Photo by the HSUSĪccording to the most recent reports, approximately 60,000 dogs are used in testing and research in the United States each year, with an additional 6,500 dogs reported as being held in laboratories but not yet used. This hound was surgically implanted with a drug delivery device for a study sponsored by Above and Beyond NB, LLC of Atlanta. In addition to toxicity testing, many other agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either carry out biomedical research on dogs (such as cardiac research) or provide funding for experiments to be carried out at other facilities. For example, the Food and Drug Administration requests that companies provide numerous animal tests, including on dogs, as part of their drug approval process. government not only sanctions these tests, many of its agencies either require them or carry out such testing themselves. Treating companion animals like this is unthinkable to most of us, and it would be illegal in any other situation. Dogs being used by workers to practice procedures like force feeding and blood collection. Dogs undergoing invasive surgeries or having their jaws broken to test dental implants. Dogs being force-fed or infused with drugs, pesticides and other products, using crude methods, many that are unlikely to ever be used in humans. Our investigator, who spent nearly 100 days at the facility, documented the dogs cowering, frightened, in their cages with surgical scars and implanted with large devices. On the day Harvey was euthanized, he was let out of his cage for a few minutes to run around on the floor - that day was “the best life he knew,” one lab employee observed.Īnd it was no different for most of the other dogs who were part of that test, sponsored by Paredox Therapeutics. That beagle, Harvey, and the 20 others did die. When another beagle from the same study is being carried to a room for euthanasia, one of the lab workers remarks, “He’s gonna die.” Subsequently, you see Harvey with a big surgical scar: his chest was opened and two chemical substances were poured into it.
Dogs in laboratories that test on animals are usually numbered, not named, but Harvey (number 1016) was an exception because laboratory workers thought he was “a good boy” and stood out as friendly and “adorable.” In the video, recorded as part of an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States, you’ll see Harvey, a beagle with soft, brown eyes, being taken out of his stainless-steel cage at the Charles River Laboratories in Michigan, where he was being used with 21 other dogs for a study.
We are also sharing this video because we need your help to get 36 dogs out of a testing facility where they are now being force-fed a fungicide every day.
It’s the kind of video no dog lover would ever wish to see, but we are releasing it today because it’s important for you to know just what goes on at laboratories across the United States where dogs are poisoned – and killed – for pesticide and pharmaceutical products and other purposes each year.