Monkey and Beagle Cull at Lab Prompts ALDF to Call for Legislative Reform
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Eric Fortney, This Dish Is Veg
July 2011

[Ed. Note: For information and updates ABSOLUTELY visit URGENT: SAEN and Win Animal Rights (WAR) Launch Joint Campaign: Save the LoveLace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI) Lab Animals...For more about this particular laboratory, visit Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Albuquerque, NM.]

Recent news regarding a massive beagle and monkey cull [mass killings] at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI) in New Mexico has prompted the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) to call for additional legislative protection for laboratory animals.

According to a report submitted by a whistleblower to the group Stop Animal Exploitation Now (SAEN), the Albuquerque-based lab began exterminating 300 monkeys and a “colony of beagles” last week.

“Culls like this one illustrate how the animal research industry views animals as disposable research tools, and not the living, feeling beings that they are,” says ALDF Executive Director Stephen Wells:

Animals who are no longer used in experiments should be turned over to reputable sanctuaries or, in the case of domestic animals like these beagles, adoptive homes. This practice is already encouraged under the law of the European Union, and for chimpanzees under U.S. federal law. If labs are unwilling to give these animals a chance at finding new homes after their lifetimes of forced service in research facilities, state legislatures or Congress must step in and amend the law to require them to do so.

Unfortunately this isn’t the first time LRRI has raised a few eyebrows throughout the animal welfare community.

Last month the facility agreed to pay $21,750 for multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act that occurred over several years. Additionally in 2010, LRRI was cited for allowing a dog to die during an experiment in which the animal did not receive enough oxygen while another canine passed after it was bled to death “without approval.”


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