Feds, State Officials Corroborate PETA’s Findings at Liberty Research, Cite Lab

New York Suspends Lab’s Permission to Experiment on Animals for Three Months After Secret Video Showed Lack of Veterinary Care, Awful Deaths

For Immediate Release:
April 9, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA has obtained U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and New York State Department of Health inspection reports on Liberty Research, Inc., a Barton contract laboratory that tests veterinary products on dogs and cats and was the subject of a 2017 PETA video exposé.

The inspections occurred in July and August 2017 in response to PETA’s evidence revealing that dogs and cats were denied adequate veterinary care, killed in slow and stressful ways, and confined with other stressed animals who injured them. The reports indicate that USDA inspectors found violations of nine federal regulations, while state officials cited Liberty for three further violations.

According to the federal inspection report, USDA officials cited Liberty after viewing video footage of workers taking more than seven minutes and four injections to kill a gasping, bloody dog and for killing cats by injecting them in the heart after administering only ketamine, which “does not cause unconsciousness” as is required. The USDA found that workers drilled into the skulls of 30 dogs—some of whom whimpered during the process—outside the “current performance standards of anesthesia and surgery.” Liberty—which employed just two technicians to tend to approximately 3,000 animals—had no records of veterinary examinations of sick and injured animals, including Jade, a cat left briefly paralyzed by seizures and without care for nearly four weeks before a worker finally gave him a fatal injection in his heart.

“The cats and dogs tormented and killed inside this stark, windowless facility are just like those who share our homes,” says PETA Vice President Daniel Paden. “As authorities have confirmed our findings, PETA urges Liberty’s customers—which include Merck, Bayer, and the universities of Pittsburgh, Florida, and Louisville—to reconsider bankrolling this hellhole.”

Based on PETA’s evidence, New York officials cited the laboratory for failing to provide a kitten suspected of having a broken leg with veterinary care and for permitting a worker to attempt to operate on a dog’s anal glands without the presence of a veterinarian. In December 2017, state officials denied Liberty’s application to renew its state-required approval to use live animals in experiments, leaving the facility unable to experiment on animals until mid-March 2018.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist view that other species are commodities. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.