PETA Calls for Company to Disclose Its Efforts to Stop Violating Animal Welfare Laws
For Immediate Release:
May 7, 2012
Contact:
Kristin Richards 202-483-7382
Princeton, N.J. -- Dressed in all black, wearing monkey masks, and holding signs that read, "Covance: Dozens of Cruelty Violations" and "Covance Poisons Animals," members of PETA, a Covance stockholder, will gather outside the Princeton Marriott as Covance shareholders arrive for the company's annual meeting on Tuesday. 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 an animal 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: Princeton Marriott, 100 College Rd. E. (near the intersection with W. City Avenue), Princeton
"Shareholders have the right to know what efforts Covance is making to ensure that no more animals are left to freeze in inadequate cages or suffer from untreated medical conditions," says Kathy Guillermo, vice president of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Division. "Just this year, Covance was cited for housing a monkey in isolation for nearly eight months, without the companionship of another monkey—which is required by law—and for allowing another monkey to get tangled in a device in his cage and die."
Following PETA's 2005 undercover investigation of Covance, in which employees were documented striking monkeys, screaming at them and throwing them against cages and dogs were found to be inadequately housed and exercised, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited and fined Covance for multiple serious violations of federal law. In recent years, Covance has been cited by the USDA for leaving dogs to suffer from dental disease, keeping monkeys in outdoor cages that were so inadequate in frigid weather that the monkeys sustained frostbite, and failing to meet the psychological needs of primates. One monkey was so distressed that he ceaselessly paced in backward circles in his cage.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.