Covance Labs May Lose Licence Due To Cruelty

by ANC Staff and BUAV

Following a shocking undercover investigation at Covance, Munster (Germany) by leading UK anti-vivisection campaigners, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), the Ministry of Environment in Northrhine-Westfalia has started a procedure to withdraw Covance's licence to keep and experiment on laboratory animals.

Covance's Munster lab reports to Covance's UK laboratory in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Covance's US headquarters is in New Jersey.

The Ministry of Environment has also confirmed that it believes the undercover evidence obtained by the BUAV constitutes a breach of German Animal Welfare law and recommends that the court authority should intervene and start legal action against the company.

This procedure to withdraw Covance's licence will be started by the City of Münster as the competent authority.

The Ministry was so shocked by the BUAV's footage that it has also made a recommendation to the Government that Covance should install surveillance cameras in its laboratory to prevent a repetition of the type of staff abuse that the BUAV discovered.

"This is fantastic news that the German authorities have acted so swiftly to start procedures to withdraw Covance's licence and we hope that this will be shortly followed by legal action against the company for breaking the law," said Wendy Higgins, Campaigns Director for the BUAV.

"We believe that the BUAV's extraordinary evidence of animal suffering and abuse clearly shows that Covance has been routinely breaking both German and EU law relating to animal experiments," she said.

"Our evidence shows that, despite what the research industry tell us, monkeys in EU labs are still suffering appalling conditions and being subjected to unacceptable and abusive staff behaviour," Higgins said.

For five months, a BUAV operative called 'Marcus' worked undercover as an animal technician at Covance, Münster, in Germany.

Marcus witnessed the daily suffering of monkeys (including heavily pregnant females) subjected to the abhorrent routine of pharmaceutical toxicity testing, tormented by certain staff, separated from each other, isolated in barren cages, regularly and forcibly pumped full of drugs and eventually killed.

BUAV's evidence from inside Covance can be viewed at: www.buav.org/covance/index.html. Readers are warned that the images and video footage from Covance may be distressing to view.

© 2004 Animal News Center, Inc.