The Paramount Importance of Media
Chimps to Chinchillas believes that a key tenet of animal advocacy is public persuasion. Media is essential to that. One can have the best information, and the most just cause—but if people don’t know about it, then change is not likely to happen. Paradigm shifts do not happen in a vacuum, while courts and legislators—like the general public—can be influenced by media reports of animal suffering.
Successful efforts on behalf of animals—such as the campaign to end experimentation on chimpanzees, the demise of the world’s largest chimp lab, and the closure of abusive research suppliers of chinchillas and animal-derived antibodies—simply would not have been possible without the media’s exposure of injustice, violations of law, and animal suffering.
In the 1970s, chimpanzees were used in crash testing and head injury experiments. Forty years later, invasive chimpanzee experimentation ended in the U.S. What changed? The ethical sea change initiated by Jane Goodall and her groundbreaking work, coupled with the media’s exposure of the complexity of chimpanzees, and how much they suffered in laboratories. The end of chimpanzee experimentation would not have been possible without compelling, and ongoing, media coverage.
Other examples described below include the permanent USDA license revocations of the world’s largest animal-derived antibody supplier—Santa Cruz Biotechnology—and the older supplier of chinchillas for experimentation, Moulton Chinchilla. Though USDA actions were the proximate cause of both revocations, the agency—and these suppliers’ research customers—were also influenced by media coverage.
We have included below a small number of media examples involving 13 separate animal protection issues involving Eric’s work.
The impact and importance of such media coverage can also be seen in a more comprehensive compilation of hundreds of news stories regarding chimpanzee experimentation, criminal animal cruelty, the enforcement of animal welfare laws, the primate trade, the Freedom of Information Act, and other issues.
Putting the World’s Largest Chimp Lab Out of Business
Frederick Coulston, a toxicologist and founder of the Coulston Foundation, said he wanted to corner the market on chimpanzees, and advertised their availability for testing cosmetics and insecticides. He told the New York Times that he wanted to raise chimps like cattle, and use them as blood and organ banks. The lab eventually gained control of half of the U.S. population, despite repeated violations of animal welfare and data integrity laws. After an eight-year campaign sprearheaded by In Defense of Animals, the lab went out of business. Save the Chimps, with the incredible generosity of the Arcus Foundation, took over the facility and permanently retired 266 chimps and 61 monkeys. Coulston’s closure was the first big domino to fall in the campaign to end experimentation on chimps. And it would not have been possible without media.
The laboratory housing the world’s largest domesticated chimpanzee colony may be near financial collapse, animal rights activists are claiming. The Coulston Foundation of Alamogordo, New Mexico….But In Defense of Animals (IDA), a Californian group that opposes the use of animals in research, claims that the lost contracts could tilt the $10.5 million lab towards financial failure. “The loss of these NIH funds could spell the beginning of the end for TCF,” says Suzanne Roy, IDA’s programme director. The group alleges that the lab’s private sources of funding — about half its revenues, according to the foundation —- are drying up. TCF laid off 20 employees in November….The IDA has been investigating TCF for five years, and alleges chronic neglect of the lab’s chimps. The group has been vindicated at least in part by three formal complaints issued by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), charging that the lab has violated the Animal Welfare Act. The most recent was issued in February….IDA claims that this contract will expire or be reduced next year, as the government reduces support for chimpanzee breeding.
In Defense of Animals had waged an aggressive eight-year campaign against Coulston, using whistle-blowing veterinarians to prompt tough regulatory action by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Coulston’s revenues eventually shriveled up and the lab got out of chimp-based research…[IDA Program Director Suzanne] Roy was presented with a framed letter to IDA from pioneering primatologist Jane Goodall that said “When you began your efforts almost a decade ago, Coulston seemed invincible, with millions of dollars in funding and a sinister ability to carry on despite his violations of the Animal Welfare Act and the large fines imposed. “But,” Goodall continued, “you and your team...were determined, and you wouldn’t give up.”
End of Chimpanzee Experimentation
The campaign to end chimpanzee experimentation took decades, and was joined by multiple animal protection groups and individuals. The inimitable Jane Goodall spearheaded the effort. Bankrupting the world’s largest chimp lab, which housed approximately half of the U.S. population, and had been funded with tens of millions of dollars from the NIH, was the first big domino to fall.
More recently, on Jan. 21, an 11-year-old male chimp named Jello, recently arrived from the N.Y .U. laboratory, died after being sedated for transfer from one cage to another . In Defense of Animals promptly filed a complaint with the Agriculture Department, charging that a necropsy had revealed that the ape had food in its trachea. “Everybody knows before you tranquilize an animal you fast him,” Mr. Kleiman said. He said the group's account was based on reports of three sources within Coulston, whom he would not name….Such a [shuttle system[ sanctuary is anathema to animal rights advocates. In Defense of Animals, which says it will raise money and open its own sanctuary, envisions ''something like an old folks home,'' said Mr . Kleiman, where no research or medical procedure would be conducted that did not directly benefit the chimp involved.
