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NORFOLK––PETA research and investigations chief Mary Beth
Sweetland told news media on May 17, 2005 that undercover investigator
Lisa Leitten between April 26, 2004 and March 11, 2005 “secretly
videotaped repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act,”
at a Covance Research Products laboratory in Vienna, Virginia.
Alleged violations, Sweetland said, included “punching, choking,
and taunting injured monkeys; recycling sick monkeys into new experiments;
failing to administer veterinary care to severely wounded monkeys; failing
to euthanize monkeys who were in extreme distress; and failing to properly
oversee lab workers,” who allegedly “tore monkeys from their
cages and violently shoved them into restraint tubes.”
Sweetland said Leitten’s undercover video also showed Covance staff
“performing painful and stressful procedures in full view of other
animals, monkeys with chronic rectal prolapses resulting from constant
stress and diarrhea,” monkeys suffering from “daily bloody
noses” as result of harsh intubation, and “monkey self-mutilation
resulting from failure to provide psychological enrichment and socialization.”
PETA filed a 253-page complaint to the USDA Animal & Plant Health
Inspection Service, asking that the lab “be shut down until a thorough
investigation can be conducted.”
Covance responded by suing PETA and Leitten in Fairfax County, Virginia,
demanding that PETA surrender the originals and all copies of Leitten’s
documentation, cease web publicity about the investigation, and agree
to never again infiltrate Covance.
Covance accused PETA and Leitten of fraud, conspiring to harm its business,
and violating a nondisclosure agreement that Leitten signed when she began
work there as a primate care technician, wrote Bonnie Pfister of Associated
Press.
Pfister and other reporters confirmed that the PETA materials “depict
frightened monkeys being yanked from their cages and handled roughly by
aggressive, often cursing technicians.”
Leitten, 30, told media that the Covance investigation was her third for
PETA, and would be her last. She holds an M.A. from Central Washington
University, where she worked under linguist and animal advocate Roger
Fouts at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute. Her first undercover
job for PETA, beginning in May 2002, was a nine-month stint at a contract
research lab in Missouri that did feeding studies for Iams, a subsidiary
of Procter & Gamble.
Leitten’s findings caused Iams to fire the lab.
Leitten in 2003 infiltrated the Amarillo Wildlife Refuge in Texas, which
was eventually cited for several Animal Welfare Act violations as result
of a PETA complaint. By May 2004 the refuge was in compliance, USDA spokesperson
Darby Holliday told David Fleshler of the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Covance was assembled as a subsidiary of Corning, Inc. during the 1980s
and 1990s, through the acquisition of independent drug development companies.
“In January 1997, Corning spun off these businesses as one publicly-traded,
independent company called Covance Inc.,” says the company web site.
Based in Princeton, New Jersey, Covance now claims “annual net revenues
totaling more than $1 billion, over 6,600 employees and 17 offices throughout
the world.”
Covance came to the attention of animal advocates after U.S. lab purchases
of monkeys from abroad more than doubled between 1997 and 2002. Charles
River Laboratories imported 36% of the monkeys; Covance imported 30%.
The British Union Against Vivisection in 2003 hired freelance journalist
Friedrich Mulln to infiltrate a Covance nonhuman primate facility in Munster,
Germany. Mulln, like Leitten, produced undercover video of staff allegedly
abusing monkeys. As the case broke, Covance won an injunction against
further distribution of the video by Mulln, but BUAV was beyond the jurisdiction
of the court. Images from the investigation remain accessible at various
web sites.
Some Covance animal welfare issues have emerged in other ways. On January
24, 2005 a fire of unknown origin at Covance Research Products’
Texter Mountain complex in Millcreek Township, Pennsylvania razed one
of four barns which according to a 2001 USDA report cumulatively housed
14,000 rabbits. Heavy smoke reportedly interfered with employees’
efforts to evacuate the rabbits.
