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Articles and
Reports The Worst Laboratories in the United States
The animal experimentation controversy excites strong emotions on
both sides of the debate. However, one aspect which is often neglected
is the relative level of actual animal care which animals receive within
laboratories, as well as the level to which experimentation is carried
out with regard to federal laws. The only method for providing an objective assessment based on the
relative occurrence of improper care and non-compliance with federal
laws is a numerical summation of all violations of the Animal Welfare
Act (AWA - the only piece of federal legislation which regulates animal
experimentation). Therefore, an assessment of this data has been performed, and the
results are compiled in a table which follows this introduction. The
data for this table is derived from USDA inspection reports for a
nine-month period during 2005. This table categorizes violations into
several categories, which are: veterinary care, personnel (meaning
inadequate or untrained personnel), handling, environmental enhancement
(relative to primates), food and water, housing facilities,
Institutional Animal Care & Use Committee (IACUC) the body within a
facility that approves experimental procedures and enforces the AWA
internally. This table also totals the number of repeat violations and direct
violations. While the repeat designation is fairly self-explanatory
(important because only after a non-compliance has been repeated 3 times
will the USDA take enforcement action) direct violations need some
explanation. Direct violations are non-compliances which have a direct
concrete impact on the lives of animals. However, the use of this
category is inconsistent and therefore, this category is something less
than reliable. For example, with regard to an incident which occurred at
the University of Pennsylvania in which a sheep died as a result of lack
of veterinary care, this incident was not listed as direct. Therefore,
this designation is incomplete at best. The only thing that can be said
is that direct violations are very severe, but a lack of direct
violations may not mean that a laboratory didn’t have any serious
violations. This listing is comprised of 15 colleges/universities and 6
corporations. While the intention is to list the top 20 labs, a 3-way
tie for 19th occurred, and so this list contains 21 facilities. The most conspicuous issues which arrive from this tabulation is the
high level of violations in the areas of veterinary care 68 (3 per
facility average), housing/facilities 108 (5 per facility average) and
IACUC 131 (6 per facility average). When this information is
extrapolated to account for an entire year, and averaged, we reach a
laboratory that violates federal law 22 times per year, or almost every
other week. This clearly indicates that the Animal Welfare Act is
essentially ignored by some of our nation’s best known colleges,
universities, and private laboratories. It is also clear from this data that the overwhelming majority of the
laboratories in question are in the eastern half of the U.S. This is not
surprising, since the USDA Office of the Inspector General charged, in
2005 (in Animal Care Inspection and Enforcement Activities) that the
Eastern Regional Office of USDA/APHIS/AC was not enforcing the Animal
Welfare Act effectively. Additionally, the largest single group of these laboratories exists
within the state of Massachusetts. It is also interesting to note that
while Harvard comes in second nationally, that 4 of the other worst labs
are affiliated with Harvard (namely Massachusetts General Hospital,
Brigham & Women’s Hospital, McLean Hospital, and the Schepens Eye
Research Institute). Apparently research officials at Harvard and their
affiliated facilities do not see enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act
as a high priority. SAEN’s previous report on this same topic, Breaking the Law: Animal Care in U.S. Labs contains a similar list of facilities that break the
law regularly. Several names continue from one period to the next: the
University of Pennsylvania, the University of Connecticut, Charles River
laboratories, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard. These
laboratories have exhibited a clear long-term pattern of violating
federal law. The existence of a long-term pattern of non-compliance with
federal law is an indictment of both the facilities that break the law,
as well as the agency charged with the enforcement of the Animal Welfare
Act. The table which lists the worst labs along with the violations which
they incurred follows this summary. See:
The Top 20 Violators of the
Animal Welfare Act
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