Cashing In on Childhood Malnutrition

The WHO has an informative factsheet on malnutrition.

I was gathering and summarizing data on the amount of tax money received by primate vivisectors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021 [About $35 million for the NIH-Funded projects and about $140 million over the life of the ongoing NIH-funded projects. And an additional $1.2 million that is slated to be awarded through September of 2025 by the National Science Foundation. I can send you a spread sheet if you are interested.] and got to wondering how NIH funding for projects using mice compared with the funding for projects using monkeys. I didn't get too far before I got sidetracked by project 1R21AI156151-01A1, "The role of DNA methylation in dysregulated monocyte immune responses during malnutrition and recovery."

The PIs (Primary Investigators) explain: "The first aim of the study will investigate how two weeks of protein malnutrition, induced by a low protein (5% protein calories) diet, in weaning mice affects the monocyte immune response elicited by bacterial endotoxin.... In the second aim, we will explore the efficacy of different treatment diets supplemented with wheat, milk or peanut proteins administered for six weeks after a two-week period of induced protein malnutrition."

Mice aren't humans. Here's an example of real science studying the treatment of malnutrition.

There is something particularly disturbing about intentionally starving baby animals. It's even worse when it is dressed up and defended with claims about wanting to help children.

My Friend PeeWee

We adopted a young male mouse about eight months ago. We call him PeeWee.

One of the things I’ve thought about as a result of getting to know him is his experience of time. When PeeWee gets in my hand, his tiny warm feet feel to me as if they are almost electric. He seems to be buzzing with energy.

Numerous sources cite a mouse’s heart rate to be between 310-840 beats per minute, mine is about 60 beats per minute.

Likewise, a mouse’s respiratory rate is reported to be between 80-230 breaths per minute; a normal adult human’s is 12 to 16 breaths per minute.

Even though PeeWee will live for only a couple of years, maybe his life span and mine feel more or less the same to each of us. He lives a fast life. Everything he does, he does at a quick rate. (That's why my pics of him are always blurry.)He never seems to move slowly except when he is evaluating whether he can make it down a steep surface. Other than that, he generally runs everywhere, he scurries. When he's holding something and eating it, his hands are turning it this way and that a mile a minute. He bites off little pieces so quickly that it seems almost to disappear. When he grooms himself, his foot is a blur. Maybe to him, when he is grooming, the speed of his scratching feels the same to him as it feels to me when I scratch myself. And he does have hands; he isn't a four-footed animal like a horse or an elephant or a dog. He has hands. Others have noticed this too. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0226774

PeeWee isn’t on the same schedule I am. His “days” and “nights” seem to last a few hours. In the period of my single 24 hour day, he seems to have a number of days or active periods.

The speed of his life has increased my sadness and alarm over the use of these small animals in labs around the world. The overwhelming majority of them live out their lives in small barren plastic bins; typically, about 80 square inches of floor space. https://www.allentowninc.com/rodent-housing/nexgen/ In most cases, from what I can glean on-line, they have very little to do and no place to go. Their environments are cramped, bleak, and often crowded. While they seem to us to live for only a short period of time, to them, their life in a plastic tub in a lab must seem to go on forever. I wonder whether they are all somewhat insane as a result.

The annual number of mice used worldwide is anyone’s guess, but sources I’ve looked at acknowledge that it is over 100 million. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79961-0

It is hard to calculate the area of floor space PeeWee has, but it’s around 40 sq. ft. and is filled with many places to hide. Tubes of varying sizes and construction connect his main area to satellite areas. The longest tube is about ten feet in length. He is essentially on an archipelago in my office. The only barriers he encounters are the edges of his islands. He has three exercise wheels and four water sources. We periodically give him a block of wheatgrass which he seems to like, both for the grass and the roots.

His diet is varied. We also put bits of popcorn (thanks JB for that tip) and oats throughout his estate.

