Federal Animal Welfare Violations at the Southwest National Primate Research Center at Texas Biomedical Research Institute

For years, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors have documented serious and chronic violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) in the laboratories of Texas Biomedical Research Institute and its associated Southwest National Primate Research Center (Texas Biomed). The AWA provides mere minimum animal welfare standards, yet Texas Biomed experimenters and staff have repeatedly failed to comply with even those.

Federal authorities have documented the violations below. Click the links for the full USDA reports.

• November 7, 2023 (one violation): Staffers subjected a monkey to three serial blood draws that weren’t part of the approved experimental protocol.

• May 2, 2023 (one critical violation): A staffer dropped a guillotine door on a monkey’s hand during a cage cleaning, and the injury required the amputation of several fingers. On June 28, 2023, the USDA issued an official warning to Texas Biomed for this violation.

• May 17, 2021 (one violation): Paint was peeling off the cinder block walls of buildings housing baboons and rhesus macaques, exposing the cinder block in some areas and creating surfaces that are difficult to sanitize.

• December 17, 2019 (two critical violations): A baboon strangled when she was able to pull a cable through an opening at the top of her cage. Also, a young baboon broke his arm because it became stuck when he was able to stick it through holes in an enclosure fence.

• December 17, 2019 (three violations, two critical): A monkey’s finger required amputation after it became stuck in the squeeze mechanism of her cage, even though staffers were aware of this risk because she had placed her finger in the mechanism before and other cages had been modified. And a monkey was severely injured and required euthanasia after another monkey gained access to their cage. Additionally, light covers in an animal room contained a lot of brown debris, multiple rooms had peeling paint, drywall was damaged and coming off the wall, and a counter was damaged with exposed particle board.

• April 2, 2018 (one critical violation): A staffer failed to secure a cage divider latch properly, and two monkeys were able to access each other and sustained injuries that required veterinary care.

• February 28, 2017 (two violations, one critical): A baboon sustained second-degree burns on his hands and feet when he was able to touch an exposed metal pipe on a heater while the appliance was on. Also, paint was eroding and the surfaces of a door and a feeder were deteriorating in a capuchin enclosure.

• January 28, 2016 (five violations): Due to failures in staff communication, a female baboon sustained injuries when three male baboons were able to access her in a chute system during a transfer. In a second incident, a male baboon was able to lift a chute door and attack a female baboon and kill her infant. Experimenters used an unapproved scoring sheet and unapproved criteria for determining when to euthanize animals on an experimental protocol. Also, experimenters failed to track the number of animals used across two experimental protocols, and 45 more animals than had been approved were used. An annual report didn’t include exceptions to the standards and regulations for the extended time between sanitations of indoor cages and the feeding of pregnant primates, and the report didn’t properly reflect animals who had experienced unrelieved pain and distress.

• February 9, 2015 (five violations): An experimental protocol didn’t contain descriptions of the methods used for hand-rearing or euthanizing newborn animals. Also, portable veterinary boxes contained outdated drugs, and a hospital had two boxes of outdated suture material. There were open bags of pretzels and Froot Loops, as well as cockroaches, in light covers and along ceiling edges.

• September 29, 2014 (one violation): A young baboon was killed when a guillotine door fell on the animal.

• June 6, 2014 (two violations, one repeat): A young male baboon died of sepsis from trauma wounds. He was housed with a large number of male baboons, and at the time of his death, he was emaciated, had multiple scabs on his body from bite wounds, and had a large abscess on his leg and ankle. Although these injuries had been present for many days before his death, they weren’t reported to veterinary staff, he wasn’t provided with any care for them, and no behavior assessment was performed for the group. Also, a monkey who was placed in a newly formed group sustained a tail degloving injury—a traumatic injury in which the skin and tissue are stripped off the tail, leaving the underlying muscles, tendons, nerves, and bone exposed. The monkey later sustained a partial tail amputation and multiple lacerations on her face and body in a separate traumatic incident. There was no indication of a behavior assessment for her or the group after the incidents. Additionally, an annual report didn’t accurately report the number of animals who had been used in experiments that involved pain and distress without being given any pain relief, anesthetic, or tranquilizing drugs.

• December 13, 2011 (citation and notification of penalty): Following a complaint from PETA about a 2010 incident in which two baboons escaped from their cages and attacked a caretaker, the USDA fined Texas Biomed $25,714 for allowing primates to escape from cages and injure themselves and others. The fine also addressed a 2009 incident in which a young monkey had escaped from a cage, gotten outside into the freezing cold, and had to be euthanized due to hypothermia.