'Monkey' and Giant 'Mouse' to Confront Charles River Laboratories Shareholders

Violations of Animal Welfare Regulations and Painful Deaths of Thousands of Dogs, Primates, Rats, and Other Animals Draw PETA Protest at Annual Meeting

For Immediate Release:
May 9, 2011

Contact:
Robbyn Brooks 202-483-7382 

Wilmington, Mass. — Holding a banner that reads, "This Is Animal Research: Don't Let Anyone Tell You Different," and shows animals who have been cruelly experimented on, two PETA representatives—one dressed as a monkey and one dressed as a mouse—will lead a protest outside Charles River Laboratories' (CRL) annual meeting in Wilmington on Tuesday.

CRL profits by breeding and selling millions of animals for use in cruel and invasive experiments in laboratories around the world. One out of every two animals suffering in laboratories today is from CRL, which also conducts painful and deadly tests on thousands of dogs, monkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, and other animals for other companies. The company has a long and sordid history of violating the minimal requirements of the federal Animal Welfare Act:

When:   Tuesday, May 10, 8 a.m.

Where:  Great Source Education Group Building, 181 Ballardvale St., Wilmington

"Charles River Laboratories' facilities are animal torture chambers," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "The company has a hand in fully half of all the pain, misery, fear, and distress suffered by animals in laboratories."

The following are just a few examples of the suffering caused by CRL:

• Federal inspection reports show that shoddy surgical methods resulted in the protracted misery and eventual death of a dog and that sick and injured animals, including rabbits with skin lesions more than 4 inches deep, were denied veterinary care.
• Dogs, monkeys, rabbits, rats, and other animals were force-fed poisonous compounds, had their skin burned off with chemicals, and were forced to inhale toxic substances. Many animals endured severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, convulsions, seizures, paralysis, or bleeding from their orifices without veterinary treatment before they died or were killed.
• In 2008, 32 monkeys in CRL's Nevada facility were cooked to death as a result of incompetence, and in 2009, a monkey was run through a high-temperature cage washer and boiled alive. The two incidents resulted in fines totaling $14,000.
• CRL imports thousands of primates for experiments every year from China and Mauritius, where infant monkeys are trapped in the wild and torn away from their families. 

For more information, please visit PETA.org.