ACTION ALERT:
Contact:
Dr. Robert Gibbens
Director, Animal Welfare Operations, USDA-APHIS
[email protected]
[email protected]
Please levy the MAXIMUM FINE against University of Louisiana, Lafayette, for their blatant
disregard of the Animal Welfare Act when their negligence caused 3 monkeys
to die, possibly by heat stroke. Their behavior should NOT be tolerated and
MUST be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Group Wants Louisiana University Fined for 3 Monkey Deaths
From USNews.com, January 27, 2021
A group opposed to experiments on animals says a Louisiana university
should be fined $30,000 because heat stroke apparently killed three research
monkeys in different outdoor cages on the same day last summer.
The Ohio-based group Stop Animal Exploitation Now issued a news release
about the deaths at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s New Iberia
Research Center.
“I am appalled that ULL negligence allowed three monkeys to die
unnecessarily,” Michael A. Budkie, the group's co-founder said in the
release.
The university said in a statement that the school and its staff are
“diligent in the care” of primates at the New Iberia Research Center and
follow federal rules.
The school took timely and appropriate action following the deaths Aug. 5,
which were promptly reported by phone a day afterward and in a letter Aug.
26, wrote Brent C. Morse, compliance oversight director for the Office of
Laboratory Animal Welfare in the National Institutes of Health.
Budkie’s request for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
is based on the Aug. 26 report by research center director Francois
Villinger, which it received under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Villinger wrote that the center's staff was providing sprinklers or misters
and frozen juice in the afternoons to help the rhesus monkeys stay cool. The
animals had lived outdoors in Alice, Texas, which has a climate similar to
New Iberia's, and other animals from the same place had settled in without
problems during similar weather, so the staff could not have anticipated the
deaths, he wrote.
The animals were brought outside between 8 and 9:10 a.m., watched for 1 to 2
1/2 hours, and checked again at 12:30 p.m., when the three dead monkeys were
found, he wrote. He said necropsy results “strongly suggested” heat stroke.
“The ambient temperatures were comfortable for that time of year, with a
humidity of 60% and 80-83 degrees Fahrenheit” — 26.7 to 28.3 degrees
Celsius) — Villinger wrote.
However, Budkie said, the thermometer had hit 93 Fahrenheit (33.9 Celsius)
by noon.
“It is absurd that ULL staff failed to take precautions when acclimating new
animals on a day where the temperature reached 93 degrees Fahrenheit,” he
said. His statement did not mention specific precautions.
Villinger wrote in August that the center has also taken additional measures
that include setting out wading pools and sprinklers in outdoor cages in the
summer, as well as arranging cages from which monkeys being introduced to
each other can move from an outdoor area to air-conditioned indoor space.
Previous USDA investigations have resulted in the university paying $158,571
since 2007, including $100,000 in 2017, Budke noted. The 2017 payment
settled several complaints, and the university did not admit any wrongdoing
at the research center.