Nationally-known labs (including UW Seattle) lie to federal agencies about animal tests; USDA report 'fraught with errors,' claims national research watchdog; Internal NIH Report Released
SEATTLE , WA - When is an electric shock not painful? Apparently, when testing labs and the government say it's not, according to a national research watchdog group that charges a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture report on animal lab testing is "fraught with errors" and hides horrific abuse, and even the existence of thousands of primate research animals.
According to Ohio-based SAEN, the recently-posted USDA Animal Welfare Enforcement Report (AWER) on animals used in painful experimentation is seriously flawed. Even the numbers are false, says SAEN, noting the 2005 report listed only 740 primates used in tests for the state of North Carolina even though Wake Forest University alone used 1,318 primates.
It's all part of a growing trend of deceptive reporting, said SAEN. Violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) by laboratories increased by 18.4 percent in one year, and a whopping 90 percent in the last five years even though AWER documents that overall animal experimentation decreased
14 percent in 2006.
"These supposedly reputable facilities are simply lying to both the federal government and the American people. Experiments which subject animals to extreme confinement, electric shocks or severe hunger and thirst are often not counted as causing pain or distress," said Michael A. Budkie, A.H.T., Executive Director of SAEN. UW Seattle researchers conducting painful experiments on primates include Albert Fuchs, Chris Kaneko, Eberhard Fetz, Steve Perlmutter.
"The compilation of such a shoddy report raises serious questions about the ability of the USDA as a regulatory agency," said Budkie. "This report is fraught with errors, and conveniently conceals the highly painful nature of experimentation on primates, making this practice appear to be well-regulated and humane. Nothing could be further from the truth."
He said labs in 16 states that experiment on approximately 34,000 primates supposedly only subjected 99 of them - or, less than one-half of one percent - to any unrelieved pain. The labs would include nationally known facilities at Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Tulane, University of Texas, University of Wisconsin, University of Washington, University of Alabama, University of Minnesota, Vanderbilt, University of Oklahoma (Health Sciences Center), Washington University and Wake Forest.
SAEN is also releasing a 100 page internal NIH report about the University of Washington Primate Research Center.
