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Animal group reacts to report about GRU and animal research

By Jorge Lopez, WRDW, Friday, March 20, 2015

A federal report finds GRU is breaking the rules when it comes to research animals.
The United States Department of Agriculture report includes nearly half a dozen violations from using expired medicine to leaving animals in cages with waste.
An animal group out of Ohio says they have a mission in Augusta.

"We want to show the public what happens insides laboratories," said Michael Budkie.
These federal reports show a lot of the same concerns the watch dog group SAEN or Stop Animal Exploitation Now has. Michael Budkie is one of the founders.
"One animal died in connection to a surgical procedure which apparently was not properly performed," Budkie said.
The inspection report shows that incident is still being reviewed, but issues like not cleaning cages, using expired medicine, and housing primates or monkeys alone have already been corrected or have a deadline to be corrected.

"The problems of working with other species of animals is that they simply do not react to chemicals, drugs, and treatments the same way that you and I do,"
Back in 2013 the humane society also claimed university researchers violated the animal welfare act when they put dental implants on dogs which led to a visit from the USDA, the same agency that released these most recent reports.

"This is the kind of thing that realistically if private individuals treated animals this way in their own home they would be cited under criminal charges for animal cruelty," Budkie said.

Georgia Regents University says the Ohio based group is quote "sensationalizing the accounts of preliminary reports from a routine USDA site visit."

We tried to reach out to the USDA to see if this latest routine inspection was planned or triggered because of 2013 dental implant research with dogs, but we haven't heard back.

SAEN or Stop Animal Exploitation Now says they filed an official complaint with the USDA yesterday in hopes that fines and punishment will bring change.

See also:

• Georgia Regents University, Augusta, CA

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