ACTION ALERT:
Contact:
Dr. Robert Gibbens
Director, Animal Welfare Operations, USDA-APHIS
[email protected]
[email protected]
Please levy the MAXIMUM FINE against University of Louisiana, Lafayette, for
their blatant disregard of the Animal Welfare Act when their negligence
caused five monkeys to die (or be euthanized) in 2021 from dehydration, and
another three in 2020 from heat stroke. Their behavior should NOT be
tolerated and MUST be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Document Reports Monkey Deaths at Louisiana Research Center
From USNews.com, September 24, 2021
Five dehydrated baby monkeys died or were euthanized in July at a University of Louisiana research center, according to a federal inspection report made public this week.
Four of the rhesus macaques became dehydrated after a water pressure
regulator malfunctioned July 20 at the University of Louisiana at
Lafayette's New Iberia Research Center, according to the Aug. 26 report.
The school and its staffers “are diligent in the care provided to animals at
the New Iberia Research Center,” university spokesman Eric Maron said in an
email Thursday.
The care meets or exceeds standards set by federal agencies and
organizations such as the American Association for Accreditation of
Laboratory Animal Care, he said Friday.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector labeled the July 20 incident a
critical violation of a requirement for “reliable running potable water” but
wrote that the university has worked to correct the problem.
The report was made public Thursday in a USDA inspection database, said
Michael Budkie, executive director of Stop Animal Exploitation Now!, an
Ohio-based group opposed to animal experiments.
He asked the agriculture department on Thursday to fine the school $50,000
for those deaths. Budkie also repeated a request made in January to fine the
university $30,000 for the apparent heat deaths of three adult monkeys last
year.
“It is simply unconscionable that ULL staff is incapable of effectively
monitoring primates, noticing issues only when the animals are either dead,
or unresponsive,” he wrote to Robert Gibbens, director of animal welfare
operations for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
The school reported the 2020 deaths promptly and took timely corrective
action, a federal compliance oversight director wrote in a letter provided
by the university in January.
Maron said the research center has checked water pressure daily since the
July deaths and is setting up an automatic alarm to alert staffers if water
pressure drops.
Inspector Annette Chapman wrote that the center also was providing monkeys
with “more high-water content supplements” and was scheduling two
inspections a day for infant monkeys in its studies.
Pressure was normal in water dispensers when a baby monkey was found
dehydrated on Aug. 19 and euthanized the same day, she wrote. Its mother was
normally hydrated but was “underconditioned,” the inspector said.
The report did not indicate why or how that infant became dehydrated.
Regular daily checks on July 19 didn't find any other cases, Chapman wrote.
Asked Friday about that incident, Maron wrote, “The mechanical issue began
as an intermittent failure of the equipment.”
Five more infants were found dehydrated on July 20. Two were dead, two were
euthanized after treatment failed to improve their condition and the fifth
recovered, Chapman wrote.
In 2017, the university paid $100,000 to settle six complaints about its
primate lab but did not admit any wrongdoing.