Deep in the New Mexico desert, there's a state-of-the-art facility at Holloman Air Force Base. It does not house fighter jets, but instead serves as home to about 300 chimpanzees.The animals make up about half of the chimps owned by the Coulston Foundation, the largest primate research laboratory in the world. The Alamogordo, N.M., facility has long been embroiled in controversy, having been repeatedly accused of mismanaging the care of the animals in its custody….But internal NIH documents show that the agency has long been aware of far more serious problems and ignored them, according to animal welfare advocates…According to In Defense of Animals, NIH funding of Coulston violated federal law and U.S. Public Health Service policy. Without AAALAC accreditation, or a functioning review committee, In Defense of Animals says, federal law states that the NIH director “shall suspend or revoke” funding. Yet since last year, the NIH has awarded the lab at least $2.8 million in "supplemental awards" and research contracts….Events came to a head late last month, when animal advocates came to Rep. John Edward Porter (R-Ill.), a staunch NIH supporter, with a plan to take over half of Coulston's chimps and turn the facility at Holloman into a sanctuary. The NIH rushed to take possession of the chimps last week.
Landmark Criminal Cruelty Charges against Charles River Laboratories
In 2004, New Mexico District Attorney Scot Key filed multiple counts of criminal animal cruelty against NIH contractor Charles River Laboratories—the world’s largest supplier of animals for experimentation—for the deaths of chimpanzees Rex and Ashley, and the near-death of Topsy. Key’s courageous act was the first time in history that an entire company was charged with criminal cruelty. CRL operated the NIH-owned Alamogordo Primate Facility, which NIH created as the successor to the Coulston Foundation. Despite receiving a subpoena from the D.A., CRL refused to disclose the chimps’ medical records., and tried to dismiss the charges with multiple legal technicalities that had nothing to do with the merits of the case. The company won on perhaps the most egregious: failing to provide veterinary care fell under the cruelty statute’s legal definition of veterinary practice. The case eventually reached the New Mexico Supreme Court, with amicus petitions filed by Jane Goodall and others. Because of CRL’s refusal to provide the chimps’ medical records, In Defense of Animals filed a FOIA request that led to a successful five-year legal battle against NIH to obtain records for hundreds of chimpanzees at the APF, upon which the landmark McClatchy Special Report “Chimps: Life in the Lab” was based. One of CRL’s arguments for preventing the state of New Mexico from enforcing its own cruelty statute was that the chimpanzees were federal property, and how dare the state of New Mexico tell the federal government what it could do with its property. If that was CRL’s attitude about chimps, what chance does any species have?
The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-owned chimpanzee facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico, faces new animal-welfare accusations. On 7 September the state district attorney in Otero County filed criminal animal-cruelty charges against Charles River Laboratories, which runs the facility under a 10-year contract from NIH, and veterinarian Rick Lee, who heads the staff there….A group that has long criticized the facility, In Defense of Animals, claims the situation has not improved. Based on reports from whistleblowers inside the lab, the group lobbied the district attorney to bring animal-cruelty charges in the deaths of two chimps: Rex, a 16-year-old with liver and kidney failure, allegedly was left unconscious in the care of night security guards when the daytime shift of medical personnel ended. He was found dead a few hours later, apparently having suffocated on his vomit. Ashley, a 16-year-old female, was attacked by 11 other chimps and severely injured. Although prone to hemorrhage, she allegedly was also left without medical care overnight and was found dead by security guards. Critics also charge that a third chimp, Topsy, a 26-year-old female, was left without care overnight while bleeding from a wound sustained in a fight. She was found listless and pale the next morning and required emergency blood transfusions.
Rex, a 16-year-old chimpanzee retired from medical experimentation, died in 2002 on the overnight shift at the Alamogordo Primate Facility where he lived. Prosecutors said he was disconnected from devices after he was anesthetized and suctioned all day to keep him from choking. Animal care workers went home after instructing security staff to check him hourly instead of every other hour. Whether that constitutes abandonment or falls within the definition of “practice of veterinary care” is at the crux of a case now before the New Mexico Supreme Court…Eric Kleiman of the California-based In Defense of Animals, which opposes use of animals in research, said he was astonished to hear of the Court’s suggestion that prosecutors should seek changes in the law. “The Legislature got fed up because of death after death from inadequate veterinary care” at what was then the Coulston Foundation, he said. “In 2001, they removed the blanket exemption (for research facilities) precisely because of abuses at this very same facility.”…Kleiman said although NIH is supposed to regulate, it is legally responsible for the actions of its contractor [Charles River Laboratories], making it a classic fox-guarding-the-henhouse situation. “I’ve been investigating this place for 14 years now,” he said. “I would make this morbid joke that if they ever found a chimp shot dead in the head, they’d rule it a suicide. So that’s the regulatory environment Charles River is in. It really is a no man’s land.”
