Animal deaths spark call for fining of Nevada, other testing labs

RENO - An animal rights group is urging federal inspectors to fine Charles River Laboratories $180,000 after the company reported four more monkeys and other research animals died at its testing labs in Nevada and elsewhere.

Leaders of the Stop Animal Exploitation Now say the recent deaths demonstrate a continuing trend of negligence that has resulted in deaths of research animals. The group stepped up its scrutiny of the labs after a 2008 heating malfunction killed 32 monkeys in Sparks and another was boiled alive a year later when it was left in a cage that went through a washer at a Reno lab.

The laboratory researcher paid fines totaling $14,500 for the two incidents . Activists urge $180,000 in fines this time.

Dave Sacks of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said the agency takes the complaints seriously and will take a close look at the laboratories.

The deaths are in reports Charles River provided to the USDA. They document unintended deaths resulting from a scenario when a tube used to force a substance into an animal's stomach instead gets into the lungs .

The reports list nine deaths over three years: one rabbit, one dog, two primates in 2009; one rabbit in 2010; two rabbits; and two primates in 2011.

Michael Budkie, executive director of Stop Animal Exploitation Now, said in a letter to USDA officials the documentation shows staff at Charles River labs have "engaged in a multi-year pattern of negligence and incompetence."

The organization also filed complaints with USDA against a Merck Sharp & Dohme lab in New Jersey, where two primates were euthanized under similar circumstances to the Charles River deaths last year; and against Wuxi Apptec in St. Paul, Minn., where three rabbits died in similar fashion in 2011.

Charles River is one of the world's largest suppliers of clinical and laboratory research services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Headquartered in Wilmington, Mass., it has labs in more than a dozen states as well as Nevada.

The documents redact the location of labs, but Budkie said only two use monkeys and the bulk of those are at Reno.

Charles River closed its lab in Sparks a year after the 32 long-tail macaques were killed. Among other things, its researchers at the Reno lab continue to conduct tests on monkeys and other animals in pursuit of new flu vaccines and even a cure for cancer.