ACTION ALERT:
Contact:
Dr. Robert Gibbens Director, Western Region, USDA
(970) 494-7478
[email protected]
[email protected]
SAMPLE MESSAGE:
Dr. Gibbens,
Please LEVY a MAXIMUM FINE against University of Washington, Seattle, for
their blatant disregard of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) when their
negligence allowed multiple ferrets to be improperly inflicted with
potentially severe head injuries. Their behavior must NOT be tolerated and
MUST be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Watchdog claims UW bashed ferrets’ heads in experiment
From Jake Goldstein-Street, DailyUW.com, January 23, 2020
A national watchdog group has filed a federal complaint claiming
violations of the Animal Welfare Act in the UW’s treatment of ferrets.
UW researchers said they gave 10 ferrets three successive impacts at 24-hour
intervals to induce traumatic brain injury. One ferret was eventually
euthanized because they were not recovering from anesthesia, according to
Stop Animal Exploitation Now, the Ohio-based watchdog that filed the
complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Care Office.
"The idea that UW staff are bashing ferrets in the head, intentionally
inflicting head injuries is simply barbaric," SAEN co-founder Michael Budkie
said in a press release. "On top of that, UW can't even follow its own
approved protocol. This project is totally unscientific."
The UW reported the ferret’s death to the Office of Laboratory Animal
Welfare within the National Institutes of Health.
“Since the University of Washington has a long history of animal abuse which
has now led to the deaths of multiple animals, I must insist that you take
the most severe action allowable under the Animal Welfare Act and
immediately begin the process of issuing the maximum fine allowable against
the University of Washington at the completion of your investigation,”
Budkie wrote in the complaint.
He wants the university to be fined $10,000 per infraction per animal. He
says that the UW violated federal law because staff did not follow their own
protocol, which was approved by the UW’s Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee.
The UW told KUOW in a statement that it “did a careful investigation of the
situation" and that "while there was a variation from the approved
experimental protocol, the review found that there were no apparent animal
welfare issues."
This isn’t the first time the UW has come under fire for its treatment of
lab animals. The UW was scrutinized in 2017 for the death of a macaque
research monkey due to dehydration. An inspection report concluded that the
monkey’s water line was disconnected for two to three days and the
technician involved no longer works at the UW.
SAEN wrote a letter in March 2017 to UW President Ana Mari Cauce with “grave
concerns” over the school’s experimentation with lab animals. The letter
cites several alleged incidents of mistreatment, including failing to
provide pain medication to monkeys, the death of a guinea pig, and
unapproved procedures with bats.
The construction of the UW’s new animal lab, an underground animal research
project next to Foege Hall worth over $100 million, also drew national
outcry. The controversy even drew protesters at health science
administrators’ homes, according to The Seattle Times.