Moulton Chinchilla—A Slow Motion Trainwreck
Daniel J. Moulton began supplying the research industry with chinchillas in the 1970s. The USDA began documenting egregious violations of the Animal Welfare Act in the early 2010s. In 2011, inspectors photographed chinchillas with eye infections so severe that their eyes were sealed shut. Even then, inspectors described this as an “ongoing problem.” It would take another ten years for a hearing to occur, and for Moulton’s license to be revoked. During that ten-year span, Moulton accumulated the most “direct” citations—the most grave type of critical citation having adverse impact on animal health and well-being—than any of the over 11,000 entities regulated under the Animal Welfare Act. USDA never confiscated a single chinchilla—despite multiple consecutive inspections identifying the very same chinchillas needing veterinary care—and never cited Moulton’s breaking the neck of a suffering chinchilla right in front of “flabbergasted” inspectors. Moulton was an example of USDA’s longstanding failure to understand urgency, and adequately enforce the Animal Welfare Act. To make matters worse, researchers continued to purchase chinchillas from Moulton, further enabling the abuse that a USDA judge later called “absolutely astounding.”
Biomedical researchers rely on chinchillas–docile South American rodents with ears strikingly similar to those of humans—for studies of ear infections and hearing loss. But the two main U.S. chinchilla suppliers to research labs have for years violated the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which enforces that law. Until the pandemic descended, the two suppliers sent hundreds of animals to U.S. labs. Those suppliers failed to identify and treat sick and injured animals, kept them in filthy barns and excrement-laden enclosures, and failed to clear dead animals, according to USDA inspection reports recently restored to full public view…..Long-tailed chinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera) are squirrel-size rodents native to the Andes. In 2019, U.S. biomedical researchers used 1250 of the animals, down by about one-third from the numbers used in 2014, according to USDA data curated by AWI….“There is a crying need for preventing taxpayer money from going to places with these [kinds of] records,” says Eric Kleiman, an AWI researcher. "It's ultimately the researcher's responsibility. They are the ones working with the animals.”
Between 2013 and 2018, Moulton Chinchilla Ranch, which now has about 750 chinchillas, accumulated more than a hundred violations of the Animal Welfare Act….At a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administrative hearing that concluded on October 8, Judge Jill Clifton revoked Moulton’s license to breed chinchillas and issued $18,000 in penalties in an oral decision. She said that the welfare violations at Moulton Chinchilla Ranch were part of an overall pattern of chronic problems with the animals’ health, sanitation, and safety….The hearing lasted 18 days and was the first animal welfare case involving research animals to go before a judge in six years, according to Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute….“Like so much of what the USDA does,” Kleiman says, the judge’s suspension now, years after the violations began, is “too little, too late.”
Santa Cruz Biotechnology
Santa Cruz Biotechnology was one of the world’s largest suppliers of antibodies derived from rabbits and goats. A former company veterinarian testified at a USDA hearing that the company had deliberately covered up the existence of an entire barn housing 841 goats. After that revelation, the company secretly removed over 5,000 goats and rabbits, leaving it housing no species covered under the Animal Welfare Act. That action prompted some researchers to launch a boycott of the company. Within months of Nature publishing its exposé, Santa Cruz settled with the USDA by agreeing to a permanent revocation of its dealer license, a cancellation of its research registration, and payment of a $3.5 million fine. That was the largest penalt in AWA history—until Envigo.
Santa Cruz Biotechnology, which owned Goat No. 11675, is the second-largest vendor in the billion-dollar antibody market. Its extensive catalogue is in high demand: according to a 2012 survey by The Scientist, fifty-three per cent of labs work with antibodies acquired from the company. But this production comes at a cost….The [USDA] inspection that has received the most attention was reported in Nature, in January, 2013. Eight hundred and forty-one goats were kept in a secret barn that had been in use for at least two and a half years, without ever having been reported to or inspected by the U.S.D.A.’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Eric Kleiman, a researcher with the Animal Welfare Institute, told me, “In my experience, what they were cited for—which the Nature article led with—about deliberately misleading A.P.H.I.S. for over two and a half years, including management, about the existence of an entire site—that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard happening with a U.S.D.A. violation ... and I’ve been doing this for twenty years.”
