A new exposé by PETA has again shown the horrors of the vivisection industry. This time the organization’s investigators targeted Envigo, an international supplier of beagles to laboratories for experiments based in Cumberland, Virginia. They found 5,000 beagle dogs and puppies intensively confined to small, barren kennels and cages 24/7, in a “factory” that produces around 500 puppies a month to sell off for animal testing.
PETA’s undercover investigators found more than 360 dead puppies during the investigation. Some had been crushed by their mothers inside the cramped cages, while others died of pneumonia or hepatitis. A catalogue of cruel malpractice was also documented, including staff withholding food from nursing mother dogs for days, workers with no veterinary credentials sticking needles into puppies’ heads, and workers routinely leaving soaked dogs in their cages to shiver on the hard plastic floors after spraying them with high-pressure hoses.
Mimi Bekhechi, PETA’s vice president of international programmes, said: “If the puppies at Envigo survive the trauma of being born into a barren cage, blasted with a high-pressure hose, and the painful procedures they’re subjected to, more horrors await them at the laboratories they’re sold to.”
WARNING!; The following video shows very distressing graphic images of examples of what the investigators recorded:
Since 2016, beagles from this facility have been experimented on at the US Food and Drug Administration, Temple University, the Medical University of South Carolina, the University of Missouri, and Level Biotechnology in Taiwan, among other labs. Since September 2020, the National Institute of Health has awarded three contracts to Envigo for live dogs. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had just completed its inspection into the facility, which often only ends up legitimizing this horrible industry. In factories like this, female dogs are bred twice a year for up to seven years, and their puppies are then kept in barren cages without any stimulation. All that, before they will be shipped to a lab where they will be tortured during pointless experiments and tests. And what is worse is that beagles are the chosen breed because of their friendly and trusting nature. A betrayal comparable to hunters shooting unwanted loyal hounds in the heads.
