Report: Mt. Ida labs rank among dirtiest in nation
Byline: By Sarah Andrews
STAFF WRITER
Newton TAB
1 May 2004
A report compiled by an animal rights watchdog group cited
animal labs at Mount Ida College among the dirtiest in the country.
The report, put together by Cincinnati-based Stop Animal
Exploitation Now!, found Mount Ida's labs to be the 11th dirtiest lab in the
country. Three other Massachusetts research labs at Charles Rivers Laboratories,
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Harvard also placed among the top
25 dirtiest animal research labs.
The author of SAEN's report, Michael Budkie, who put the
report together using inspection reports from the United States Department of
Agriculture from 2000 to 2003, said Mount Ida sticks out because it is one of
the smaller labs with only 40 or so animals, but had a high number of violations
with 25.
"The fact that they would come up eleventh nationally with
less than 100 animals on hand, that's pretty problematic and that's putting it
mildly. I find it shameful that with 40 animals they came up with 25 violations
in 3 years. It's approaching one per animal," he said.
Officials in Mount Ida's animal lab did not return messages
left by the TAB.
Most of the violations at Mount Ida occurred in the categories
of miscellaneous and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Budkie said
miscellaneous violations could range from sanitation to the way animals were
housed. IACUC violations occurred at most labs.
The IACUC is the body charged with enforcing the Animal
Welfare Act by inspections and reviews on a daily basis in all research labs.