He seems glad to see and interact with me. I call him early in the evening and most of the time, but not always, I can hear him rustling around in his ship for a while (one of the pieces of furniture upstairs in his main house) before he comes down and visits with me. (Lately, he has been shacking up in one of the more distant annexes, but still gets out of his nest box there to come see me when I call him.) He walks around on my lap and climbs into my hand. He seems genuinely glad to see me. I don’t feed him by hand; I assume he interacts with me simply because he wants to.

The other day, I leaned a small mirror where he could see it. He stops and checks it out every once in a while. I've learned that he is very alert to changes in his environment. He scopes out new things, investigates new passages and seem altogether fully aware of everything around him. The zillions of mice in the labs live in a never-changing mind-numbing environment.

I think he has the best life a lone male fancy mouse could have. A “fancy mouse” is a mouse bred for the pet trade, for humans who fancy mice. We breed them to entertain us. We also breed mice to use as tools in laboratories. We also breed them to feed to other animals we fancy who we keep in confined spaces. The astronomical number of mice we create and consume each year must make them the most suffering-filled species on the planet.

I’ve been struck by the claims of some of the people who work in labs that use animals that they got into their profession because they like and care about animals. This seems to me like a concentration camp guard saying they got into their line of work because they like people. Given the fact that the overwhelming majority of the mice in the labs are stored in plastic tubs that are stored in racks and that they are accessed only to clean the tub, refill the water bottle, or to do something to the mice, I’m doubtful that many, if any at all, of the animal care- and lab-techs ever get to know any of the mice in the tubs. It’s unlikely that they could even if they might want to.

There is something dark and very ugly about our use of animals, our indifference to their suffering, our arrogance. I’m glad I’ve gotten to know PeeWee, and am glad I have been able to make his life a little better than the lives of most other captive mice.

PeeWee is most assuredly a someone rather than a something.

How Should We Kill Them?

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homeless_Man.jpg

It must be terrible to be homeless, on the street, to wonder where your next meal will come from, to deal with all the stares, the cold shoulders, the business owners and local residents who want you out of their neighborhood, the rain, the cold, the heat. I doubt that I can fully imagine the stress, distress, the pain and suffering that must at times simply overwhelm someone in this terrible predictament.

We could put them in shelters, and I know that many people are actively pushing for more shelters, better shelters, greater shelter capacity, but it's a plain fact that we just don't have room for all of them. Leaving them on the street, to fend for themselves, its inhumane.

Gas chambers and electric chairs seem particularly gruesome; they don't seem very humane. Lethal injection seems less violent. That might be the kindest way to kill them.

It's a big problem. An article in the NY Times reports that the 2020 estimate of 580,000 homeless people in the US is likely much too low given the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Here's a crazy idea: let's not kill them. Let's provide for them. Let's make vasectomies and other birth control methods free and something to be celebrated. Let's take a tiny sliver of our tax dollars and build free and very low-rent public housing all across the US. Let's make free cafeterias a part of these housing projects.

If this seems like the right way to go, I don't see a reason not to expand it in ways that will provide shelter and meals and birth control for homeless dogs and cats as well.

How should we kill them? We shouldn't kill them. Homeless humans, dogs, and cats are victims, not criminals, and certainly are not guilty of capital crimes simply for being alive and homeless.

In every case, in every circumstance, homeless is better than dead.

Little Downside for Multiple Federal Law Violations

On April 15, 2020, the USDA fined the University of Wisconsin $74,000 for series of twenty-two violations of the Animal Welfare Act that occurred from March 4, 2015 to April 25, 2019.

The USDA reports that the university has not been inspected since December 10, 2019. [To see the data, you need to enter 35-R-0001 into the "Certificate Number" field.

Since December 10, 2019, the university has self-reported thirty-seven violations (most involving monkeys) to the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW). [See UW-Madison's Self-Reported Animal Welfare Violations] OLAW rarely, if ever, issues citations or levies fines.

You might imagine that an institution fined for multiple violations would warrant extra attention, but in the world of tax-payer-funded vivisection, that does not appear to be the case. There is no downside for repeat violations of the so-called Animal Welfare Act.

USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Isn't Doing Its Job and They Know It.