In July 2015, the major antibody provider Santa Cruz Biotechnology owned 2,471 rabbits and 3,202 goats. Now the animals have vanished, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)….But Santa Cruz Biotech is also the subject of three animal-welfare complaints filed by the USDA after its inspectors found evidence that the firm mistreated goats at its facility in California….The USDA hearing is set to resume on 5 April. If Santa Cruz Biotech is found to have violated the US Animal Welfare Act, it could be fined or lose its licence to keep animals for commercial use….Cathy Liss, president of the Animal Welfare Institute, an advocacy group in Washington DC, suspects that the animals were killed. She says that it is unlikely that such a large number of animals bred for such a specific purpose would find a buyer…..”So much of what was cited involves great animal suffering,” says Liss, whose advocacy group has campaigned for the USDA to take action against the company. “We are hoping that USDA holds out and if there is going to be a settlement, that it includes them permanently losing their licence as a dealer.”
Envigo—A Scandal of Epic Proportions
Taking unprecedented action, the U.S. Department of Justice and Commonwealth of Virginia seized 446 beagles in “acute distress” at Envigo’s dog breeding site in Virginia in May 2022. As a result of this bold action, the company was forced to close the facility and adopt out 4,000 dogs. It eventually pleaded guilty to the crime of conspiring to violate the Animal Welfare Act, and paid an historic $35 million fine. This scandal was the biggest USDA enforcement failure in history.
More than 5,000 dogs were crowded in small, barren cages lined with feces and mold. A three-week-old puppy was stuck in a waste pan under his cage, dried feces matting his fur. Fights between kennel mates had left some dogs dead, including one by “evisceration.” These violations and dozens more were documented in recent United States Department of Agriculture public inspection reports. Yet for months, the USDA, which is responsible for enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, neither confiscated any dogs nor suspended or revoked the license of the animal-breeding facility in Cumberland, Virginia….Envigo’s record is an “unmitigated, unprecedented disaster,” says Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C….Not attempting to establish why the dogs died violates the Animal Welfare Act. At the time of the USDA’s July and October 2021 inspections, Envigo had only one staff veterinarian to attend to 5,000 dogs. The USDA’s numerous veterinary care citations are “evidence that [one veterinarian] is an insufficient number,” Kleiman says…Animal welfare experts are critical not just of the USDA’s reluctance to take action over infractions, but also of what they consider to be AAALAC’s weak oversight. The industry’s accreditation agency schedules site visits only once every three years and, according to the Animal Welfare Institute, has a history of dismissing welfare problems that violate the USDA’s guidelines. AAALAC’s reports are not made public….The multiple severe violations documented at Envigo’s facility and the alleged failure to follow euthanasia procedures at Inotiv’s should be a wakeup call for the USDA to ramp up its oversight and enforcement of animal breeding and research companies, Kleiman says. “Research won’t police itself.” Kleiman says the USDA should send an unequivocal message that “no matter how large, how powerful, how wealthy” these companies are, animal suffering won’t be tolerated.
Envigo, a leading supplier of research animals, pleaded guilty yesterday to criminally violating the U.S. Animal Welfare Act (AWA) by neglecting thousands of beagles at its Cumberland, Virginia, breeding facility….“For the first time in history, a research supplier has pled guilty to the crime of conspiring to violate the Animal Welfare Act and is paying an unprecedented fine,” says Eric Kleiman, an independent animal protection researcher. “That’s some measure of accountability for the untold numbers of beagles who needlessly suffered and died.”…Kleiman took to task USDA, which is responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the AWA. Although USDA issued the facility more than 60 citations from July 2021 to May 2022, it took no enforcement action and allowed the facility to keep operating. “Envigo’s abhorrent record should have resulted in permanent USDA license revocation. That’s the fault of USDA leadership, which the Department of Justice … commendably bypassed to save thousands of beagles,” Kleiman said.
USDA’s Problematic Enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act
Every single presidential administration since George H.W. Bush in 1992 has featured a damning audit by the USDA Inspector General regarding the USDA’s failure to adequately enforce the Animal Welfare Act. The most recent OIG audit was issued in February 2025, finding that 80 percent of dog breeder inspections reviewed were noncompliant. Media outlets such as National Geographic, the Washington Post, and Science magazine have repeatedly covered the USDA’s failure to enforce, using case studies and systemic data to document fundamental problems. Chimps to Chinchillas believes that such exposure in credible media outlets can help create an environment for change.
