ELLIE HANSEN, HOST:

I’m so happy to be having this conversation with you today, and learning more about Rise for Animals. Have you always wanted to work in the field of animal rights or animal activism? And at what point in your career or your life, did you become aware of the horrors of animal experimentation and decided that you wanted to help?

LINDSEY SOFFES, GUEST:

I have been a proponent of animal rights for almost 15 years, and it’s really fulfilling for me to have joined this cause in a professional capacity. I learned about the horrors of animal experimentation at the same time that I really learned about the horrors of factory farming and other human exploitations of non-human animals. And I think like so many in this movement, really have to credit Peter Singer, the author of Animal Liberation, with opening my eyes and inspiring me to adopt ethical veganism. the best decision I’ve made for sure, and the one that eventually led me here.

Before joining the Anti-Vivisection Movement, I advocated for human civil rights in a legal capacity, and for the interests of companion and farmed animals who were subjected to human cruelty or needed human protection outside of labs. And when I had the opportunity to join the Animal Rights Movement in the fight against animal experimentation, it seemed like a great fit for me because it combines social justice and rights work with non-human animals.

And to me, vivisection is particularly interesting. It’s a core animal rights issue. Some commentators have labeled vivisection as the animal rights movement’s most controversial target. And it’s intriguing to me that historically, anti-vivisection advocacy helped launch the animal rights and welfare movements before effectively being sidelined, right, as the large quote unquote humane groups kind of separated themselves from the anti-vivisection factions. And it really can’t be denied that the issues vivisection raises are unique and challenging. It’s for lack of a better term specialized, right? Because it involves science. It’s hugely political because there’s so much money involved. It’s emotional because people have been falsely led to believe that their self-interest, their health and the health of their loved ones, is tied to the perpetuation of this practice. And yet, still, it remains wholly an ethical and moral issue, an animal rights issue, one that lies at, and I think should be viewed as lying at the heart of the larger animal rights movement, which I feel so fortunate to help represent as part of Rise for Animals.

HANSEN:

So I’d like to talk about one of Rise for Animals’ newest projects. I recently learned about the Animal Research Laboratory Overview (ARLO). This is an online resource hosted by Rise for Animals I think everyone should know about. Can you describe ARLO and how it’s changing how members of the public can now use this resource to stay informed about what’s happening in research laboratories in their communities and their state and across the nation?

LINDSEY:

Yes, thank you for the question. ARLO is an open source, publicly accessible database that houses and makes available for review and download thousands of public records pertaining to animal research throughout the United States. Anyone can access it at arlo.riseforanimals.org or through Rise’s website. Rise submits large numbers of Freedom of Information Act requests and state public records requests, and we upload the responses we get to ARLO. Anyone who accesses ARLO can search through all of the available records and can filter them by facility name or type, by physical location, or by topic if you’re interested in a specific term. You can also refine search results by species, so for example, you can hone in on facilities that report experimenting on dogs.

Notably though, it’s not only what’s in ARLO, but I think also what’s not in ARLO that defines its importance as an advocacy tool. There’s just so much that we don’t know, that we don’t have access to about animal research in this country. For example, we’re routinely denied public records because the responding institution claims a broad legislative exemption and we can’t verify the veracity of that claim. Institutions often seek to charge us tens of thousands of dollars. to produce public records, meaning that we really have to pick and choose which requests we can pursue, which we think will be most helpful potentially to the movement. And when we receive a response, many of the documents are often heavily redacted, so parts of them are blacked out. And again, because the responding entity is claiming that this information doesn’t need to be made public by law, and because we can’t see the information, we can’t confirm whether this is true.

It’s also important to note that not all animal research facilities can even be accounted for in a comprehensive tool like ARLO because US law doesn’t require that all research facilities be licensed or in some other way report their activities to the government. Labs that don’t experiment on animals covered by the Animal Welfare Act, which we’ll touch on later, or receive funding from a public health agency, like the NIH, remain unregulated. And so we may not even know they exist, much less be able to accrue documents about them.

