Animal ‘Bloodbath’ to Confront Charles River Shareholders

Thousands of Dogs, Monkeys, and Other Animals Are Poisoned, Killed in Company’s Notorious Laboratories, Says PETA

For Immediate Release:
May 6, 2013

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

Andover, Mass. — Beneath a banner reading, “CRL: Stop the Animal Bloodbath,” and holding signs that read, “Stop Trading in Animal Torture,” a group of PETA members—including a masked “monkey” lying in a bathtub full of “blood”—will greet Charles River Laboratories (CRL) shareholders as they arrive for the company’s annual meeting at the Wyndham Boston Andover hotel on Tuesday. PETA owns just enough stock in CRL to introduce resolutions to help animals, and inside the meeting, a PETA representative will speak in favor of the group’s shareholder resolution calling on the company—which has a long history of animal welfare violations—to issue a report disclosing what company executives are doing to prevent future problems: 

Date:    Tuesday, May 7

Time:    7:30 a.m.

Place:   Wyndham Boston Andover, 123 Old River Rd. (near the Old River Road exit off Interstate 93), Andover

CRL—whose CEO, James Foster, topped PETA’s “Dirty Dozen” list of the 12 worst CEOs for animals in laboratories—has been cited repeatedly by federal inspectors for animal welfare violations, including inadequate veterinary care, failure to provide suffering animals with pain relief, and shoddy surgical methods, resulting in the misery and eventual death of a dog. The company is the world’s largest breeder of animals for use in experiments, supplying one of every two of the more than 100 million animals tormented in laboratories each year. It is also the second-largest importer of primates into the U.S. Animals in CRL’s laboratories are force-fed test compounds in order to poison them intentionally, have caustic experimental chemicals smeared onto their bare skin, and are forced to inhale toxic substances in painful and deadly experiments.

“CRL shareholders should know that their company has been so negligent that 30 monkeys baked to death when a heating system malfunctioned and another monkey was scalded to death when her cage was run through a high-temperature cage washer while she was still locked inside,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. “PETA and the other shareholders have the right to know how CRL is using the animals in its laboratories—and what the company is doing to prevent the illegal abuses.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.