USDA Inspector General's Audit Report: 33601-0002-31 "Animal Care Program Oversight of Dog Breeders."

APHIS is responsible for enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act. The agency not doing its job is like all the cops being on vacation at the same time.

There's really no one policing APHIS. This is just the latest scathing report on APHIS from the USDA's Inspector General's Office.

Excerpts from the summary:

"We identified data reliability issues with reports generated from APHIS’ Animal Care Information System (ACIS) database. This occurred because the agency no longer has a data manager for ACIS, and several large patches to the system have made it unreliable. As a result, APHIS is impeded in its ability to make informed management decisions, identify trends in noncompliant items, and identify how many inspections have been completed."

We also found that APHIS did not consistently address complaints it received or adequately document the results of its follow-up. This occurred because APHIS does not have a documented process for responding to complaints or for recording the results of the agency’s actions. As a result, some dog breeder facilities may be conducting regulated activity without a USDA license or oversight. Therefore, APHIS is not able to ensure the overall health and humane treatment of animals at these facilities."

"APHIS agreed with our findings."

The vaccination problem.

The risk of acquiring or transmitting covid (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2,) is reduced in vaccinated humans. It isn't clear to me that that is sufficient reason to get vaccinated.

Try as I might, I haven't been able to find the details on all the vaccines' production methods. I don't get a flu shot because I don't want to be part of the reason that chickens are hurt and killed.

If I was stranded on a desert island with a dog, a chicken, or a human I could overcome, I wouldn't kill and eat them even if I would starve to death otherwise. The risk of getting and dying from Covid is lower than the risk of starving to death when stranded on a desert island.

I suspect that the mRNA vaccines use fewer animals in their producton, but, as I mentioned above, mRNA production details are hard to find.

At 68, I'm in a high-risk group. At my day job, I interact with the public. We are all masked, and when we are the closest and I'm speaking with them, there is generally a barrier between us. When I shop for groceries, I wear a mask and avoid being very close to other shoppers. I use self-checkout even though I'd prefer to help create a job by being checked out by a clerk. At the dog parks, no one is masked, but we are outdoors, and I keep my distance.

I wish I knew about the mRNA vaccine production methods.

For the record, the primate vivisection industry's claims about the need for monkeys in the development of the Covid vaccines rings hollow to me. Vivisectors have claimed that just about everything is the direct result of their experiments on animals. I've debunked many of these, and in the process of reading the history of medicine and the historical details behind many of the drugs and treatments ballyhooed by the vivisectors, I've learned that their claims can never be taken at face value. If their claims about the use of monkeys was the only mention of animals being used I might go ahead and get vaccinated because their claims are almost always bogus.

Cruelty pretending to be heroics at UW-Madison

Why are Chancellor Blank and vet school Dean Markell grinning? Does he imagine extra space for more hideous experiments on dogs and other animals like the ones he has conducted? [For example: rabbits, rats, and dogs]. Does she think her bosses, the Board of Regents, will extend her contract? Is she completely in the dark about the terrible things done to animals at the vet school? We need more sifting and winnowing.

There is something particularly distasteful, hideous in fact, about those who hurt and kill animals and at the same time portray themselves as “heroes” for animals. This would be like Joseph Mengele declaring himself a hero for children if something he discovered by experimenting on children turned out to be in some way beneficial to other children. A better example might be J. Marion Sims.

Sims, the “father of genecology” conducted experiments on enslaved Black women (and children) that led to improvements in gynecological care for women. His work is a textbook example of the ends not being justified by the means. He could and should have found unenslaved women willing to take part in his experiments.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is expanding its vet school. See the hype here and here.

Not mentioned anywhere in the propaganda are the terrible things done to animals at the vet school. I’ve pointed to a tiny fraction of them here.

People get rich by hurting the most vulnerable among us and they declare themselves heroes. No one but a tiny few seem to notice the dark irony. Local media jumps on-board. On matters concerning the terrible things done to animals there is next to no investigative journalism.

We live in a very sick world.

On fonctionne tous de la même manière

UW-Madison College of Letters and Science "Macaque Enrichment" Doc.

