Global effort exposes bid to dismantle Indian lab animal welfare regulations

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

NEW DELHI–An apparent covert attempt to
erase regulatory protection of rats, mice, and
birds in Indian laboratories, in the name of
harmonizing Indian regulations with international
standards, was flushed into the open and at
least briefly delayed on March 19 when an
appalled insider leaked the strategic blueprint
to ANIMAL PEOPLE through a chain of street dog
rescuers.
The document was received on a Friday afternoon.
ANIMAL PEOPLE immediately forwarded
copies to regulatory experts throughout the
world, including several in India, soliciting
comment.
The Indian experts promptly recognized
that the proposed “harmonization” was more a move
to dismantle the entire Indian laboratory animal
welfare assurance structure.
Working through the weekend to provide
informed reinforcement were Humane Farm Animal
Care founder Adele Douglass, who led the effort
to obtain the 1990 addition of dog and cat source
tracking requirements to the U.S. Animal Welfare
Act; Aesop Project founder Linda Howard; Animal
Welfare Institute president Cathy Liss; and
International Society for the Protection of
Exotic Animal Kind & Livestock founder Marc
Jurnove, whose case in 1998 established the
right of private citizens to sue the USDA to
obtain Animal Welfare Act enforcement.
By Monday morning cabinet-level e-mails
forwarded from New Delhi indicated that the
status of the strategic blueprint had been
downgraded to “internal brainstorming,” and
there seemed to be a strong likelihood that no
action would be taken until after the current
Indian national election campaign, and perhaps
not then, depending on the strength and
direction of ongoing global response.

Evacuations of Greek dogs & cats for adoption are halted by rumors

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

ATHENS–Two activists taking advantage of the publicity
surrounding the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens to promote adoptions of
street dogs and cats from Greece were accused in a heavily publicized
March 11 confrontation at the Eleftherios Venizelos Airport near
Athens of covertly supplying dogs and cats to laboratories.
Greek Animal Welfare Society representative Carol McBeth
rushed to the airport to refute the spurious charge, on behalf of
the less well known people and organizations who were accused. Greek
Animal Welfare Society president Vesna Jones also vouched for the
rescuers in subsequent correspondence. Nonetheless, airport
officials did not allow the export of six puppies who already had
adoptive families waiting in Belgium, and as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to
press, had clamped down on all dog and cat exports by organizations
which do not operate licensed animal shelters in Greece.
The incident reportedly started when Iris Roussi, vice
president of Zoofiliki Ilioupolis, and Mieke Schuddinck, founder of
the Belgian organization Poezenboot Caprice, were intercepted at the
airport by Greek Animal Lovers Organization president Ioannina
Karagouni, an attorney who accompanied her, and Alpha-TV reporter
Spyros Lambrou. Lambrou and H. Anastasaki of the newspaper Espresso
then extensively amplified Karagouni’s claims.

Ebola exposure risk

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

FORT DETRICK, Maryland– A National Research Council fellow
doing postdoctoral virology research at the U.S. Army Research
Institute for Infectious Diseases accidentally grazed herself with a
needle on February 11 while injecting mice with a weakened strain of
Ebola virus. Quarantined for 30 days on February 12, at “Level
Four” biosecurity, she remained free of Ebola symptoms at least
through February 18, reported David Dishneau of the Baltimore Sun.
The researcher was trying to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Ebola
victims typically die after several days of high fever, diarrhea,
vomiting, and both internal and external bleeding.

Did Plum Island lab introduce Lyme & West Nile viruses?

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

ORIENT POINT, N.Y.–The 850-acre Plum Island Animal Disease
Center, just off Long Island, operated by the USDA and the
Department of Homeland Security, is nominally the first line of
defense for Americans against zoonotic diseases associated with
agriculture–like the avian flu H5N1.
Now New York City corporate attorney Michael C. Carroll, 31,
argues in a newly published book entitled Lab 257 – The Disturbing
Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, from
William Morrow Inc., that accidents at Plum Island may have
introduced Lyme disease and West Nile fever to the U.S.
“The first outbreak of Lyme disease occurred in Old Lyme,
Connecticut, in 1975,” Carroll pointed out to Newsday staff writer
Bill Bleyer in a pre-publication interview. “Ten miles southwest of
Old Lyme you have Plum Island directly in the flight path of hundreds
of thousands of birds.”
Carroll asserts that Plum Island was at the time breeding
thousands of ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease and were
“impregnated with exotic animal viruses and bacteria.”
According to Carroll, government documents establish that in
1978 holes were found in the roof and air filtration system at the
lab and in the incinerator where infected animal carcasses were
burned. The leaks came to light in 1978 after hoof and mouth disease
escaped from one of the Plum Island buildings, infecting about 200
cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses who were kept outside. All were
killed, lest the disease escape to the mainland.

