from [email protected]
COULSTON LOSES ANOTHER PRESIDENT AND VET, SUFFERS MORE LAYOFFS
In Defense of Animals, Mill Valley, CA 94941
Contact: Eric Kleiman, 717-939-3231
USDA, NIH Blasted on "Anniversaries of Inaction"
Alamogordo, NM (February 22, 2001) - Ronald Couch, Ph.D.
has left The Coulston Foundation (TCF), making him the third president
or vice-president to leave the reeling primate testing lab in the span
of ten months, In Defense of Animals (IDA) announced today. In addition,
Dr. Babette Fontenot has become the 18th veterinarian to have left the
lab since 1994, while an unknown number of layoffs have apparently also
occurred at the teetering facility.
Couch, who worked with Coulston for almost ten years,
was also the lab's Institutional Official - legally responsible for
ensuring compliance with the Animal Welfare Act - as well as head of its
Division of Experimental and Applied Research. Ali Javadian, Ph.D., who
left last October, was TCF's vice-president, Chief Financial Officer,
and head of Virology and Immunotoxicology. Last March, David Renquist,
DVM, left the lab after being president for only six months. Renquist,
who had been a TCF consultant for years, had been hired specifically to
bring the lab into compliance with animal welfare laws. According to
IDA, the departure of Couch and Javadian may have left TCF with no Ph.D.
scientists with enough experience and training to adequately serve as
study directors for experiments.
"With this continued staffing upheaval, affecting both
senior management and veterinary care, how can Coulston possibly comply
with federal animal welfare laws and properly care for over 600
chimpanzees and 300 monkeys?" asked IDA Research Director Eric Kleiman.
"These lives are in clear, imminent danger, yet both the USDA and the
NIH continue their failure to enforce animal welfare laws. Almost two
years after the NIH's so-called enforcement arm - the Office of
Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW)
- professed its 'great concern about loong-term situation/animals at
serious risk' to both USDA and NIH officials, the situation today
appears worse than ever. Yet not only has the NIH continued its illegal
'supplemental awards' to Coulston - now totaling more than $2.5 million
in taxpayer funds - but the USDA has taken no actual enforcement action
in over two years, despite repeatedly documenting grave violations of
the Animal Welfare Act at the lab since May 1999."
Kleiman noted that today marks the one-year anniversary
of the External Review Team (ERT) site visit mandated by the August 24,
1999 consent decree between Coulston and the USDA to settle multiple
violations of the Animal Welfare Act involving negligent chimpanzee
deaths, research oversight violations, and inadequate veterinary care.
That unprecedented settlement required, among other things, that
Coulston divest of 300 chimpanzees, hire an adequate number of qualified
veterinarians as
determined by the USDA, and comply with the Animal Welfare Act. The ERT
was supposed to report on all aspects of Coulston's animal care program,
and to make recommendations that Coulston was mandated to implement as
part of the legally binding settlement. The Association for Assessment
and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) International
served as the ERT and was approved by the USDA.
In its report, available on the web at http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/Coulston/tcfdocs.html
, AAALAC found gravely deficient veterinary care and staffing, and an
essentially non-functioning Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
- the very same violations it found during a February 24-25, 1998 site
visit regarding these cornerstones of compliance with all animal welfare
laws. According to IDA, the situation in 2000 was actually worse, with
less-experienced veterinarians, 100 percent veterinary turnover, and
lack of veterinary staff involvement in animal care. AAALAC even
suggested that inadequate care may have contributed to the deaths of 17
chimpanzees, and directly blamed the
deaths of four chimpanzees on lack of proper veterinary care. Now TCF
apparently has less than three full-time veterinarians, all lacking
significant chimpanzee experience.
"Today, one year later, the veterinary situation
eviscerated by AAALAC is actually worse with the departure of Dr.
Fontenot," stated Kleiman. "Where is the implementation of the AAALAC
recommendations supposedly mandated by the USDA? What has the USDA done
to enforce this report - or enforce the legally binding August 24, 1999
settlement? Or enforce its own December 1998 inspection report, in which
it cited Coulston for inadequate veterinary care because it had only 2.5
clinical veterinarians - who had far more chimpanzee experience than the
current staff - and needed '3-5 more' to meet animal care needs at TCF?
Considering its non-enforcement of the settlement, what enforcement
action has the USDA taken since it filed formal charges more than two
years ago, on February 11, 1999, for the negligent deaths of the
chimpanzees Terrance, Muffin and Holly?"
