Media Coverage About SAEN Stop Animal Exploitation Now

Animal rights group blasts N.M. Tech over cannibalism, other abuses in mice research

 

Animal rights group blasts N.M. Tech over cannibalism, other abuses in mice research

From SantaFeNewMexican.com, March 2, 2023

A national animal rights watchdog group is calling on the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to terminate all staff involved in a research project involving mice that went awry in 2021, and to overhaul the school’s animal care program.

The organization, which calls itself SAEN — for stop animal exploitation now — sent a letter to New Mexico Tech President Stephen Wells late last month demanding changes after it obtained a report about a federally funded project that violated both federal and school policies on the welfare of research animals.

The researcher conducting the cancer study on a colony of mice provided such poor care of the animals that babies separated from the colony died, other mice starved to death and cages became crowded from overbreeding, the school reported to the National Institutes of Health in September 2021. “Cannibalism was high,” the report says.

It also cites a lack of record-keeping and says the researcher “directed and allowed unqualified and inexperienced personnel (an undergraduate) to conduct surgical procedures on living mice without supervision.”

The report says the researcher’s privileges were revoked and the person was removed from their spot on the school’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which conducted an investigation into allegations of abuses.

“It is time for the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to draw a line in the sand and say ‘No More.’ A very clear message must be sent to all employees,” SAEN Executive Director Michael Budkie wrote in the Feb. 27 letter to Wells.

If the school doesn’t meet the group’s demands, Budkie wrote, “SAEN will be forced to submit a request to the National Institutes of Health to revoke the New Mexico Tech Animal Welfare Assurance,” which would lead to the termination of all federally funded projects involving animals.

Mikell Coleman, New Mexico Tech’s director of research compliance, said in a statement Thursday in response to the letter the school notified the National Institutes of Health about its investigation into the incident, ended the researcher’s privileges to conduct animal studies and terminated funding for the project.

“The researcher in question was the only individual engaged in this type of research at the institution and the incident effectively ended that type of research at New Mexico Tech,” the statement says.

“The IACUC and Research Compliance staff take animal welfare seriously,” Coleman wrote. “The conduct was discovered and reported, thoroughly investigated, and subsequently adjudicated. The corrective actions taken were the most severe actions the IACUC and the New Mexico Tech Research Office had the authority to take.”

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