Yale Under Fire For Unnecessary Lab Animal Deaths

By Melissa Cronin

Published on 4/3/2014 at 4:54 PM

Yale University has joined the ranks of several other prominent colleges in trouble over the welfare of their lab animals, after an animal rights group filed a federal complaint alleging that 33 animal deaths occurred due to negligence in the university's research labs.

Ohio-based animal advocacy group Stop Animal Exploitation NOW (SAEN) is calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fine Yale $60,000 against Yale for noncompliance with the Animal Welfare Act. Animal activists say that the deaths -- one dog, 17 hamsters and 15 mastomys (a type of rodent) -- were avoidable. Says AP:

BLOCK According to the documents obtained by SAEN, the laboratory dog death occurred in 2011, after a backup oxygen tank malfunctioned during an intubation procedure. The hamsters died in 2012 after a lab worker failed to perform a morning assessment of the animals. The mastomys died in 2012 after being given an oral vaccine.

"The general public is often led to believe that because facilities are inspected, it means the animals are OK and there's nothing to worry about," Michael Budkie, SAEN's executive director, told AP. "But everything is not OK, based on what we're seeing in government documents."

Spokesman for Yale, Tom Conroy denied the allegations.

"Yale takes seriously its responsibility for the humane care of animals," Conroy said. "Our self-monitoring programs meet or exceed federal regulations and independent accreditation standards."

Yale is only the latest institution to come under fire for animal welfare, as The Dodo reported last month, when the University of Michigan came under fire:

Michigan joins a growing list of universities, the most recent of which was UC Berkeley, which was fined $8,750 last month for allowing five lab animals to die of thirst in 2011. In December, Harvard was slapped with $24,000 fine for 11 violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including four involving the death of an animal. At Emory University, a July 2012 USDA report revealed that an employee killed a rhesus macaque monkey by giving him the incorrect compound, while the University of Louisiana Lafayette was fined $38,571 for a group of animal welfare violations in 2013.