And I think these examples speak to the alarming lack of transparency that surrounds the vivisection in our country. And as advocates, we know that this is strategic—this obfuscation by the industry. They want to shield the public from what’s happening, and this presents one of our biggest challenges. This is such an entrenched practice and such a defended one by animal researchers who want to retain complete freedom over what they do, and not draw negative attention from animal rights advocates, and probably equally if not more so from the not-yet-advocates—anti-vivisection advocates who would be really abhorred by what’s happening if they became aware and if they could see it for themselves.

So because we can’t unlock laboratory doors today, the best we can do is to carve out a small window by gathering and sharing the information that is available, that we can procure, including, importantly, information compiled by animal researchers themselves. And that is what ARLO does. And in this way, it acts as a unique and we think important tool in increasing animal research industry transparency.

We encourage anyone interested to check it out and please give us feedback. We are really committed to continuing to build out this tool and make it helpful to fellow advocates, as helpful as possible. And we welcome anyone to submit legally obtained public records for upload to ARLO. We would love for all of us as a movement to share with each other what we know.

HANSEN:

What’s the feedback so far on ARLO? Just curious as to how people are actually putting it to use.

LINDSEY:

Yes, we get positive feedback, especially from grassroots groups who are seeking to start campaigning around either a particular facility or a particular practice and don’t have another way to go about procuring this information, either by getting a good overview of what’s happening nationally or happening at a specific institution, or they just don’t know how to get started. We also find it helpful because public records requests can take quite a long time to see any result of fulfillment, and so this gives advocates a place to start where the records are absolutely already available, and it can help guide what other information they may wish to request.

To that end, we also tell advocates to please, if the process or the fees associated with public records are a bar to their procurement for them, to please let us know and see if we can help make sure that those public records requests can get filed.

HANSEN:

ARLO sounds like a very valuable resource, and one of your most recent records requests regarding dogs in laboratories involves the University of Washington (UW)—which you call one of the worst offenders in the animal experimentation industry. What makes UW one of the worst offenders?

LINDSEY:

We obtained the most recently published pictures, all of which are available in ARLO, in response to a state public records request submitted to the University of Washington. I would say that the University of Washington is a prolific lab for several reasons. It has accumulated a long list of Animal Welfare Act violations, which are rarely officially meted out by the government’s enforcement arm. So the accumulation of many of them says something really ugly about what’s happening inside the facility’s walls. And I want to make clear that this is of course not to say that equally awful things aren’t happening in other labs all around the country, only that the government’s observance and documentation is relatively unusual and therefore speaks volumes. Often. To us.

The UW is also home to one of the US’s seven national primate research centers, and these centers receive funding from the federal government, primarily the NIH, private foundations, and private industry. And these centers perform basic and applied research on non-human primates. Together, they report about a thousand studies a year that involve over 2,000 investigators, and in 2021, they reported over 27,000 non-human primate subjects. And beyond their practices in research, right, in that specific realm, the UW has also fought very hard to stave off any public accountability. It built its animal laboratories underground and has engaged in other conduct that’s attempted to shield from public view what it’s doing. So in fact, in October of last year, the UW was sued by PETA. and was found to have destroyed and failed to turn over public records while under a federal investigation. And then just last month, PETA won another suit against the University of Washington, which sought to keep the names of its Institutional Care and Use Committee Members confidential.

HANSEN:

Rise for Animals’ headquarters is located in Boston, MA. Massachusetts is one of the top meccas for animal testing in our nation. In fact, Charles River Laboratories is located in MA, which at last count in 2021, had 9,284 dogs within their facility. Their headquarters is in Wilmington. What can you tell us about Charles River? How is Rise for Animals able to target Charles River since they’re right in your backyard?

LINDSEY:

Charles River is definitely a major force in and on behalf of the animal research industry. And there appear to be two main prongs to its approximately $3.5 billion operation. One, it undertakes animal experimentation itself and it’s valued as a top CRO, or contract research organization, meaning that third parties pay it to perform experiments. And two, it acts as a commercial breeder, breeding and selling non-human animals for experimentation through a global network with customers that range from government institutions to academic ones, members of the private industry. And in fact, Charles River has been described as the world’s largest supplier of lab animals and perhaps more aptly as the General Motors of the laboratory animal industry.

