http://www.flickr.com/photos/rob-qld/ / CC BY 2.0

In July 2008, PETA received an anonymous letter reporting that "many monkeys" had died at Charles River Laboratory's (CRL) Sparks, Nevada, facility because of a heating system malfunction. We immediately filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which opened an investigation. After the incident, CRL was fined $10,000 for the death of 32 monkeys—and then went right back to selling and experimenting on millions of animals.

Jumping forward to earlier this year, another horror story broke from behind the walls of a CRL lab in Reno, Nevada. Employees at this facility carelessly ran a monkey through a high-temperature cage washer and boiled him alive. CRL was once again fined, this time for $4,000.

Now news outlets across the country are reporting on the combined $14,000 in fines for the deaths of these 33 monkeys—who were forced to endure the excruciating pain of being cooked alive because of employee ineptitude—and people everywhere are crying out for tighter regulations.

Compared to the usual slap on the wrist that abusive companies receive, these fines are hefty. But for a billion-dollar corporation with a long and sordid history of violating federal animal protection laws—and the iniquitous distinction of being the world's largest tester and supplier of animals for use in experimentation—they're like parking tickets. CRL is responsible for the imprisoning, poisoning, mutilating, and killing of literally tens of millions of animals—from mice to dogs to monkeys—in its own laboratories and those of its customers.

While the deaths of these monkeys have shined some light on the horrors that occur inside CRL, it is the everyday operations of this company and others like it that cause animals the most suffering and death.

Lets's hope that CRL's recent closing of a testing facility in Massachusetts is a sign of things to come for the entire nasty company.

Written by Logan Scherer

It's not going to bankrupt Covance—torturing animals in experiments is big business—but this is a big black eye for them, and it's a vindication of PETA Europe's work to expose the callous disregard for suffering that helps Covance's execs sleep at night. But today, the New Jersey-based animal-testing company paid PETA Europe $290,000 following a British court’s dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the company to stop them from publicizing undercover video footage from a Covance lab here in Virginia. As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk puts it,

How d'ya like them apples, Covance? To mark PETA Europe's big victory for free speech, here's the video that Covance really, really doesn't want people to see. It should come as no surprise that the footage is extremely disturbing, but—as the British courts have just demonstrated—it's vitally important that companies like Covance not be allowed to get away with trying to keep their dirty little secrets from the public.

This is actually really incredible, and it's been a long time coming. A couple of months ago, I wrote about a lab Iams was using to test its food that was under investigation by the USDA. Well, I just found out that the lab just agreed to a $33,000 civil penalty after federal investigators alleged the company committed nearly 40 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Some of the violations found by USDA inspectors were failing to provide sheep with appropriate pain relief during surgery, inadequate training of employees for animal handling and care, failure to vaccinate dogs and cats used for research, and keeping animals in cages smaller than the legal limits. You can read the full story here.

Of course, this is just one small step forward in our campaign to stop companies from lab-testing pet food. While Iams may have stopped using this lab after our investigation, the company needs to stop lab-testing its food altogether. You can help persuade them to do just that by only feeding your animals cruelty-free pet food, and by clicking here to let Iams know that you won’t buy their food until they stop testing on animals.