Several former USDA inspectors and senior staff interviewed by National Geographic say overlooked welfare concerns such as those at Monterey Zoo have become more common in the past six years, because of what they assert became a practice of prioritizing business interests over animal welfare….“How do you replace that kind of institutional knowledge and memory?” Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the Animal Welfare Institute, in Washington, D.C., says of the resignations of USDA animal care workers since 2017. When new inspectors replace those who have left, “all that they know is plunging enforcement, right? They have nothing to compare it to.”…Enforcement actions have begun to increase again this year, but they still fall short of what they had been before 2015. Through August of this year, up to 34 percent of inspections have resulted in citations, compared with up to 60 percent in 2014, according to an analysis by the Animal Welfare Institute….Kleiman, of the Animal Welfare Institute, says he’s hopeful that after three years of not confiscating any animals, the agency is once again seizing those it deems to be in danger. But “praising the USDA for resuming confiscations is like praising an NBA player for knowing how to dribble,” he says….For example, Moulton Chinchilla Ranch in Minnesota, which had its license revoked on October 8, has been cited for more than a hundred animal welfare violations dating back to 2013, including filthy cages, leaving the body of a newborn chinchilla to decompose, and accumulated feces. Yet for years, the USDA had failed to act, Kleiman says. “If they’re not going to act on Moulton, what are they going to act on?”…In another case, the USDA inspected two facilities of Iowa dog breeder Daniel Gingerich an unprecedented eight times in July 2021, and inspectors documented more than 70 pages of Animal Welfare Act violations, but never seized any dogs. After he read their official reports, Kleiman says, the facilities can only be described as a “hellscape.” According to the reports, dogs were panting and gasping in the intense summer heat, several had empty or nearly empty water bowls, their coats were heavily matted, and many had skin conditions or oozing lesions. At least three dogs were found dead in two July inspections. “How that doesn't trigger an immediate confiscation is beyond me,” Kleiman says. “This is criminal cruelty.”
Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the Animal Welfare Institute, criticizes the USDA’s fining system. With such “pathetic fines,” he says, facilities like these “can act with impunity, with resulting animal suffering, because they know [the USDA] will not act with any force.” Such small fines fly “under the radar” of public scrutiny and reflect the toothlessness of USDA enforcement, he says…The USDA “coddles research,” Kleiman says. The fines issued to Colorado State, Lovelace Biomedical, and the former Toxikon lab “are all paltry amounts for so many reasons, including but not limited to the severity of the citations—all involving animal deaths—the deep pockets of these wealthy research facilities, and the history … at all three,” he says. Kleiman’s criticism echoes a 2005 report by the OIG calling for higher fines for research facilities violating the Animal Welfare Act. It pointed out that the amounts don’t vary according to whether the offender is “a small farmer that breeds dogs” or “a research facility with billions in assets,” making penalties for larger facilities “negligible.”…The USDA needs to rethink its process for issuing fines, Kleiman says— though he believes the entire agency, which he says “has failed to adequately enforce the law” for decades, needs to be overhauled. “I can’t tell you how sick and tired I and other animal protection advocates are of opining, once again, about yet another [USDA] enforcement failure,” Kleiman says. “Thirty years of OIG reports, Congressional scrutiny, public pressure, media [exposure] and yet, what really changes?”.
The Ugliness of the Primate Trade
In November 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment alleging an international conspiracy to smuggle long-tailed macaques into U.S. research labs from Cambodia by “laundering” them—falsely claiming that wild-caught monkeys were captive born. That same month, Science magazine reported that the world’s largest supplier of primates for experimentation—Inotiv (which had purchased Envigo)—had received allegedly smuggled monkeys. A day after the indictment was unsealed, Inotiv reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that employees of its principal supplier of primates—the Hong Kong-based Vanny group—had been indicted. A few years earlier, the USDA had documented the negligent deaths of 25 long-tailed macaques from Cambodia at SNBL USA, a contract research organization and primate dealer that reported millions of dollars in revenue selling monkeys. USDA fined the company $185,000, and suspended its dealer license for 30 days. That did not stop the ugliness of the primate trade.
The indictment of several members of an alleged international monkey smuggling ring is sending ripples through the U.S. biomedical community. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged two Cambodian wildlife officials and several members of a Hong Kong based primate supply company with illegally exporting hundreds—and potentially more than 2000— cynomolgus macaques, an endangered species, to the United States for research. The animals were reportedly captured from the wild in Cambodia and falsely labeled as captive-bred….It’s unclear how many of the animals in question have been used in research, but one of two companies that received them is the largest private supplier of monkeys to U.S. research labs, Science has learned. The company, Inotiv….“If this is the reaction from the supply side, then we think there needs to be much stricter controls on the demand side,” says Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal advocacy group that has closely followed the issue. “If monkeys are to be used in research in the U.S., there is a responsibility to ensure they are well cared-for.…”
While many of us would prefer not to give it much thought, monkeys are often used in laboratory tests during the development of key medical products such as the Covid-19 vaccines. Sadly, the global trade in nonhuman primates can involve murky dealings, including smuggling of illegal animals. The resulting blowback is of great concern to America’s world-leading medical research….Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the Animal Welfare Institute, an advocacy organization, says that suspending all imports from Cambodia is a necessary measure until there is a foolproof way of determining the origin of the monkeys. The nation’s November statement about the arrests denied the allegations and made no mention of efforts to crack down on smuggling. “Given Cambodia’s response to the allegations were not exactly fulsome, we believe there should be more controls on the demand side,” Mr. Kleiman said.