Charles River has huge ties to a huge number of pro-vivisection entities that are both public and private. By way of example only, we know that it has received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from the NIH over the last several years. And it boasts having supported the development of 86% of the drugs approved by the FDA in 2021. And given that in total, right, less than 5% of prospective drugs secure FDA approval, this is a ridiculously high number. And it demands that we consider what it could tell us about the relationship between Charles River and the federal government.

On a more historical note, Charles River has also been a huge contributor to defending and expanding the vivisection industry. It founded the Association for Biomedical Research, which merged with the National Society for Medical Research to form today’s National Association for Biomedical Research, which acts as the industry’s premier and extremely powerful lobbying agent. And it sits on the International Council for Lab Animal Science, or ICLAS, an organization that exists to advance animal research on an international scale, and that interacts in an official capacity with the World Health Organization.

So all of this said, Rise has not yet undertaken a campaign specific to Charles River. Instead, as I’ll talk about more later in relation to our Marshall campaign, Rise advocates against the animal research industry as a whole, seeking to expose interconnections and strategically erode the industry’s bedrock—that being largely born of public and political support for, and definitely legal protection of animal research. We recognize that as long as there is demand for Charles River services, its operations will continue. And this tells us that we need to disrupt the economics of the system—the entire industry of which Charles River is a part. Because doing so will affect the operations of individual institutions like Charles River in a way that going after the operations of just an individual institution like Charles River could never affect the operations of the industry as a whole.

HANSEN:

As I understand it, labs in the private sector are not required to give out any information to the public. This is especially upsetting because they could be doing whatever they want to dogs and other animals and we will never know about it. So, who regulates private labs, or oversees that they are following the Animal Welfare Act, for example?

LINDSEY:

Yeah. So the US system can be most aptly described as one of self-regulation, right? There is no one comprehensive law or regulation that applies to all research facilities. And only research facilities using certain species of animals, which we’ll touch on later, or receiving certain government funding are even subject to any government…quote unquote…regulation, as you mentioned. That said, at a basic level, we can think of the system as three-part.

So firstly, we have the Animal Welfare Act or the AWA. This is the only federal piece of legislation applicable to animal research facilities. And it sits under the purview of the United States Department of Agriculture or the USDA. By way of overview, I think it’s really important to recognize that The AWA only sets minimum care standards. It does not prohibit a single type of harm to a non-human, no matter how egregious. And it applies only to an estimated at best 5% of all non-human animals subjected to research because it exempts mice, rats, and birds bred for research. It exempts amphibians, reptiles, and farmed animals used for agricultural research. I think it’s also important to know that the AWA was never intended to meaningfully regulate animal research. Rather, and this is made really clear in the congressional record around this bill, it was meant to assuage the community’s concerns about animal protection and animal welfare by putting on the books some language around welfare. So really, the USDA uses it as a crux of its supposed law that was never intended to regulate labs.

But if we take that aside and look at what we actually have in the AWA, the USDA is supposed to inspect all licensed animal research facilities at least once a year. But we know that it has not been doing this. In fact, public records show that the USDA has inspected little more than 60% of licensed facilities a year and has, in fact, deferred to a private Animal Research Trade Association, the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, called ALAC. And if ALAC accredits a research facility, the USDA investigates no further and defers any potential inspections for up to three years. And for those inspections that it does undertake of ALAC-accredited facilities, the USDA directs its agents to perform limited or focused inspections. So years and years can go by without the USDA setting its eyes on a single animal at any given research facility. Rise for Animals, in partnership with the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Clinic, are actually pursuing a lawsuit against the USDA over this policy, and the case is pending in federal court.