Lab animal care & use updates

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

Northwestern University, of Chicago, in December 2003
agreed to pay $9,400 to the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection
Service in settlement of charges that it violated the federal Animal
Welfare Act from September 1998 to February 2003. Northwestern
allegedly “failed to establish and maintain programs of adequate
veterinary care” for laboratory animals, including keeping “complete
medical records.”
The USDA is reportedly still reviewing the results of an
August 2003 inspection of the Northwestern labs to see if the
deficiencies have been remedied.
The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Laboratory
Animal Welfare is separately probing animal care at Northwestern,
wrote Chicago Tribune higher education reporter Robert Becker.
Northwestern “received $325 million in sponsored research
funds last year,” Becker said.
Earlier in December, Staci Hupp of the Des Moines Register
disclosed that the Iowa State University veterinary school admitted
that it had filed insufficiently detailed animal use reports with the
USDA, but would not be penalized. The Association of Veterinarians
for Animal Rights recently complained to the USDA that Iowa State and
25 other vet schools had filed incomplete data.

Tufts veterinary school breaks dogs’ bones, kills the dogs, injures humane reputation

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

GRAFTON, Mass.– Philip C. Kosch, DVM,
dean of the Tufts University School of Veterinary
Medicine, announced by e-mail on January 2 that
researchers had killed the last five of six dogs
whose legs were deliberately broken as part of a
bone-healing study.
One dog had already been euthanized due to a post-surgical infection.
The killings were authorized by the Tufts
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
despite pleas for the dogs’ lives from the New
England Anti-Vivisection Society and
Massachusetts SPCA.
NEAVS and the MSPA learned of the
bone-breaking study only days earlier, after
Center for Animals & Public Policy masters’
degree candidates Tara Turner, Donna Zenko,
Diana Goodrich, and Michelle Johnson finally
realized after months of effort, supported by
more than two dozen classmates, that they would
not be able to save the dogs through internal
channels.

BOOKS: From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse:
Alternative Methods for a Progressive, Humane Education (2nd edition)
by Nick Jukes and Mihnea Chiuia
InterNICHE (19 Brookhouse Ave. , Leicester LE2 0JE, U.K.), 2003.
520 pages, paperback. (Pricing: contact <coordinator@interniche.org>.

From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse addresses teachers whose
disciplines traditionally involve animal experiments. The book will
also help students who do not wish to take part in animal
experiments, and animal advocates who are campaigning against animal
experimentation in education.
The authors investigate aspects of the “3R” concept. The
original “3R” curriculum, emphasized in basic education, was
“Reading, Writing, Arithmetic.” In 1959 British authors William
Russell and Rex Burch proposed that in science the “3R” concept
should be “Refine, Reduce, Replace,” meaning that the numbers of
animal experiments done should be drastically reduced, and that
painful and invasive experiments should be replaced or refined to use
fewer animals.
Much of From Guinea Pig to Computer Mouse catalogs
alternatives to animal tests in education. More than 500
alternatives suitable for teaching anatomy, physiology, surgery,
and other disciplines are briefly reviewed. Ten chapters describe
products specific to common curriculums.

Aging boomers bring boom in monkey traffic

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

Beijing news media on November 25, 2003
announced the arrest of lab animal dealer Jia
Ruiseng. Called by police the biggest wildlife
trafficker ever caught in China, Ruiseng
allegedly bought 2,130 macaques during the year
from illegal trappers in central Anhui province.
China is building a new primate research
center at Sun Yat Sen University, in the
southern part of the country, but it will start
with only 100-200 macaques, officials said.
Ruiseng served the export trade.
The Royal SPCA in 1995 won a ban on the
import into Britain of wild-caught nonhuman
primates for research use. In August 2003,
however, the Home Office authorized the import
of captive-bred monkeys from the Centre de
Recherches Primatologiques in Mauritius, despite
RSPCA video purporting to show “squalid and
barren cages that appear to fall far short of
International Primatological Society guidelines.”
The Medical Research Council, a British
government agency, is reportedly increasing its
access to monkeys by starting a macaque breeding
center at Porton down in Wiltshire.

Fates that really “scare the monkeys” of Guangzhou, China

September 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

GUANGZHOU, BOSTON– Among the less visible effects of the
2002-2003 SARS outbreak in China may be a claimed shortage of monkeys
in U.S. laboratories.
Of the 99,939 nonhuman primates imported into the U.S. from
1995 through 2002, 26,134 came from China, according to an analysis
of trade data by Linda Howard of the Aesop Project.
The total included almost exactly a third of the 78,903
crab-eating macaques acquired by U.S. labs and lab suppliers.
The U.S. bought more monkeys from China than from any other
nation. Next were Mauritius, furnishing 22,695 monkeys; Indonesia,
17,379; and Vietnam, 13,535. SARS put most of those sources at
least temporarily off limits.
Among the more horrifying possibilities raised by an
ambiguous description of the situation published on July 18 in the
South China Morning Post is that Chinese-reared crab-eating macaques,
if excluded from lab use, may be eaten.
Wrote South China Morning Post Guangzhou correspondent Leu
Siew Ying, “About 10,000 rhesus monkeys and thousands of snakes held
at wild animal farms in Guangzhou are waiting for health authorities
to determine their fate. Depending on whether or not they were
responsible for transmitting SARS, the inmates will head either to
laboratories or dinner tables.”

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