USDA’s Lack of Transparency
In February 2017, the USDA caused a firestorm when it abruptly removed inspection reports and other documents from its website. Channeling Alice in Wonderland, the agency actually claimed one of its rationales was transparency. After years of significant media exposure, public outrage, and lawsuits, Congress forced the USDA to restore the reports in 2020 by amending the Animal Welfare Act through an appropriations bill.
Their litigation is now being hailed by some Tennessee walking horse activists as the impetus for an abrupt USDA decision last week to pull from its public website all enforcement records related to horse soring and to animal welfare at dog breeding operations and other facilities….The records removal has prompted broad outcry from animal protection groups, some of which characterized it as an assault on transparency by the Trump administration. Industries regulated by the USDA, including groups representing zoos and research labs, have also been critical….Yet animal advocacy groups say access had already begun to be reduced last fall. The USDA last posted enforcement records in August, according to Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the Animal Welfare Institute who shared information about the lawsuit with The Washington Post. Other records were retroactively redacted, he said. Some involved SNBL, a Washington state based company that imports primates for research. In September, the USDA filed a complaint accusing the company of violations associated with the deaths — including by thirst and strangulation — of 38 monkeys imported from Asia. Kleiman obtained the unredacted complaint through a FOIA request, and it was published on the websites of the Seattle Times and the Animal Welfare Institute. But in November, Kleiman noted, the USDA filed a motion to seal its own complaint. It sought to redact information about SNBL’s nearly $10 million profit over two years, as well as the number of monkeys it imported and used annually — the kind of information not covered under FOIA exemptions.
But it's difficult for the public to know whether the company [Thomas D. Morris Inc.]—which supplied animals used in at least 48 biomedical studies published since 2012—has kept a clean record. That's because, on 3 February, USDA abruptly removed inspection reports, warning letters, and other documents on nearly 8000 animal facilities that the agency regulates, including Thomas D. Morris, from public databases….USDA officials said the removal was prompted by their commitment to “maintaining the privacy rights of individuals” identified in the documents, which animal rights groups, journalists, and others have regularly used to publicize the failings of AWA violators. And they say they are still reviewing the withdrawn documents, with an eye toward blacking out information that shouldn't be public before reposting them. So far, APHIS has reposted inspection reports on most of the 983 research facilities that it regulates. But according to a 19 May analysis by the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington, D.C., it has not restored records covering 94% of the 3333 breeders and dealers that provide animals for the pet trade and, in some cases, research. “Are huge companies [that supply research animals] like Marshall Farms, Covance, Charles River online? Yes. The rest are not because they are licensed as individuals. This has chilling ramifications,” says Eric Kleiman, who conducted the analysis for the Animal Welfare Institute.
Using the Freedom of Information Act for Animals
Obtaining records from government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act and state open records laws has been vital to achieving successes for animals. Testimony before Congress in March 2000, which led to a broad congressional investigation of NIH’s management of billions of dollars in grants, was based largely on documents obtained through FOIA. An excellent example of FOIA’s importance was the groundbreaking McClatchy Newspapers Special Report “Chimps: Life in the Lab.” This was the most in-depth reporting ever published regarding the widespread suffering of chimpanzees in experimentation. This Special Report was based on thousands of pages of chimpanzee medical record obtained from the NIH through a successful FOIA lawsuit that lasted five years.
During Lennie's life under the microscope, science changed. Starting in the 1960s, Lennie, a chimpanzee, was strapped in a spacesuit for U.S. government test flights, and subjected to spinal taps. He was fed a banana laced with triparanol, a drug already removed from the market for humans. In the 1970s, he was a breeder, used to increase the supply of lab chimps. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was infected with the HIV and hepatitis viruses and subjected time and again to blood draws and biopsies. In 2002, Lennie died at a federal primate facility in the New Mexico desert, where many of his former cage-mates still live. Today, those former cage-mates — about 180 of them — are at the center of an impassioned debate between the National Institutes of Health and the animal-rights community….To understand the evolving science of chimp research, McClatchy talked with researchers and animal-rights activists, reviewed the scientific literature and read through thousands of pages of medical records that recount the experimentation on and illnesses, behavior and deaths of Lennie and his peers. In Defense of Animals, an advocacy group, obtained the records after a five-year legal fight with the NIH. The group shared them exclusively with McClatchy with no strings attached; McClatchy conducted its own review of the records, which provide the most detailed look ever into the day-to-day life of chimp experimentation.
