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. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD | Chicago Tribune
Score one for the beagles. You might remember two years ago when a Virginia facility that bred thousands of animals for laboratory research got caught badly mistreating its dogs, under the noses of government inspectors.
The Chicago area, which has a world-class animal-welfare network, rose to the occasion and welcomed dozens of the abused pooches to new homes here. About 4,000 were adopted around the country: Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, famously got one, too.
Earlier this month, the feds announced a criminal penalty for the facility’s Indiana-based owner, and it’s gratifyingly severe. In the plea bargain, Inotiv Inc., via its Envigo subsidiaries, pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy to violate the Animal Welfare Act and conspiracy to violate the Clean Water Act.
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.
The company still will be permitted to sell everything from monkeys and rabbits to rats and mice for drug testing and other experiments, but it will not be breeding dogs again. Inotiv said it shut down its hellish beagle-breeding factory in September 2022 — months if not years too late.
A key whistleblower in this case was People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA, an organization companies love to hate for its undercover investigations of animal cruelty. PETA publicized the sickening conditions at Envigo’s Virginia facility.
Read more here.
Related: “75 more rescued beagles headed to Anderson Humane in South Elgin,” “‘They are starting over now’: Beagles bred for research meet new foster families in South Elgin,” “‘They were found in some pretty bad conditions’: Rescued beagles need foster homes”
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