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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has launched a website cataloging violations of federal animal welfare rules at five Virginia public universities that use animals in their research.
This story was reported and written by our media partner The Virginia Mercury
“The information we are gathering is intended to educate legislators on the need for more transparency and accountability for taxpayer funded institutions that still experiment on animals,” wrote PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch, who is based in Norfolk, in an email.
The launch comes as some Virginia lawmakers push for greater transparency about animal welfare violations at testing facilities in the commonwealth.
The website compiles reports of violations discovered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), as well as reports by and about animal testing facilities to the National Institutes of Health Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare. It includes information on the five public universities in Virginia that experiment on animals as part of their scientific and medical research: Eastern Virginia Medical School, Old Dominion University, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia Tech.
While PETA has long pushed for a halt to animal experimentation, the issue has taken on heightened significance for Virginia legislators following federal agents’ May 2022 seizure of over 4,000 beagles from a Cumberland County breeding facility operated by global biotechnology company Envigo.
The agents had over the prior nine months discovered dozens of violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the complex, where Envigo bred thousands of beagles for use in research. Inspectors found piles of feces, urine, insects and uneaten food under kennel floors. Live ants were seen crawling in and out of dog feeders. More than 300 puppies had died due to “unknown causes” between January and July 2021.
PETA had found similar abuses in its own 2021 undercover investigation.
In 2022, amid national headlines about the Cumberland facility, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation adding further restrictions to Envigo’s operations and making research animals not actively involved in experiments subject to state rules for animal care imposed on commercial pet breeders.
Further efforts in 2023 to increase state oversight of research animals had more mixed results.
Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, proposed legislation that would have required animal testing facilities to register with the state and impose civil penalties and other restrictions on those that racked up critical violations.
“Ultimately what this bill is trying to do is to reduce or eliminate these kinds of violations, especially when they harm the animals that are being tested,” he said during one hearing.
In particular, he argued, the state should have “explanations” of violations at state university labs.
“These are institutions that carry our name: Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University,” he said. “So I think that we as the government that also subsidizes them in many ways, gives them monies, need to have explanations on exactly what is the root cause of these violations, how is it happening, what steps are they taking to correct these.”
Several lawmakers, however, expressed reluctance to back a bill that lacked support from Virginia’s higher education institutions, and the proposal was ultimately tabled.
Other bills would have ordered facilities to submit annual reports to the state on how many animals they use, the percentage of their funds that are spent on research involving animals and a plan for reducing their use of animals over the next 10 years. While the reports would not have been posted publicly on a state website, they would have been subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, said Senate patron Jennifer Boysko, D-Loudoun.
“We don’t know exactly in Virginia who’s testing on animals and what the scope is,” she said during a January committee hearing. “And so this is an attempt to start to monitor and identify so that we are keeping our own records.”
Under the federal Animal Welfare Act, facilities that conduct animal testing must already submit reports to the USDA on what they used in experiments. But many animal welfare organizations argue those figures give an inaccurate picture of the impacts of testing because the act does not cover some of the most common species used in experiments: mice, rats and birds. The Virginia proposal would have included data on all research animals, not just those covered by the Animal Welfare Act.
“The case we’re making is there are a number of animals that are being experimented on in Virginia that do not fall under the coverage of that act,” said Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax, who carried a version of the bill in the House. “So we have no idea or data or reporting requirements on what count of those animals are here in the commonwealth.”
PETA has estimated that the 7,252 animals reported to the USDA as being used in Virginia testing facilities in 2021 are roughly 5% of the animals actually being used in research.
While Boysko’s version of the bill passed both chambers in different forms, it was revised substantially during negotiations between the House and Senate about how to harmonize it with a different proposal from Del. Michael Webert, R-Fauquier.
The final legislation only requires animal testing facilities to display a link to their annual USDA report as well as any other inspection reports. Any facility operated by a higher education institution that receives a critical citation for violating federal animal welfare rules must notify the school’s leadership.
Shin told The Virginian-Pilot this spring that higher education groups had heavily lobbied against other provisions of Boysko’s legislation. And in committee hearings, some lawmakers expressed concern that requiring public schools to report the percentage of their funding that they spent on animal research would be too burdensome.
“You’ve got to quantify that out, separate that out, and my broader question then is: As to what purpose?” Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania, asked this January. “What is that going to tell you when you get the number of animals they’re using in testing and where they’re getting them from? To me it begs the question: What’s it going to tell us that’s going to result in making sure that animals are treated humanely and only testing goes on that needs to be done?”
In an email to the Mercury, Nachminovitch said lawmakers are “unaware of the multitude and/or severity of federal animal welfare violations at laboratories, even those funded by Virginians” but the group expects other bills on the issue to be proposed during the upcoming General Assembly session.
The PETA website intends to make those violations easily accessible to the public, she said. But, she continued, “so much information is not publicly available, e.g., the number of animals not covered by the federal Animal Welfare Act, the breakdown of tax dollars dedicated to animal experiments versus non-animal methods, and more.”