According to IDA, the USDA has taken none, despite
repeatedly documenting grave violations of the Animal Welfare Act both
in official investigations involving negligent chimpanzee deaths as well
as routine inspections of the lab since May 1999. In an official
investigation obtained through a joint
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Animal Protection of New
Mexico and IDA, the agency found multiple violations, including
inadequate veterinary care, related to the negligent May 1999 death of
the chimpanzee Eason on an invasive spinal protocol, but never filed
formal charges. Instead, the agency signed the August 24, 1999
settlement with Coulston fully knowing that the lab had already
repeatedly violated a June 1996 settlement decree in which it had
promised to "cease and desist" from
violating the Animal Welfare Act. Since the signing of the August 24,
1999 settlement, in which Coulston again promised to comply with the
Act, the USDA has repeatedly documented violations of both the
settlement and the Act in both inspections and investigations, yet taken
no action. According
to IDA, every single USDA inspection report since the settlement - six
in all - have documented violations of both the settlement and the Act.
But the USDA has taken no enforcement action.
Moreover, according to IDA, the USDA has, for almost
nine months, sat on evidence of violations the agency itself uncovered
involving the gruesome, grossly negligent November 1999 death of the
ex-Air Force chimpanzee Donna, who died from a massive infection and
uterine rupture after carrying a large, dead fetus inside her for weeks.
The USDA completed its investigation into Donna's death on May 26, 2000.
On June 22, 2000, USDA Western Sector Director Dr. Robert Gibbens stated
in a sworn affidavit that the agency "anticipates" filing formal charges
based on the violations it uncovered during its investigation. To date,
USDA has taken no action. When members of Congress wrote the agency last
September asking about the investigation, the USDA took six weeks to
respond - and in an October 31 letter failed to provide the requested
information and said that the USDA was reviewing the case. That was
almost four months ago. Nor has the USDA taken enforcement action
regarding the August 2000 death of the ten-year-old chimpanzee Ray,
despite its apparent findings of Animal Welfare Act violations during a
preliminary inquiry, which eventually became a full-blown official
investigation. Nor has it taken any enforcement action regarding the
year-old External Review Team report, nor the repeated violations of the
August 24, 1999 consent decree that the agency itself has documented.
The USDA did, however, withhold for months the ERT report in response to
a joint FOIA request filed by Animal Protection of New Mexico and IDA,
citing what IDA called the "flimsy pretext" that releasing the report
would interfere with a law enforcement proceeding, despite the fact that
Coulston already possessed the entire report pursuant to the consent
decree.
Also, when Coulston blatantly and illegally denied USDA
inspectors access to the facility on February 18, 2000, the agency
simply wrote an inspections report, but took no action. When Coulston
again attempted to deny access to USDA inspectors last October but
relented after several hours, the USDA
apparently didn't even bother to cite it as a violation.
Kleiman also noted that today marks the two-year
anniversary of the NIH's "Restriction" of Coulston's Animal Welfare
Assurance. On February 22, 1999, OLAW took this rare step based on
concerns about "the number of veterinarians and their credentials." It
also required, among other things, that Coulston hire seven "fully
qualified" veterinarians. In March 1999, NIH publicly stated that when
OLAW addresses a problem with a lab, "the institutions solve them," thus
resulting in no facility having its federal funding terminated the
previous year. Federal law requires that if a facility is in continuing
noncompliance, after being given a "reasonable opportunity" to take
corrective action, then the NIH, through OLAW, "*shall* suspend or
revoke" federal funding to that facility. "I guess no one told Coulston
about OLAW's great record for solving problems," said Kleiman. "These
past two years that OLAW has been on the case certainly have changed
conditions at Coulston. The veterinary staffing situation today is
*worse* today than two years ago. Coulston apparently now has less than
three full-time clinical veterinarians, none having significant
chimpanzee experience. Where are the seven 'fully qualified'
veterinarians supposedly mandated by OLAW? I guess that two years is not
a reasonable amount of time for correcting those grave veterinary
staffing deficiencies cited by OLAW. I guess that's
why OLAW has allowed over $2.5 million in illegal 'supplemental awards'
since June 1999 to avert bankruptcy at this private lab. Perhaps OLAW
should be renamed 'Oh...law?'"
"At both the USDA and the NIH, 'enforcement' appears to
be on paper only," concluded Kleiman. "We don't know which agency's
inactions are worse, but we do know that the lives of over 600
chimpanzees and 300 monkeys are in imminent danger. We call on Congress
to investigate both the NIH and the USDA, and demand that these agencies
finally be compelled to enforce the law and permanently retire the
primates at Coulston."
Go on to Save Dolphins
From TSA Tanks
Return to 11 March 2001 Issue
Return to Newsletters
** Fair Use Notice**
This document may contain copyrighted material, use of which has not been
specifically authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that this
not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the
copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your
own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.