Tribune/Debra Reid - A sign, held by Nancy Harbinson, urges Charles River Lab employees to report animal abuse at the company's lab in Sparks where 32 monkeys died recently. "I'm here for the animals. I want them to stop this (animal testing). They have plenty of alternatives," Harbinson said.
Tribune/Debra Reid - Signs and fliers urged Charles River Lab employees to report animal abuse during Friday's peaceful protest at the lab in Sparks where thirty-two monkeys recently died. Sparks police were called by company officials and warned six protesters, including Karen Harbinson, to stay out of the street and off private property.
Six protesters, who were out in front of the Charles River Laboratories, were outraged at Thursday’s release from an anonymous Charles River employee that had notified the public of the overheating of 32 monkeys overnight back in May.
The monkeys, according to a Charles River statement, were found dead in one room on May 28 of this year. Charles River attributes the primates’ deaths to “several human errors.”
Having organized weeks before, protesting previous animal rights violations, the group of protesters said they felt the licensing of the lab should be revoked.
Protest organizer, Tania Tavcar, was leading the main effort of the protest, passing out fliers to Charles River employees, in effort to encourage other whistleblowers to come forward if they were aware of similar animal abuse.
“We know for a fact, this will happen again,” Tavcar said, explaining that she is not satisfied with the control efforts of the United States Department of Agriculture in stepping into this situation. “It’s high time they did something about this.”
Charles River Laboratories spokeswoman, Amy Cianciaruso, reported in an official release that Charles River “takes this issue very seriously and immediately notified the Center(s) for Disease Control and Prevention” and met with the USDA shortly after.
“Several corrective measures were identified, implemented and tested,” Cianciaruso said.
USDA spokeswoman Karen Eggert confirmed that Charles River did meet with USDA officials and an investigation followed. Since then, Eggert said the situation has been corrected.
“When a mistake is noticed, we (USDA) work with the company to correct it,” Eggert said.
As far as operation licenses, the USDA does have the jurisdiction to revoke. However, Eggert said, it is only revoked when dealing with “repeat offenders” and “if the problem isn’t fixed.”
When investigating the incident involving the 32 dead monkeys, no fines were issued, Eggert said.
Coral Amende, founder of Reno Outreach for Animal Rights said she feels strongly that the importation of the animals should be banned as well as the Charles River licensing revoked.
“I think that any research lab is inhumane,” Amende said. “But sometimes you just get those that go beyond inhumane and Charles River is one of those.”
According to USDA reports, over the course of 2006 and 2007, there were multiple animal injury reports including such those as two monkeys who required fingers to be amputated due to moving cages, two animals suffered adverse clinical side affects and died overnight and six rabbits suffered from skin lesions from injections.
Tavcar and her protesters said they will not give up protesting though, with the next protest scheduled for Wednesday at the Charles River Sparks location at 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“The USDA just slaps their (Charles River) wrist,” Tavcar said. “How many animals have to die?”
For complete USDA reports, visit the USDA Web site at www.usda.gov.
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