World's Worst Companies for Animals in Laboratories

Every year, millions of animals around the world suffer and die in painful experiments conducted at the hands of pharmaceutical laboratories, contract testing facilities and companies that breed animals to be sold for experimentation. Many of these companies are multi-national, exporting their brand of cruelty across the globe. A list of the worst offenders – and many of them are prominent in Europe too.

Charles River Laboratories
Charles River Laboratories is the world's largest breeder of animals for use in experiments; the company operates across Europe as well as the US. In 2005, the US Department of Agriculture cited Charles River Laboratories for 22 serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act. The company runs a large animal-testing laboratory in the countryside – not far from Edinburgh – and supplies animals, animal housing and other support facilities to labs around the world.

Wyeth
Wyeth's pharmaceutical business involves a vicious cycle of repeatedly impregnating horses, confining mares to tiny stalls, and ripping away their foals for slaughter. This cycle continues until the mare is worn out and she also ends up on a slaughterhouse floor. All this is done to collect mares' oestrogen-rich urine to produce the menopause drug Premarin. In 2002, a study of women using Prempro (Premarin plus progesterone) was abruptly halted by the US government after it concluded that hormone-replacement therapy raises the risk of strokes by 41 per cent, heart attacks by 29 per cent and breast cancer by 26 per cent. There are more than a dozen synthetic and plant-based menopause drugs available that safely and effectively ease the symptoms of menopause without causing horses to suffer and die. Wyeth is a global pharmaceutical company and produces vaccines in the UK.

Merck Merck
– known as Merck, Sharp & Dome or MSD outside the US – developed the notorious Vioxx. The drug has been implicated in heart attacks, strokes and the deaths of tens of thousands of people, even though the painkiller was repeatedly tested on animals. In a precedent-setting case, the company was sued in the US – specifically for relying on animal tests and ignoring more effective safety-assessment methods, such as post-market surveillance of patient reactions, in vitro tests using human cells and tissues, and computer modelling. Merck's reliance on scientifically flawed animal tests led to injuries and deaths for humans.

Huntingdon Life Sciences
Already notorious in Britain, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is the third-largest – and probably the most reviled – contract testing company in the world. HLS' "science" has been the subject of five undercover investigations exposing tremendous cruelty to animals. Every day, HLS experiments on and kills an average of 500 animals – including rats, rabbits, pigs, dogs and primates – who are forced to ingest and inhale all sorts of toxic chemicals, including toxic doses of pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, and pesticides and chemicals such as weed killers and disinfectants.

Boehringer Ingelheim
They say it all comes out in the wash, but in Boehringer's case, what has come out is dead monkeys. The company's negligence resulted in the deaths of three monkeys in high-temperature cage washers. Add to this dead and dying dogs, traumatised monkeys and unqualified personnel, and it's little wonder that US officials found 19 violations of animal welfare laws in the first nine months of 2005. The $20,060 fine – one of the largest fines in recent years – was pocket change for Boehringer, but it indicates that things are terribly awry in the company's laboratories. Boehringer also operates in the UK and across Europe.

Novartis Corporation
Swiss-based Novartis and their subsidiaries have spent millions of dollars – and thousands of animals have died as well – to develop animal organs for transplantation into humans, but the only results have been animal suffering and a pitiful waste of precious scientific resources. Pointless and painful experiments in xenotransplantation have been one of the greatest medical research fiascos of all time. One hundred years of failed research shows that animals – even ones with transplanted human genes – do not have suitable spare parts for people. Novartis has their fingers in many pies, including GM crops, and is still conducting animal research in the UK.

The Jackson Laboratory
The three blind mice in the famous nursery rhyme had it easy compared to the more than 2 million transgenic mice who are bred and killed each year by The Jackson Laboratory. The Jackson Laboratory sells millions of genetically mutated mice to laboratories in the US and 63 other countries. The creation of transgenic animals, like JAX® Mice, is responsible for an explosion in the number of animals who suffer and die in laboratories around the world – more than 1 million were used in the UK in 2006, and it's mostly because of transgenic animals that the overall number of experiments is now rising after years of decline.

Pfizer
Dogs in Pfizer's British breeding colony in Sandwich were used in fatal tests during the development of Viagra, and the multi-national company is now the leading supplier of drugs to the NHS. Shockingly, 10 official inspections of Pfizer's US animal research laboratories between May 2004 and August 2006 revealed multiple violations of animal protection laws – a dead cat was trapped in a drain line and went unnoticed for more than a month, a dog was scalded to death in the automatic cage washer, animals experienced stress and untreated infections, and a laboratory reeked from the stench of excrement. To avoid scrutiny and regulation, Pfizer has begun transferring animal testing to China, where, according to a recent article in Forbes magazine, "scientists are cheap and plentiful and pesky protesters held at bay".
Barbaric BusinessHundreds of other companies around the world make money by abusing animals in laboratories, and this list only scratches the surface of them. With profit as their motive, many businesses are willing to ignore the scientific evidence that animal testing is old-fashioned, misleading and even dangerous – and just as willing to turn a blind eye to animal suffering and death. Fortunately, enlightened scientists, institutions and companies are increasingly rejecting animal testing.

Stop the slaught of baby seal

In just a few weeks, the annual Canadian seal hunt will begin. Hunters armed with clubs and boat hooks will bludgeon nearly 300,000 defenseless baby harp seals, tear the skin off their bodies, and leave them to suffer and die on the bloody ice floes.It's the largest marine mammal slaughter on Earth, and it should be criminal. But this mass killing continues with the blessing of the Canadian government and the international fur industry—and it needs to stop now

animals abuse

Most cows never enjoy a peaceful day in a grassy field. Instead, cows raised for their milk are commonly confined to filthy sheds and barren dirt lots. They're hooked up to milking machines several times each day and are given hormones and antibiotics. They are repeatedly impregnated until their weak bodies finally give out. Then they are hauled on filthy trucks, sometimes hundreds of miles, to slaughterhouses. When they arrive, they are hung upside-down, dismembered, and skinned—sometimes while they are still conscious.