November/December
2000
Life
Science or Living Hell?
By Barbara
Stagno
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Huntingdon Life Sciences
(HLS) is Europe’s largest contract animal testing company, where 500
animals die each day from cruelty, neglect and botched experiments.
With headquarters in Great Britain, and a U.S. laboratory located in
East Millstone, NJ, there are more than 70,000 animals—including
dogs, cats, monkeys, guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, mice, and birds—waiting
to die at any time in HLS.
There’s no “Life” for the animals at Huntingdon Life
Sciences
HLS’s business is conducting chemical tests on animals. These
tests are commissioned by its clients, who are some of the top names
in the pharmaceutical, biotech and agrochemical industries. Each year
at HLS, 180,000 animals are forced to ingest, inhale and endure all
manner of toxic chemicals. Animals are restrained and forced to consume
toxic doses of pharmaceuticals, pesticides or industrial chemicals
such
as weed killers and disinfectants. Some animals are placed in inhalation
chambers where they are choked by noxious fumes; others have caustic
chemicals applied to their shaved, raw skin. At the end of these excruciating
procedures, some of which last up to a year, the surviving animals
are
killed and their bodies are dissected for analysis. For the animals,
HLS is a living hell.
Huntingdon’s “Secrets” Exposed
HLS’s motto is “Your Secret is Our Secret.” However,
some of its loathsome secrets have been revealed to the world through
a series of undercover investigations. In 1997, animal rights organizations
in the U.S. and England infiltrated HLS and emerged with shocking video
coverage that would change the public’s view of HLS forever. Extensive
footage from both locations showed laboratory workers taunting and abusing
animals as they were subjected to invasive procedures and chemical tests.
In the UK, HLS workers were caught on video punching beagle puppies
in the face. Clandestine video footage from the NJ facility showed workers
shoving and throwing monkeys into cages, jeering at them while performing
procedures and in one gruesome scene, a supposedly “post-mortem” dissection
was performed on a monkey who was still alive. These video clips are
only a small segment of months of documentation proving callous
abuse and torture of defenseless animals at HLS. One investigator wrote
in her statement about HLS:
“The laboratory personnel [at HLS] are so poorly trained that even
routine procedures like blood collection caused animals serious physical
injuries. I saw monkeys hunched over in pain after abdominal surgery
performed by laboratory personnel who had no formal veterinary training.
One of the employees doing the surgery told me that she had never done
such surgeries before and that she had ‘no idea what [she] was
doing.’
HLS technicians ‘practiced’ surgery on lightly anesthetized
rats; failed to kill rats by breaking their necks despite numerous attempts,
ultimately putting them into plastic bags while still alive; failed
to provide injured and infected rats with veterinary care; and even
hung a sign on a rat’s cage saying ‘Please give me a drink’ instead
of euthanizing the animal who could no longer drink because of severe
oral disease.
HLS lab workers joked about the ‘Platinum Club’—you
automatically become a member if you kill an animal. They keep a list
of those in
the club and the animals they had killed.”
HLS Dethroned
When the undercover exposès reached the media—including
a British TV station that broadcast a clip showing the workers hitting
crying puppies in the face—HLS was hit with a public relations
nightmare. The infractions at the U.S. facility resulted in a $50,000
fine by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violating the Animal
Welfare Act. In England, the Home Office confirmed that HLS had violated
16 conditions of Good Laboratory Practice. Two HLS employees were subsequently
arrested and charged with cruelty to animals. With its disgraceful
treatment
of animals now revealed to the world, HLS began to slip from a profit-making
company into a sinking ship with investors pulling out abruptly.
Transplant scandal tells newest story on HLS house of horrors
Incredibly, in September 2000, HLS was exposed yet again for extreme
animal cruelty and fraudulent research practices. Animal activists obtained
documents leaked from the lab that exposed at least 520 errors and omissions
that occurred due to botched cross-species organ transplant experiments.
Hundreds of monkeys and wild-caught baboons died after they were transplanted
with genetically manipulated piglet hearts and kidneys. Numerous reports
on this research boasted about their tremendous successes, but the newest
information has proven that those successes and claims were greatly
exaggerated. In fact, the documents reveal that researchers falsified
outcomes to make it appear as if the experiments were successful, and
that animals who were recorded on paper as doing well were, in fact,
suffering and dying.
A Dim Future for HLS
The good news is that British activists, acting under the unified
group known as Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), have been successful
in bringing HLS financially to its knees by targeting the company’s
investors. HLS is now looking to the U.S.—where animal protection
laws are weaker and where its marred reputation is less widely known—to
restore its financial future. This is why In Defense of Animals (IDA)
has linked arms with SHAC in an international campaign designed to target
HLS on both sides of the Atlantic. IDA will make sure that HLS’s
dirty reputation continues to be exposed widely in the U.S., especially
to its investors.
Barbara Stagno is Northeast
Regional Director for In Defense of Animals, a national organization
dedicated to ending the abuse of animals by defending their rights,
welfare and habitats. To learn more or to join their campaigns call
(212) 462-3068 or visit www.idausa.org.