They've been out of the lab for years, but for many chimpanzees at a federal primate facility here, the effects of long-ago medical experimentation can linger till they die….McClatchy reviewed the records of chimpanzees who lived and died at Alamogordo over the last 10 years. The records detail an animal's entire history, from minor dental procedures to serious illnesses. They show a chimp's final hours or days — and how the facility reacted. The records also reveal new information about the final hours of Rex, who was part of the focus of the animal-cruelty case….The deaths of two chimps and the near-death of a third prompted the local district attorney to bring a case of animal cruelty against the facility in 2004. One of those deaths involved Rex. But Rex's recently released medical records provide more detail, some not available at the time of the animal cruelty case. The records “reveal what both Charles River and the NIH never wanted the DA, or a jury, to see: This young chimpanzee was in severe pain when he was awake; that during a physical exam he not only vomited but also spurted clotted blood from his nose; that he was a physical wreck,” said Eric Kleiman of In Defense of Animals, an advocacy group that forced open the chimps' medical records after a lengthy legal battle with the NIH.
Media and Testimony before Congress
When an official from the NIH testified before Congress, a House member told him “I’m sick and tired of reading about another dead chimp at Coulston.” That, in a nutshell, encapsulates the vital importance of media. After Eric testified before Congress in 2000, Congress launched an investigation of NIH’s management of billions of dollars in grants because it continued to fund the Coulston Foundation despite well-publicized violations of animal welfare and data integrity laws.
An Alamogordo biomedical research laboratory housing more than 600 chimpanzees is so poorly run the federal government should take it over, representatives of two animal advocacy groups told a House subcommittee on Tuesday….Eric Kleiman, a spokesman for In Defense of Animals, said a $5 million emergency federal appropriation would take care of about half of the chimps for three years. “One logical solution is for Congress to appropriate funds to take over this facility and retire the mandated 300 animals there until sanctuary space can be built to accommodate them,” Kleiman told the subcommittee….Kleiman also charged the National Institutes of Health with giving Coulston millions of dollars in government grants despite knowing the foundation could not adequately care for its chimps. Documents obtained from the NIH under a Freedom of Information Act request, Kleiman said, reported: “An April 1999 NIH site visit/audit found that TCF (Coulston) had $800,000 in unpaid bills, $2.6 million in outstanding loans and had been bringing in at most only one-third of cash flow needed to keep it solvent.”
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has launched an inquiry into how the National Institutes of Health manages the billions of dollars in federal funds it receives annually to sponsor research and conduct its own operations….The committee is also interested in re-examining NIH’s involvement with the now-defunct Coulston Foundation (TCF), a registered animal research facility in Alamogordo, NM. TCF had been one of the largest laboratory chimpanzee facilities in the world but declared bankruptcy last September after it had been cited by the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration with various violations. The committee wants copies of “all files relating to TCF maintained by the grants management and program officers who have overseen NIH grants to TCF.”
Wasteful Animal Experimentation
The “Real Ridiculous Research” campaign at IDA—a play on the Russell & Burch “3 Rs” of Replacement, Reduction and Refinement—garnered damning media coverage. A taxpayer-funded study about rats on cocaine preferring Beethoven or Miles Davis was a highlight. Or lowlight, as the case may be.
Rats prefer silence over Beethoven and Miles Davis unless they are on cocaine. Then they like the jazz. That discovery landed Albany Medical College on the Top 10 list of "Most Ridiculous Research on Animals of 2011" compiled by In Defense of Animals, a California-based group that opposes animal experiments. "We thought that this was particularly wasteful," said Eric Kleiman, research director for IDA, who ranked the Albany Med research second worst for two music experiments on rats. "Miles Davis and Beethoven with rats? I mean, c’mon.”…Also on the Top 10 list were a University of New England study that found exercise was harder for rats with drug-induced arthritis; a study at Emory University that found the offspring of single-mom prairie voles (the researchers removed the fathers) spent less time with their own children; and a Tulane National Primate Research Center that showed labs are a stressful place for lab monkeys, which was ranked No. 1. The Top 10 list is made up of research funded by taxpayer money that appeared in peer-reviewed journals in 2011. "If you are doing these kinds of experiments, what is not being funded?" Kleiman said. "They are taking money away from the really transformative stuff."
