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Update (June 3, 2024): We have historic news! Following PETA’s undercover investigation, Envigo pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of conspiracy to violate the federal Animal Welfare Act and a felony charge of conspiracy to violate the federal Clean Water Act. 😲 🎉
These first-ever federal convictions of a supplier of animals for experimentation leave Envigo facing more than $35 million in penalties, including a $22 million fine. 😶 PETA’s investigator tipped off the government to many of the violations later cited in filings by the U.S. Department of Justice, including that Envigo staff killed conscious puppies by painfully injecting them in the heart, advised other employees to withhold food from nursing mother dogs, falsely told inspectors the dogs were being fed every day, and falsified records.
Since July 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has cited Envigo for more than 70 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Read the agency’s findings and inspection reports here.
The dogs held at the facility had no beds, no toys, no stimulation—no real lives. For more than 50 years, different companies have bred them at this dog factory farm to sell to laboratories for experimentation. 😟
The dogs were kept in sheds that stretched as long as a football field. When hundreds of dogs inside these sheds barked at once, the sound was deafeningly loud. The noise level reached over 117 decibels—often louder than a rock concert—and dogs’ hearing is much more sensitive than humans’. 🥺
The stressful and severely crowded conditions caused the animals to fight, often leading to injuries (especially to their ears). Female dogs at Envigo were bred repeatedly for years. Many gave birth to puppies on the hard floor.
Dead and Dying Puppies: An Almost Daily Occurrence
Throughout the investigation, PETA’s eyewitness found more than 350 puppies dead among their live littermates and mothers. 😭 Some puppies had been accidentally crushed to death by their mothers inside the cramped cages, while others just couldn’t survive the harsh conditions.
On a Monday, PETA’s investigator found the rotting, rancid-smelling, and split-open body of a puppy who had been left in a cage with their mother and littermates. A worker said, “That puppy’s probably been in there since Friday.” Some puppies fell through holes in the cages and ended up in drains—soaking wet and covered with feces, bedding, and waste. They usually didn’t survive.
Conscious Puppies Killed by Heart Injection
Workers euthanized some puppies by injecting a solution into their hearts while they were still conscious and able to feel the needle penetrating their chests. FYI, this practice goes completely against veterinary guidelines for euthanasia. 😠
Animals and Food Soaked With High-Pressure Water
A supervisor and other Envigo employees sprayed the cages with a high-pressure hose without first removing the nursing mother dogs and puppies inside. The dogs were left soaking wet. 😞 Careless spraying also left food moldy and rotting, and maggots sometimes infested puppies’ food.
Lay Workers With No Veterinary Credentials ‘Diagnosed’ Dogs
When dogs were sick or injured, lay workers tried to diagnose and treat them. A supervisor put a needle into a puppy’s head, without pain relief, in a crude attempt to drain fluid from a wound. When the puppy cried out, the supervisor tried to hold the animal’s mouth shut. 😢
Workers who were not veterinarians—or even veterinary technicians—cut tissue from puppies’ eyes, stitched dogs’ penises, and even cut puppies out of sedated dogs’ abdomens before euthanizing the mothers.
Standard Operating Procedures and the Suffering They Caused
Workers were told to use clamps to remove newborn puppies’ dewclaws—where bone meets nail—without pain relief. Workers also pressed needled clamps into puppies’ ears, as the animals’ mothers looked on, and then rubbed paint into the resulting holes to tattoo them.
Workers Refused to Follow the Feds’ Instructions
Food was purposely withheld from nursing mothers during their last 48 hours with their puppies. According to a supervisor, government inspectors told management to feed the dogs through their last nursing day, but the supervisor refused and kept denying them even half a cup of kibble. 😡 Wtaf.
No animals deserve to endure the anguish that imprisoned dogs at Envigo experience. 🙅 Please urge your members of Congress to mandate that NIH stop throwing away our tax dollars on cruel and useless experiments on animals like these beagles and instead focus on modern, non-animal research methods.