Aside from the AWA, I would say the second piece is something called the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, referred to as the GUIDE, which was adopted by the NIH—we know to be the largest funder of animal research in the US and assertedly worldwide. Animal research facilities that receive public health agency funding, such as funding from the NIH, are asked to comply with the GUIDE’s recommendations for animal care. But just like the AWA, the GUIDE is not really a regulatory document. In fact, the quasi-government agency responsible for drafting the guide and updating the guide doesn’t consider it to constitute a regulatory document at all, though the NIH treats it and talks about it as though it does. But really, no matter how you define it as regulatory or not, the guide relies entirely on research facilities’ self-regulation by asking these facilities to self-report quote-unquote significant deviations from the guide. We know that the NIH does not undertake routine inspections. And just like the UASDA does in the AWA realm, the NIH treats ALAC accreditation as evidence of compliance with the guide.

It’s also important to note, I think, that like the AWA, the GUIDE doesn’t prohibit a single type of harm to a non-human. And this is less surprising when we realize that both laws or regulations, I should say, the AWA and the GUIDE were written by members of the animal research industry and then put forth for legislative consideration.

And the third piece would be oversight performed by the research facilities themselves. So both the AWA and the law that underpins the GUIDE, which is the Health Research Extension Act, direct animal research facilities to form Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees. called IACUCs. And this is what I referenced earlier with regard to the University of Washington. Members of these committees are asked or tasked with, I should say, reviewing all experimental protocols that are going to be pursued by that institution or that institution’s researchers. But IACUC members are selected by the animal research institution itself. And in turn, these committees approve 98 to 99% of all experiments proposed. And this seems incredible until we realize that once again, and now we’re three for three, right? Regulation of animal research is not the goal. The AWA effectively says that IACUCs are not intended to and therefore can’t meaningfully regulate research. And in fact, it’s often asserted that the main role of IACUCs is to give us the impression that animal welfare type regulation is taking place on an institutional level.

So taken together, we confront the really distressing reality that the answer to your question of who is responsible for regulating research facilities is, well, the researchers who make up those research facilities.

HANSEN:

That just doesn’t seem right to me.

LINDSEY:

No, it does not.

HANSEN:

According to many of the animal laboratory reports on ARLO, it seems that in many instances the number of animals being used for research is actually increasing, rather than decreasing. Why do you think this is?

LINDSEY:

Really important question. I would first note that any figures we can project are vastly underrepresented of the number of animals being commodified and brutalized in labs. The filings that we use to project these numbers are based on self-reports by animal research facilities that are specific to animals or species under the purview of the Animal Welfare Act. So this means dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, non-agricultural pigs, non-agricultural sheep, and non-human primates. Put differently, and with apologies for hitting this again, but I just think it’s so important, that the AWA does not consider rats, mice, and birds bred for research to be animals, such that over 99% of exploited animals enjoy zero legal protections and are not reported by research facilities at all. Estimates of the total number of mice and rats used for research in the US each year exceed 100 million, or 100 times the average number of animals reported. And this number is expected to continue to climb as facilities experiment with and on genetically modified rodents.

I will also say that it is believed that facilities often choose rodents, of course for a variety of reasons, but not the least of which is to avoid government regulation and public oversight and to reduce the likelihood of outcries from the community. Unfortunately, these animals, though the same in all ways that matter as the others who are exploited, aren’t faring as well with public sentiment. And public sentiment for their wellbeing is lagging behind that for other species. They are unfortunately considered by most people to be more acceptable victims of this industry than other species like dogs, cats, and primates.

But if we turn to the reported numbers that you referenced, we certainly have seen ups and downs. And for the years for which publicly available information is reported by the government, between 2014 and 2021, we know that the total number of animals varied between an estimated low of about 913,000 in 2015 to an estimated high of over 1.8 million in 2018. The other years tracked between these figures, with estimated 2021 numbers sitting around 1.4 million. We think that some of the reported increases can be attributed to increases in aquaculture research with the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of fish each year. And this trend plays into a huge jump we’re seeing in the use of quote unquote “other animals”–so animals other than those that I previously delineated but that are still covered in some way by the AWA. Use of quote unquote “other animals” has increased from about 250,000 in 2015 to over 700,000 in 2021. Other recent increases such as that seen between 2020 and 2021 were probably at least somewhat attributable to COVID-19 effects as fewer animals were used in 2020 than either in 2019 or 2021.

