PETA Calls for Company to Disclose Its Efforts to Stop Violating Animal Protection Laws
For Immediate Release:
May 7, 2012
Contact:
Kristin Richards 202-483-7382
Andover, Mass. -- Dressed in all black, wearing dog masks, and holding signs that read, "Charles River Poisons Dogs, Cats, Rabbits, Mice" and "32 Monkeys Baked to Death," members of PETA will gather outside the Wyndham Boston Andover hotel as Charles River Laboratories (CRL) shareholders arrive for the company's annual meeting on Tuesday. PETA owns a small amount of stock in CRL in order to introduce resolutions to benefit animals who are experimented on by the company. Inside the meeting, a PETA representative will speak in support of the group's shareholder resolution, which calls on the company—which has a long history of animal welfare violations—to issue a report disclosing its efforts to correct these violations and to ensure future compliance with animal welfare laws:
Date: Tuesday, May 8
Time: 7:30 a.m.
Place: Wyndham Boston Andover, 123 River Rd. (near the River Road exit off Interstate 93), Andover
"Shareholders have the right to know what efforts, if any, Charles River Laboratories is making to address the egregious violations, including overheating and scalding monkeys to death, that have occurred at its facilities," says Jessica Sandler, director of PETA's Regulatory Testing Division. "CRL has an ethical and financial obligation to adhere to minimum animal protection regulations—including using modern, non-animal research methods whenever possible."
In 2010, the latest year for which statistics are available, CRL used more than 1,300 dogs, 5,000 primates, and tens of thousands of rats, mice, and other animals in experiments. In recent years, CRL has been cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for allowing a monkey to be boiled alive inside a high-temperature cage washer and 32 monkeys to be cooked to death by their room's heating system. CRL has denied veterinary care to rabbits and pigs with large, deep sores and failed to treat primates so traumatized by their captivity that they had begun to exhibit abnormal behavior, such as one monkey who picked all the hair off his back.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.