Podcasts & Presentations

Eric has given presentations to animal law and public policy classes, and has spoken to an animal protection podcast about the campaign to end chimpanzee experimentation, Envigo, the primate trade, Moulton Chinchilla, media, tactics, strategy, obtaining public records, whistleblowers, and using existing animal welfare laws—despite their weakness—to help animals.

Podcasts:

• Species Unite podcast, February 2023. This involved discussion of the campaign to end chimpanzee experimentation, including the efforts to put the world’s largest chimp lab out of business, the controversy surrounding the primate trade and the monkey smuggling indictment unsealed in November 2022, the failure of the USDA to adequately enforce the Animal Welfare Act, and the thousands of beagles rescued from appalling conditions at Envigo’s dog breeding facility in Virginia, after the USDA had failed to act.

Presentations:

• Talk to Vermont Law and Graduate School animal law class about the criminal cruelty case against Charles River Laboratories, October 2023. This included discussion of the landmark criminal charges against the world’s largest supplier of animals for experimentation involving the deaths of the chimpanzees Rex and Ashley, and the near-death of Topsy, the use of the Freedom of Information Act, and a lawsuit against the NIH, to obtain medical records for hundreds of chimpanzees at the Alamogordo Primate Facility, and how that outgrowth of the criminal case led to the groundbreaking McClatchy Newspapers Special Report: “Chimps: Life in the Lab.”

• Presentation to University of Oklahoma animal law class about Moulton Chinchilla, March 2025. This included discussion of Moulton Chinchilla as a case study for the longstanding failure of the USDA to adequately enforce the Animal Welfare Act. The slide deck is based primarily on records—including damning (and graphic) photos obtained from the USDA through FOIA—documenting the agency’s failure to act for almost a decade. The importance of media, as well as multiple USDA Inspector General audits and an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision lambasting the agency’s enforcement of the AWA, are also included.

• Talk to Masters in Animal Protection Policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School, April 2025. This included discussion of the campaign to end chimpanzee experimentation, the closure of the world’s largest chimp lab, the use of FOIA and other public records laws, whistleblowers, the importance of media in effecting change for animals, campaign strategies that might be of use today (and those that might not be), the importance of legal challenges such as petitions to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the primate trade.

Testimony:

• In-person testimony before Congress, March 2000.  This included discussion of the Coulston Foundation’s egregious animal welfare record, NIH’s continued illegal funding of the lab despite violations of animal welfare and data integrity regulations, and calls for a Congressional investigation of NIH as well as an end to experimentation on chimpanzees. Much of this information was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

• Written testimony to Congress, 2006.  This included discussion of the Coulston Foundation, the criminal cruelty charges against NIH contractor Charles River Laboratories, and NIH’s legal and ethical responsibility for the Alamogordo Primate Facility.