On June 6, an inspector with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s animal-welfare division made a macabre discovery. At a sprawling animal research facility in South Texas, 25 captive monkeys had not been fed for six days. They were in such bad shape that two of them had to be euthanized. In her report, the inspector concluded that the “lack of food was due to a miscommunication between employees” at Covance Research Products in Alice, a rural town about an hour west of Corpus Christi.
Covance, a multibillion-dollar company that tests pharmaceutical products on primates, is a repeat offender of the federal law that sets standards for the treatment of animals in research laboratories. USDA inspectors have found the company’s Alice location noncompliant at least five times since 2014. In two related incidents, 13 monkeys at the facility died from overheating when a thermostat malfunctioned.
The rule-breaking underscores an uncomfortable truth in the development of new pharmaceutical drugs and chemicals: The products are sometimes created at the expense of animals that are injured or killed in the process. Now, animal-rights advocates say the situation could get worse. Obama’s USDA let inspectors forgive some violations without writing them up; the Trump administration’s regulatory rollback machine lets licensees self-report violations to escape penalties.