Of the 4 documents I recieved form the university on May 10, 2021, after 142 days of waiting, the College of Letters and Science was, in a way, the oddest.

These redactions are odd and questionable. The use of macaques at the School of Letters and Science generally takes place at the Harlow lab, just across an alley form the Primate Center. Why redact that location? Maybe if crazy animal rights fanatics learned that monkeys are being experimented on in the building that used to house and is named after Harry Harlow, they would go crazy? Who doesn't know that the Harlow lab experiments on monkeys? And why is the title of something staff are required to read hidden? Strange indeed. Or just silly and/or dumb.

It's doubly weird and silly because anyone can google "Harlow lab" and immediately see a picture of it and the address and phone number. And if you go to their webpage, you see immediately that the Director is (still) Chris Coe.

Whatever, here's the document:
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
COLLEGE OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES
SOP #325 DATE ISSUED: April 13, 2018
TITLE: Macaque Enrichment

There is no mention of what to do when a monkey starts exhibiting signs of mental illness. Maybe that's in yet another document. We'll see.

Primate Environmental Enrichment at UW-Madison - The Plan

The image above is from the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Primate Research Center's Animal Services webpage. (The splash images rotate periodically.) I think it more fair to point to this image rather than a generic image from another source.

The Animal Welfare Act (Public Law 89-544) was passed in 1966. For the most part, laboratories using animals continued their business as usual. Exercise requirements for dogs and psychological well-being for primates were not mandated until 1985. The law requires laboratories using primates to have a plan that provides an environment that promotes their psychological well-being. This plan musy be available to USDA inspectors on request. It took the University of Wisconsin, Madison 142 days provide me with this copy of their legally required plan. Oddly, the plan is dated 2020. Did they have to write it because I requested it? It woundn't surprise me.

The introduction captures the essence of the plan:

The Environmental Enhancement Program at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (WNPRC) is dedicated to promoting and enhancing psychological well-being for the entire non-human primate (NHP)colony while ensuring that our animals are free from unnecessary pain and distress. By utilizing a combination of environmental enrichment, behavior modification, and positive reinforcement, the program attempts to promote a diverse array of species typical behaviors and decrease the occurrence of stereotypical and self-injurious behavior (SIB) by increasing activity.

Tellingly, the plan merely attempts to decrease the incidence of profound psychological distress. There is nothing in the Animal Welfare Act that mandates success. Everyone who takes the time to learn about the issue knows that it is next to impossible to maintain the psychological well-being of macaques kept for years in small steel cages.

There is nothing in the law that says the plan must be successful.

The Animal Wefare Act does though stipulate who must have sufficient and appropriate authority to assure that adequate veterinary care is provided at all times and that he or she is able to oversee the adequacy of all aspects of animal care and use for all animals. That person must be the attending veterinarian. The attending veterinarian at the UW-Madison is Saverio “Buddy” Capuano.

I doubt his situation is unique, though I've not looked closely at the publishing histories of attending vets at the other large primate labs aroung the country. In Capuano's case, he is a coauthor of numerous papers detailing a host of terible things done to monkeys that he has had a hand in.

So it can't come as too much of a surprise that monkeys at the university are caged alone for years on end, that there are monkeys pulling their hair out, pacing endlessly, whose lives are pretty much a living hell.

Look at the picture at the top of this essay. It must be an example of what the university, Capuano, et al consider an example of good care. But these young monkeys are in a box and will be for their entire lives. Compare their likely life experiences with those of wild rhesus macaques.

In any case, here's one more document I received in response to my request: cage size exemptions.

Environmental Enrichment at UW Madison - pair housing macaques

Just about a month ago, I suggested that the University of Wisconsin might be in violation of the Animal Welfare Act because they had been dragging their feet for so long in providing me with copies of documents that they are required to have on hand and ready to be reviewed by a UDSA Animal Welfare inspector.

