdon Life Sciences' Andrew H. Baker, Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories' Ryoichi Nagata, Boehringer Ingelheim's J. Martin Carroll, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research's Daniel Vasella, The Jackson Laboratory's Robert Alvine, and Pfizer's Jeffrey Kindler.
Video footage of animals inside laboratories is available. For more information, please visit StopAnimalTests.com.
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