Bristol Myers Hit With Fine for Monkey Deaths
May 20th, 2013 // 10:48 pm @ jmpickett
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The Department of Agriculture has fined Bristol Myers Squibb for breaking the Animal Welfare Act due to the deaths of two monkeys in its labs. This fine was just revealed by PETA this week. That organization filed a complaint with FDA in 2012 after a whistleblower called foul on the laboratory conditions at the company.
The monkey deaths were reported earlier. In one of the cases, a macaque was left alone when it was restrained during some type of medical procedure. Why the monkey died is not known. In the other, the macaque was left in a case or cage that was in the process of being sanitized. It was left in there when the cage was put into nearly boiling water, killing the monkey.
There were a total of four violations that were noted by USDA. The agency fined the company $2600 in February. The other cases dealt with a bottle of epinephrine that was expired that was in an emergency kit, and for leaving open some food containers.
PETA has said it is satisfied for the rule violations regarding the safety and health of animals, but the group said that the fine is tiny for a firm that made $17 billion last year in sales.
However, PETA hopes that Bristol Myers Squibb will reform its care of animals and pay more attention to what is going on in its labs. USDA very rarely fines companies that violate animal protection laws. We hear that it is a very long and embarrassing process for the companies involved because the feds actually initiate a formal investigation.
