To gain perspective into the whole "lab" thing, I worked in one on a
six month contract. I worked only a month before being let go, due to
the goverment contract not being renewed.

That being said, I learned all the little things that go into animal
labs. There are good and bad, just like anything else.

Ultimately, there are guidelines in place to prevent unneccessary
animal testing. This means that the researchers draw up a plan, and
that plan gets approved by a committee. The committe must decide if the
animals are truly needed to prove a scientific point - if other means
can be used, they deny the tester access to animal experimentation.

This goes for levels of pain as well. There has to be a "real" need for
the type of test to justify constant pain levels in the animals. Of all
the tests going on, only one involved a high pain level. Unfortunately
for some tests that deal with chronic pain, the VA does approve them.

The tests directly involved stem cell research, pain medicine, tendon
repair, etc. All animals there were mice, some rats, and a room of
rabbits. The most terrible thing I saw go on was the other animal
caretakers being moronic, leaving babies in the empty cages (it's not
hard to find all the babies and transfer them to their new cage),
meaning the babies would be dumped in the trash with the garbage.
Luckily for a few weeks, I was that trash dumper and I saved quite a
few babies and adults (without going into details about that). Also I
found several adults left in cage and I talked to the staff about this.

Also CO2 is the method of extermination at the end of studies. CO2 is
only effectively "humane" if the chamber the animals are placed in is
deep enough that it can be "pre charged" (filled) with CO2 at a high
level. When the mouse is placed inside, it is immediately overwhelmed
by the lack of oxygen and passes out. Instead, they had shallow
containers, did not require precharging (difficult to do anyway, in the
containers), and so that was inhumane. There are circles within the lab
community that do not advocate this as humane, and it is clearly not.

Also animals would sit for days waiting for death. Not funny when the
reason was overcrowding. Conscientious researchers would not breed
extra mice. These ones were from Stanford. They really did not care.
Many would dump mice in the room and take away the cards, meaning we
could not charge them since we didnt know who they were, and thus they
didn't care about the consequence of extra mice. Researchers were
charged for the extermination.

The lab vet was not on site every day. That was also a bother. Many
times when I was not working I would find that babies were left without
mothers to die (harvested by the researchers). Unacceptable. So they
died, starved, cold, they suffered. Ridiculous. The staff would not
take care of them because of the manner in which you have to dispose
of them (they cannot be killed by CO2, so they are killed using a
guillotine). The vet was the only one willing to do this, but she was
often not there.

Also the person training me was an awful person. She took a bunch of
the mice, put them in the tank, and pushed the CO2 to it's highest
level without charging the tank, to show me "how not to do it". Then,
she said, that's how she does it all the time, since she doesn't have
time to sit around and wait. That was when I decided to try to get to
the mice before her....so I could at least try to give them a less
stressful death. When precharged it was not bad at all (considering
the alternative with her there). The way she did it, and I assume most
everyone else there, the mice suffered by gasping for air for minutes
before death. The way I did it, they were unconscious within seconds.
It was worth precharging. These animals contributed to human health in
some way, dignity should have been given to them. I imagine that most
labs do not have people who care about this, as this one did not.

Are the guidelines in place for labs to be good places, when animal
testing is needed? Yes. Do labs actually follow these guidelines?
Heck no.

Animal testing needs a much better system than what they have now -
a hotline number......and that system would simply be, strict
anti-cruelty laws with true penalties. Unfortunately the world does
not see animals such as mice and rats as worth protecting, and even
more unfortunate is that in many people's eyes, ferrets are only one
step up (or equal) to a rat.

Luckily ferrets do not have as many applications as a lab mouse or rat,
so they are not as widely used. When they are, their existence is not
so great: I saw a poster for "ferret enrichment" (there were no ferrets
at this facility) on a learning board, that said "wow, ferrets love to
sleep in steel kibble bowls". That they do, when they have nothing like
a hammock to sleep in. They are limited to what they can wash in the
tunnelwasher, or put through the autoclave for cleaning. I believe I
saw some articles on giving PVC pipes but usually they have nothing in
their pens.

Excuse the long post.

Laryssa

[Posted in FML 5908]