Cruelty Inside Product Testing Lab

For the dogs, cats, and rabbits inside Professional Laboratory and Research Services (PLRS), the cruel poisoning tests were only part of the abuse.

• Workers kicked, dragged, and cursed at dogs and violently slammed cats into cages.

• Dogs were deliberately kept infested with worms for months at a time even when no tests required it.

• PETA’s investigator was instructed not to report numerous dogs’ red, raw sores to the lab’s veterinarian—who only visited the laboratory once a week. Bloody diarrhea, skin conditions, worm infestations, oozing sores, abscessed teeth, and pus- and blood-filled infections on ears went untreated or were ineffectively handled by workers who had no veterinary training or credentials.

• PLRS operated a side business raising and selling ticks and attached thousands of ticks onto rabbits’ shaved bodies to allow the ticks to gorge for five days. Many rabbits were subjected to this twice and were then killed. Non-animal methods for raising ticks have been available since the mid-’90s. Other rabbits were held over thousands of mosquitoes, who fed on the animals and sucked blood from their shaved backs for 15 minutes a day for up to five days.

• Workers cleaned the bottoms of rabbit cages by vigorously shaking the cage floors up and down—with the rabbits still inside. According to what PETA’s investigator was told, this caused at least two rabbits’ feet to be completely severed. The investigator asked her supervisor if the employee was disciplined for dismembering a rabbit and was told, “No, but don’t clock in late, then you will get in trouble.”

• A supervisor who killed rabbits by injecting a solution into their hearts admitted, “I’m not really … good at this.”

• A supervisor pulled a tooth from a dog who had been inadequately sedated with an expired drug. As the supervisor yanked at the tooth, the dog kicked and shook.

Dogs were so traumatized from living locked up for months—and sometimes years—without affection, enrichment, companionship, exercise, or even an occasional kind word, they circled and paced continuously.