Aisling Ambassador Beagles rescued and adopted from Envigo Breeding Facility in VA
8.6.2022 Meet Gemma and Tink, two 3 and 4-year old female ‘purpose bred’ beagles recently adopted by our Founder and President, Susan Howe, and now joining their new brother Scout as the next Aisling Center Ambassador Dogs. Survivors of the Envigo breeding facility in Cumberland VA that ceased its operations in May 2022, Gem and Tink were among the first beagles to leave the facility where nearly 5000 beagles were warehoused, bred for the sole purpose of supplying research and testing laboratories with dogs. More than 4000 remaining dogs are currently being transported to various rescues and shelters around the country, en route to their forever homes.
Following a seven month undercover investigation by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) in 2021, exposing dozens of animal rights violations, and over 70 violations of the Animal Welfare Act cited by the USDA in the past two years, Virginia legislators pressured the USDA to respond, and on May 19, 2022, the US Department of Justice filed a complaint in a Federal District Court seeking an injunction against Envigo, barring them from breeding, selling or otherwise engaging in business related to the beagles at the Cumberland VA facility. In a final ruling on the case in July, US District Court Judge Norman K. Moon ordered all remaining beagles at the facility be surrendered and placed up for adoption and the facility be closed.
The Human Society of the United States is working with the Federal Government and multiple shelter and rescue partners around the country, including MSPCA and Northeast Animal Shelter, along with several smaller shelters and rescues in Massachusetts, to find loving permanent homes for these dogs. Tink and Gemma will spend the rest of their lives in the home of our Founder, with their 4 other rescue beagle siblings. You can read about the rescue efforts underway, and Tink and Gem’s story as covered by the Boston Globe here.
It is important to understand that while the closure of the Cumberland VA Envigo Facility is an historic victory for animal welfare, especially for the 4000+ beagle survivors, our work does not end here. Envigo is a privately-held contract research organization (CRO) with over 30 locations in North America, Europe and the Middle East. The company was acquired by parent company Inotiv in 2021, and provides beagles and other ‘research models’, products and research and testing services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, government, academia, and other life sciences organizations. There are literally tens of thousands of beagles (and other dogs) around the country and the world being bred for research and testing, by companies like Envigo/Inotiv, Marshall BioResources and Ridglan Farms.
The use of dogs in scientific research dates back over two hundred years in the US, and in product testing at least as far back as the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938. While the number of dogs used today for these purposes is substantially less than the over 200,000 per year used in the US in the 1970s, according to USDA records between 50-60,000 per year are still subjected to these practices in this country.
Purpose-bred dogs are part of a multi-billion dollar industry designed to bring drugs, food, medical devices and other chemicals to market, and it will take more than animal rights activism to end these practices. It will take policy changes, cutting taxpayer dollars that support animal research and testing, financial investments in tech companies focused on biomedical research methods that do not use live animal models, and incentives for researchers to develop, refine, and adopt newer, more efficient, effective and predictive non-animal models—many of which exist already, and some that still require further development to serve as surrogates for complex living organisms. Some methods are readily available, awaiting only validation and acceptance from the scientific community and from regulatory agencies. It will require re-training of the scientific and product research and development communities on the use of new approach methods (NAMs), rethinking the idea that benchmark data—however poor, is a reason to continue the status quo. It will take public pressure, and a commitment government officials to reallocate tax payer dollars to incentivize and support this transition. It will take a systems change with multiple disruptions—something that doesn’t happen overnight, and yet collective perturbations can and often do lead to a tipping point.
We cannot wait for the change most needed, which is a change of heart. Creating a culture of compassion where animals are given the respect and kindness they deserve is a critical component of building an enlightened and peaceful society, and has been a goal of animal rights activists for centuries. Yet, the industries that experiment on animals continue to cultivate cultures that inherently drive out those whose ethics would preclude them from causing suffering to other living beings. So the system is self-perpetuating, and requires change that favors not only the animals, but also the corporations and the humans that experiment on them. A “3 E’s approach” is needed in addition to the 3 R’s — ethics, economics, and efficacy. As we are continue to advocate for a new ethics for animals, we must also focus on the economics of replacing animals with new non-animal methods that increase efficacy, predictability, validity of the research, and reduce the overall costs, especially to taxpayers.
The Envigo facility closure has gotten a lot of national press, and provides us with an opportunity to pause and ask ourselves “If purpose-bred dogs for research and product development were really advancing science and technology to improve human and animal health — and there is good reason to believe they are not—is subjecting tens of thousands of dogs to pain, suffering and euthanasia an acceptable means of doing so?” Perhaps a question more difficult to answer might be, “If our own personal companion animals were subjected to the kind of research and testing these dogs have had to endure on a mass scale for decades, would we sanction these practices? Or is there a better way?”
At Aisling, we believe a better way forward is not only possible, it is our Mission.
