Cages full of beagle puppies wait to meet their foster families at Anderson Humane shelter on Aug. 9, 2022, in South Elgin. According to spokesperson Juliann Carlson, 91 male beagle puppies between 6 and 10 months old arrived the previous night from Virginia. They were rescued from Inotiv, a Virginia-based research facility, where over 4,000 beagles were removed. All of them have found homes. Score one for the beagles.
This was a rare criminal conviction of a company supplying lab animals, and the financial penalties were the largest imposed in a federal animal-welfare case. Inotiv will pay $35 million, including a $22 million fine. It also agreed to fund an independent “compliance monitor” with oversight powers, among other measures.
Dogs were kept in enclosures littered with moldy feces, stinking of sewage and overrun with fleas and cockroaches, according to PETA and inspection reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which was supposed to have been on top of things all along. Evidence showed that company executives knew about the problems: Employees complained about everything from the facility’s incompetent vet care to its stench, only to be ignored. Even after the USDA started to take the case seriously, its inspectors found that the violations continued.
Sadly, animal cruelty is a fact of life in the U.S., and while we can all hope that others will learn from Inotiv’s experience, the current state of affairs is alarming. Euthanasia rates for unwanted pets have shot up as the cost of ownership has soared with inflation and owners have returned to offices, post-pandemic.