I wrote to the state Attorney General's Office about the length of time I had been waiting -- The AG's office says on its website that though there is no specified time requirement in the law, that two weeks is a reasonable amount of time. Within a few days I received the documents that I had been waiting 142 days for. The cover letter was undated; the records were made available to me on May 10, 2021 (see below). I asked for them on December 19, 2020.

Of the four documents I received, the pair housing exemption list provides the most insight into the living conditions of monkeys at the university. The NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare booklet "Macaques," a part of it's series Enrichment for NonHuman Primates, says:

Because of the intrinsic social nature of macaques, pair or group housing of compatible animals is extremely important. It is well-known that raising a macaque alone, without the company of other macaques of the same species, will result in that animal expressing a pattern of abnormal behaviors that can become self-destructive. Even the behavior profiles of adult animals housed alone can degenerate into inciting these abnormal behaviors, which may include repeated pacing, circling, or somersaulting; hyper-aggression; depression; and self-injurious behavior, including hair plucking or self-biting.

Everyone even a tiny bit interested and even minimally informed seems to know that keeping macaques in cages by themselves is harmful to them. The effects seems to be significantly worse than keeping humans in solitary confinement. And yet, if I am reading the document correctly (there is no one to ask), on or about the day the document was printed, 67 macaques were in cages by themselves.

One female monkey, rh2347, was apparently moved to a cage with another monkey on February 25, 2021, afer 12 years of being alone.

Three monkeys have been cages alone since 2013. Six since 2014. Eleven since 2015.

The Wisconsin National Primate Research is a hideous place, all the monkey labs are. They all operate in pretty much the same way.

View Message

CC: lisa.hull@wisc.edu;
Subject: Rick Bogle Public Records Request :: P001468-121920
Body:
RE: PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST of December 19, 2020.
Reference # P001468-121920.

Dear Requester:

I write in response to your request under the Wisconsin Public Records Law, Wisconsin Statutes §§19.31-19.39, dated December 19, 2020 for, “the university's primate psychological enhancement plan or (plans) and any exemptions that have been granted from January 1, 2020 to present. (For reference see 9 CFR § 3.81).”

Attached please find 33-pages of records in response to your request.

We have redacted or withheld the following categories of information for the reasons given below:

[blah, blah, blah...]

Sincerely,
Lynn Rusch
Senior Administrative Program Specialist
University of Wisconsin – Madison

UW-Madison May Be in Frank Violation the Animal Welfare Act

Using their public records request on-line portal, I submitted a public records request to the University of Wisconsin, Madison on December 19, 2020.

Please send me a copy (or copies) of the university's primate psychological enhancement plan (or plans) and any exemptions that have been granted from January 1, 2020 to present. (For reference see 9 CFR § 3.81).

Thanks in advance,

Rick Bogle

Almost 5 months later, I’m still waiting.

9 CFR § 3.81:

§ 3.81 Environment enhancement to promote psychological well-being.

Dealers, exhibitors, and research facilities must develop, document, and follow an appropriate plan for environment enhancement adequate to promote the psychological well-being of nonhuman primates. The plan must be in accordance with the currently accepted professional standards as cited in appropriate professional journals or reference guides, and as directed by the attending veterinarian. This plan must be made available to APHIS upon request, and, in the case of research facilities, to officials of any pertinent funding agency.

If the plan must be made available to APHIS upon request, it seems that the plan must be readily available. (APHIS, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, is a small branch of the USDA. APHIS is charged with oversight of compliance with the Animal Welfare Act, of which § 3.81 is a part.)

Why hasn’t the university sent me a copy of their primate psychological enhancement plan or plans?

The University of Wisconsin is odd in a number of ways, but particularly so with regard to the use of monkeys. Numerous vivisectors across campus use these animals. Maybe the School of Medicine and Public Health, where the infamous Michele Basso experimented on monkeys, has its own plan. Maybe the infamous Harlow Center for Biological Psychology (aka, the Harlow Lab) has its own plan. And maybe the University of Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, just across the street from the Harlow lab, has its own plan. Who knows? Maybe they don’t have a plan? Maybe they are writing one right now?

