Beleaguered beagle facility closes under government pressure. Fate of 3000 dogs unclear

Some content has been removed for formatting reasons. Please view the original article for the best reading experience. Facing growing financial and legal hurdles, a company that owns a troubled research beagle breeding facility in Cumberland, Virginia, said last night it will shutter the establishment, which until recently supplied dogs to universities, major drugmakers, and the National Institutes of Health. Because of the growing cost of bringing the complex of several large buildings into compliance with the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), “We have decided we will not be investing further in this facility, and it will be closed,” Inotiv President and CEO Robert Leasure said in a statement . Inotiv is a contract research organization that has become a major research animal supplier through recent acquisitions, including its November 2021 purchase of Envigo, which owns the Virginia facility. Inotiv says it is the second-largest supplier of research beagles, producing about 25% of the dogs used in the United States. Since it took over Envigo, the number of dogs at the Cumberland complex has dropped from about 5000 to about 3000. Animal welfare activists applauded the planned closure but said they have little confidence that Inotiv, which holds tens of thousands of other AWA-regulated research animals at other sites, is committed to their welfare. “Closing only this abhorrent facility is not enough,” says Eric Kleiman, a res...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news