Feds Descend on Colorado Lab After PETA Sting

Investigation Shows Dogs Denied Pain Relief After Their Vocal Cords Severed at Red Beast Enterprises; Elderly Animals Warehoused at Site Funded by Pharma and University Clients

For Immediate Release:
February 27, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

A new PETA undercover investigation has carefully recorded the systemic neglect of dogs and cats at Red Beast Enterprises Inc., a Fort Collins laboratory doing business as High Quality Research (HQR), which gets paid to test drugs and other products in crude ways on dogs, cats, and rats. Prompted by PETA’s complaint and video footage, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials have just completed a multiday inspection of the facility, where animals were documented to be housed in poor conditions and left to suffer from untreated and painful eye ailments, open sores, chronic skin inflammation, respiratory distress, stress-induced zoochosis, and more.

PETA’s investigator documented that HQR’s veterinarian put gynecological forceps down the throats of all dogs there and cut their vocal cords with them so that—as the laboratory’s president described it—they wouldn’t bother staff by being as “loud” or “shrill.” The veterinarian denied the dogs pain relief following this “debarking,” which some dogs endured twice. Still, the barking of more than 100 stressed beagles is deafening—it exceeded 115 dB, comparable to a heavy metal concert. Deprived of even a bed or any opportunity to leave the windowless rooms for a walk and fresh air, beagles paced and turned in endless circles, which are ways animals try to cope with intensive confinement and deprivation. HQR obtained dogs from Ridglan Farms Inc., a notorious Wisconsin breeding factory currently under criminal investigation for allegations of cruelty to dogs.

The laboratory also kept dozens of cats, some for more than a decade, in barren rooms that lacked any soft surfaces or sufficient hiding places, forcing them to try to rest on hard flooring and to eat and drink from dishes contaminated with used litter. Some cats were kept crated.

“This disgusting operation’s failure to provide animals with even basic care goes back over a decade, and its clients need to reconsider bankrolling this misery and suffering,” says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Oversight & Special Cases Dr. Alka Chandna. “Leaving sick and injured animals to suffer without adequate veterinary care and denying crudely mutilated dogs pain relief violate federal law, and this place needs to close down.”

HQR’s president and veterinarian denied the investigator’s repeated appeals to adopt 11-year-old beagles Bo (who suffered from neck pain and a stiff gait) and Docker (who was afflicted with hyperthyroidism and a golf ball–sized mass on his neck) by saying that house-training them would be difficult and feigning concern for the investigator’s carpet and kitchen floor. Kegan suffered from an eye ulcer that the veterinarian said would cause a human to “writh[e] on the floor in pain” yet denied the dog any pain relief. The president rejected a request to adopt Kegan—and get her veterinary care—because he wanted to use her in more experiments. He refused to allow anyone to adopt out sick cats and provide them with veterinary care because Colorado State University experimenters weren’t “done with them.”

According to published papers, staff at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Kansas State University, Bayer HealthCare, and IDEXX Laboratories have participated in or “overseen” animal experiments at HQR.

PETA is also filing complaints with the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies. The feds have fined HQR $7,700 since 2011 for failing to monitor rabbits’ pain and depriving dogs of adequate care for tartar-covered and loose teeth and bloody gums.

Photos from PETA’s investigation are available here, and video footage is available here

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.