Scottish Laboratory that Crushes Live Rats to Death Gets Sanctioned

A whistleblower at a laboratory in Scotland alerted PETA to animal cruelty at its facilities. PETA stepped in to file a complaint and the facility is now under investigation and has been sanctioned.

Charles River Laboratories’ allegedly crushed live rats to death, administered chemical overdoses to rats and other harmful acts toward the animals. PETA ‘s information from the whistleblower claimed that rats were removed via forklift to a trash compactor and crushed inside.

PETA claimed this shows, “issues of flagrant incompetence, poor standards of care, and a blatant disregard for life.” The company violates animal welfare regulations in the United States as well.

According to the Sunday Post, Dr. Julia Baines, a senior ­science policy adviser at Peta UK, said, “Experimenting on animals is a dirty business, and Charles River Laboratories is one of the world’s top peddlers of misery and death, reportedly supplying one in every two animals used in experiments and therefore having a hand in half of all the pain, fear and distress endured by animals in laboratories around the globe. The company has previously been found to have violated animal welfare regulations in the US and now in Scotland. Animals are not inanimate pieces of laboratory equipment to be recklessly drugged, gassed, discarded or cut up in cruel experiments. PETA is calling for the Home Office to revoke Charles River Laboratories’ licence.”

The Home Office confirmed sanctions against Charles River Laboratories, one of the largest suppliers of research to pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Animal testing is harmful to animals and unnecessary. The majority of animal testing is used in medicine and for other human products and treatments. According to PETA, the National Institutes of Health wastes $12 billion annually on animal testing that leads nowhere, these experiments on animals actually fail 90% of the time! The research used on animals rarely correlates when it is then tested on humans, making it a waste of money and unnecessary. Monkeys, mice, rats and dogs are all used in animal experiments around the nation.

Sign this petition to end animal testing!

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