In any case, a four month-long delay in sending me a document that they are legally required to have on-hand doesn’t instill a lot of confidence. It suggests to me that they are breaking the law by not having a plan, can’t find it (which means that no one ever looks at it), or are afraid I will read it and write about it, or.... Honestly, I can’t come up with another scenario to explain their delay.

"Good Animal Care and Good Science Go Hand in Hand"

If good animal care and good science go hand in hand, it follows that poor animal care results in poor science.

The most appropriate behavioral management program houses macaques in a sufficiently enriched and safe environment to prevent the development of abnormal behaviors.

Abnormal behaviors include repetitive movements, such as pacing, circling, rocking, spinning, somersaulting and bouncing. Cage-licking, self-clasping, self-sucking, masturbation, “saluting,” and eating feces are some other aberrant, repetitive behaviors. Abnormal behaviors in macaques also can hurt or injure the animals, as in the case of hair plucking, self-biting and head banging.

Abnormal behaviors are an undesirable consequence of captive housing, reflecting an inadequate environment for maintaining the animal.” Macaques Kathryn Bayne, M.S., Ph.D., D.V.M., DACLAM, CAAB AAALAC International. (NIH Publication No. 05-5744).

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the undercover investigations and whistle-blower reports documenting a variety of serious behavioral problems like self-wounding, pulling out their hair, repetitive movements, and chronic diarrhea afflicting monkeys at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center is that the "science" being conducted there is not good science.

From Peta's 2020 undercover investigation at UW-Madison Keeping a monkey alone in such a bleak environment is obviously very cruel. It should be illegal.

This begs the questions of why does NIH continue to fund poor science? Why are the university's Animal Care and Use Committees consistently approving the resulting poor scientific projects? Why haven't USDA-APHIS inspectors cited the primate labs for their poor care? Why hasn't NIH OLAW required the reporting of behavioral problems and chronic diarrhea?

Unfortunately, the answer is the same for all of these questions. No one really cares. All the claims about good science being dependent on good animal care are just propaganda. Everyone on the inside must know this, which makes all of them liars.

And, of course, the reason no one cares is that there is no reason to. The money keeps pouring in.

Never-Ending Suffering at UW-Madison

Six months undercover.

Flat Indignant Denial

I came accoss this phrase in Nicholson Baker's book Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act. (Penguin Press, 2020). It was the strategy used by the CIA in its claims that it had not engaged in bio-warfare.

I was struck by how aptly the phrase captures universities' statements whenever details of their use of animals make it into the news cycle.

A Tiny Sliver of What UW-Madison Doesn't Want You to Know

A PETA Undercover Investigation

Workers Pry Baby Monkeys Away From Their Mothers, Electroshock Penises, and More in Deranged Lab

Parkinson's Breakthrough or Plain Old Hype?

You be the judge.

I'd have commented on UW-Madison's Facebook page, but I'm blocked. They are seemingly afraid of substantive dialog. And really, who can blame them? Million's of tax-payer dollars are at stake.

They recently linked to a press release from the university's PR department about purported progress in treating Parkinson's disease.

Primate Center vivisector Maria Emborg has published a paper reporting on her use of stem cells injected into the brains of monkeys who have some symptoms that mimic Parkinson's symptoms in humans.

The reason they have these symptoms is that she had injected a chemical called MPTP into their brains. [If you are interested, here are a handfull of posts concerning this hideousness.]

Now, you'd think from the press release that this was important big news. It isn't, and I'll get to that in a second. What's particularly hideous is what MPTP injected in their brains does to the monkeys. Reasonable people agree that this is just about as terrible a thing as you can do to an animal.

The reason this isn't big news, and what isn't mentioned in the press release, is that very similar research on fully consenting humans has been underway since at least the early 1990s. See Li, Wen, et al. ["Extensive graft-derived dopaminergic innervation is maintained 24 years after transplantation in the degenerating parkinsonian brain." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113.23 (2016): 6544-6549.]

Research using fully consenting humans is the only ethical way to proceed, and probably the smartest.

A bit of trivia: Check out her public funding history.