A California-based animal-rights group has identified the “Top 10 List of Most Ridiculous Research on Animals for 2011,” and a Lehigh University study weighed in at No. 7 in the nationwide list….In Defense of Animals claims the Lehigh research found that putting hamsters on a diet had no significant impact of their abilities to “perform and enjoy” sexual intercourse and thus was a waste of taxpayers money. Eric Kleiman, research director for In Defense of Animals, said the experiment is an example of how the National Institutes of Health spend billions of tax dollars every year to fund research that yields no significant impact to the average American..
Animal Welfare and Data Integrity
Both the NIH and FDA have stated that animal welfare compliance is directly related to data integrity. Even if one accepts industry’s claims about animal experimentation, Chimps to Chinchillas believes that the USDA inspection histories of multiple research facilities raise significant questions about the entire animal experimentation enterprise. Eric raised such questions regarding the now-defunct Coulston Foundation, and publicly asked the FDA to investigate Inotiv in 2022. After IDA filed multiple complaints regarding the Coulston Foundation, the FDA took action, and for the first and only time in history, disqualified an entire lab—the death penalty for a contract research facility. Eric’s testimony before Congress in March 2000 led to a damning Minneapolis Star Tribune exposé of researcher Fatih Uckun, who failed to report the deaths of three out of eight chimps—Holly, Muffin, and Terence—undergoing tests of a drug in which Uckun had a significant financial interest. Eric’s 25-page literature search and analysis submitted to the USDA regarding the deaths of Holly, Muffin, and Terence from the “known side effect” of the drug TXU-PAP resulted in the agency’s filing an administrative complaint against Coulston regarding their “unnecessary deaths.”
A federal investigation has found that the country's largest chimpanzee facility has violated dozens of regulations relating to good laboratory practices….Animal activists who obtained the report claim that the irregularities raise questions about the integrity of trials involving potential new drugs and medical devices. The Coulston Foundation, a private breeding and research facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico, conducts research into AIDS, spinal cord injury, and vaccine development….The lab irregularities are described in a 31-page report by an FDA investigator, who lists alleged infractions without comment. The report, obtained by In Defense of Animals (IDA), based in Mill Valley, California, states that laboratory workers kept inadequate records of some animal conditions, changed experimental protocols without proper approval, and failed to collect necessary tissue and urine samples. In one case, according to the report, three animals in a study lost approximately 20% of their body weight in a matter of weeks and another died. Despite this, the report states, no animals were removed from the study for medical reasons….IDA says that the document highlights sloppy science by Coulston, which receives much of its support from the National Institutes of Health but also tests new products for pharmaceutical and medical device companies. “It's far more than just record keeping,” says IDA's Eric Kleiman. “If a protocol calls for tissue samples to be taken and they're not, that could damage the whole study.”…Other researchers who carry out clinical studies with primates say the report is likely to be a blow to the foundation even if it does not affect the results of specific studies….Bill Hobson, president of Sierra Biomedical in Sparks, Nevada, says he would be “surprised” if the research was compromised but that the report could have financial repercussions. “These things are open to the public, and our competitors use them” as ammunition when bidding for contracts, he says.
The founder of the Parker Hughes Institute in Roseville withheld information about the deadly effects of an experimental drug that was once touted as a “magic bullet for AIDS and cancer. Dr. Fatih Uckun and a team of researchers claimed that the drug, which he developed, caused no serious side effects in key animal safety tests in 1998. Yet federal investigators found that it caused the deaths of three of eight chimpanzees used in two tests at a research lab in New Mexico. The deaths were not mentioned a year later in a medical journal article by Uckun and his colleagues, or in a recent drug patent citing the chimp testing. In both cases, the tests were held up as evidence of the drug’s safety. At least 11 people, including a 7-year-old girl, got the drug after the chimps died….The chimp deaths prompted a U.S. Agriculture Department investigation of the lab. It shut down in 2002 after being cited for numerous animal welfare violations….Uckun said in a statement he was “quite upset” about the chimp deaths. In the journal article, Uckun’s team mentioned only the results of four of the surviving Coulston chimps and two others tested at a Texas lab…. Even before the article was submitted to the journal, USDA investigators had concluded that the three chimps had died unnecessarily from this side effect, and that Coulston should have been prepared to deal with it….In March 2000, before the TXU human study ended, an animal-rights activist who had looked into the chimp deaths told a House committee about the connection to Uckun and asked for an investigation into how the government oversees federally funded research. “When we find this kind of dishonesty in both a published paper and a patent, that raises real questions about how widespread this is," said Eric Kleiman, the activist who investigated Coulston for eight years as research director for In Defense of Animals, based in California. “This isn't just animal welfare concerns; we are talking about human safety as well.”