Shin Nippon Biomedical Lab, Ltd.

Shin Nippon Biomedical Lab (SNBL) is an animal-testing company based in Japan that, until recently, operated a massive animal laboratory in Everett, Washington, where thousands of primates were used every year to test products for client companies.

In addition to the pain and torment caused by the contracted experiments, animals at SNBL have suffered from cruelty, neglect, and incompetence. According to federal inspection reports, primates there have died from trauma during capture, starvation, severe crowding, being run through a scalding-hot cage washer, strangulation, entrapment, hyperthermia, multiple organ failure, dehydration, suffocation, and internal bleeding. According to a 2017 inspection report, workers denied veterinary care to a monkey who had fractured the two long bones in her forearm and suffered from bruising and scabbing on other parts of her body, likely as a result of rough handling. She was in such bad shape that she was euthanized. A 2016 inspection report cited the company after six monkeys died from internal bleeding when inadequately trained personnel subjected them to liver biopsies. In 2011, federal inspectors documented that 78 percent of the monkeys at SNBL were caged alone—in violation of federal law—unable to touch or interact in any way with other monkeys. This is so distressing to monkeys that they develop abnormal, stress-induced types of behavior, such as self-mutilation, incessant rocking, and hair-pulling.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) filed a nine-page administrative lawsuit against SNBL for dozens of violations, including the strangulation death of a monkey, the death of a baby monkey who had been taken from her cage and returned to the wrong mother, the physical abuse of caged monkeys, and the deaths of 25 macaque monkeys during shipment from Asia to the company’s U.S. facilities. In December 2016, SNBL and the USDA reached a $185,000 settlement agreement for these violations—a pittance to the massive international animal exploiter. Between 2006 and 2009, SNBL was fined $46,195 by the USDA for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Despite its long history of violence, neglect, incompetence, and disregard, the USDA has refused to shut down SNBL.

In 2018, SNBL sold the Everett laboratory to a company called Altasciences. Monkeys, dogs, and other animals continue to be imprisoned in this facility and subjected to cruel and deadly tests.