UW-Madison refuses own medicine....

Long-time observers will not be surprised that a letter which appeared in the Mar 11, 2021, Capital Times pointing to the gross discrepency between a UW-Madison National Primate Research Center factsheet on pet monkeys and the Primate Center's own practices led to the university deleting the factsheet almost immediately and replacing it with a less embarrassing substitute. Ryan Hartkopf: UW-Madison, are you sure you want a monkey?

I guess they embrace the 'do as I say, not as I do' philosophy.

See the archived fact sheet here (you have to scroll down), and the gutted version without mention of the minimumly humane cage size here.

The cage-size standard in labs using monkeys must meet the minimum cage sizes stipulated in the Animal Welfare Act. Subpart D: Specifications for the Humane Handling, Care, Treatment, and Transportation of Nonhuman Primates stipulates that cages for young and female macaques must have at least 4.3 sq. ft. of floor space and be at least 30" high. Adult male macaques must have 6 sq.ft. of floor space and be at least 32" high. In the deleted Fact Sheet, the university says, "The minimum cage size for the smallest monkey is 4ft x 6ft x 6ft. That's 24 square feet of floor space, almost four times the floor space and two and a half times taller than is required by the Animal Wefare Act.

This is the reality of the housing used by the primate labs:

Kudos to letter writer Ryan Hartkopf for taking the time to read and think about what the university says it does and what it actually does to to animals. And kudos likewise to the Captital Times for publicing his letter.

In Spite of Recent Fine, UW-Madison Still Racking-Up Animal Welfare Violations.

On April 15, 2020, the USDA cited and fined the University of Wisconsin, Madison $74,000 for twenty-three violations of the Animal Welfare Act that occurred between March 4, 2015 and April 25, 2019; about 6 violations a year. The university responded to the citations in an article in the Wisconsin State Journal:

Most of the problems described in the most recent settlement were immediately reported by campus staff to federal agencies, according to university spokeswoman Kelly Tyrrell. UW-Madison took steps to prevent future violations, including upgrading procedures, equipment and staffing, long before the settlement was reached April 15 and the fine was paid April 29. [UW-Madison fined $74,000 over care of research animals. Kelly Meyerhofer. Wisconsin State Journal. Jul 30, 2020.]

But the violations of the Animal Welfare Act continue at an apparently even greater rate.

On or about April 20, 2020, a monkey was given an overdose of an experimental drug.

On or about June 4, 2020, a monkey went eight hours without post-operative analgesia.

On July 13, 2020, a monkey escaped when being transferred to a transport device and sustained a severe injury to the end of their tail. The injury was not noticed for two weeks.

On July 17, 2020, a monkey escaped from a transport device and injured their tongue. Two other monkeys in the room also sustained injuries during interactions with the escaped monkey.

Numerous violations of the Public Health Service Policy on the Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals have also continued since the citation was issued.

It is likely that the only agency the university reported the problems to was OLAW, the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare. OLAW does not cite nor fine institutions for animal welfare violations. OLAW is a tiny agency within the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the United States Public Health Service, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

It remains to be seen exactly why it took three and a half months for the public to learn about the fine. The university is so quick to announce anything that buffs its image.

Not mentioned in the article were the rest of the violations. As mentioned above, the fine was imposed by the USDA which enforces the Animal Welfare Act. With only a few rare exceptions the Animal Welfare Act does not apply to mice, rats, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, or animals used in agricultural research. So, the USDA fined the university only for violations involving animals covered by the Animal Welfare Act.

The university was not cited or fined for its violations of the PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The Policy applies to all Public Health Service-“conducted or supported activities involving animals…”. The Policy defines animal: “Any live, vertebrate animal used or intended for use in research, research training, experimentation, or biological testing or for related purposes.”

Since April 15, 2020, the university has reported PHS Policy violations involving more than 50 animals.

All of the reports submitted by the university to OLAW are available here.

Note: Local papers have shown no interest in the recurring violations. It seems that unless there is a fine, the university's law-breaking harm to animals isn't news.

What a world.