That said, some trends are heading in a better direction. For example, the number of dogs being reported has decreased from over 69,000 in 2014 to just north of 48,000 in 2021. Still an unimaginable number. We believe, as we know you do, that even one would be too many, but at least a smaller number than in the past.

HANSEN:

And since we’re speaking about dogs, Rise for Animals has started a campaign against Marshall Farms Group, an enormous breeder of dogs for research with a global presence. The latest records available show that there are over 21,000 dogs at the facility in North Rose, NY. Can you talk about your campaign against Marshall Farms?

LINDSEY:

Absolutely. As with many of our other campaigns, Rise has tried to increase public awareness of Marshall and its operation. We’ve publicized information about the Animal Welfare Act violations that Marshall has accrued over the last several years—these violations depicting injured animals, inadequate animal and veterinary care, and unsafe living conditions, and giving us some more insight into the number of animals being housed, at least at the New York site.

Rise has also tried to encourage community members against supporting any of Marshall’s operations by protesting PETCO, the animal supply chain that sells ferrets bred by Marshall, as well as other products manufactured by Marshall.

And we at Rise have tried to get more information by visiting Marshall’s headquarters in New York. Unfortunately, the site is strategically constructed and the facilities are strategically placed. And because of the cooperation between Marshall’s security and local law enforcement, we’ve really been prevented, as have other activists, from obtaining more information on the ground. We have, though, been able to compile and share drone footage that depicts Marshall’s breeding and research sheds. And these look exactly like US CAFOs or factory farms. We’re currently in talks with other animal rights groups, including those more local, so those based in New York, to determine how we can reignite a joint campaign. And some discussions have surrounded directing billboards close to Marshall’s physical site, but unfortunately, multiple ad agencies have rejected our proposals to date. As we all know, the power and sway of the animal research industry is immense.

HANSEN:

I know from my own research and my own acquaintances in the area of New York where Marshall Farms is located that it is particularly difficult to do anything to protest this breeding facility. I cannot even wrap my brain around 21,000 dogs all in one place. That alone seems so inhumane and wrong…not to mention heartbreaking. What makes Marshall so “untouchable” for a better word? I mean, I believe we need to stand up for these dogs stuck in this situation. What do we do?

LINDSEY:

Specifics aside, we as proponents of animal rights take an institutional view. That is to say, we condemn all research involving non-human animals, and we try to focus on this baseline instead of condemning the atrocities committed by a single industry actor in a vacuum.

When we discuss the practices of a single industry actor like Marshall, which is important, we do so to open the public’s eyes to the general practice of vivisection, vis-à-vis evidenced examples. But at the same time, we don’t want people to come to believe that these atrocities are limited or unique to a particular institution. You know, Marshall’s practices are despicable. But Marshall is not an aberrant actor. You know, what they do is industry standard. And they continue along because they make huge amounts of money continuing along, because others are paying them to do that. This type of institutional perspective, though, tells us that campaigning to close Marshall without changing the industrial and societal status quo will not ensure meaningful change for non-humans. Given our economic system alone, we know that continued demand for Marshall’s quote unquote products and services will induce supply, as corporate actors chase profits, such that even a campaign that were successful at harming Marshall’s continued structure or shutting down Marshall, can’t really be sure to prevent another corporation from stepping right into those shoes, satisfying demand for canine lab subjects.

So to secure real change, we need to stop the demand from these dogs. And this institutional view also helps explain why entities like Marshall appear so untouchable. It’s a sizable player in a multi-billion-dollar industry, which is often termed the biomedical research complex or the medical cartel, and which is heavily intertwined with the government. through a web of nonprofit organizations, trade and professional associations, and advocacy groups, all working together to reinforce and defend the current paradigm because it’s like hugely profitable for them.

So when we talk about any individual player, any large player in the space like Marshall, we have to realize that we’re really up against the entire industry. And this is not to dissuade our efforts in any way. This is just to embolden us to think more globally. Because history tells us that if we stand together to amplify our voices, and if we work diligently to inspire others to come and stand with us, we can definitely weaken the walls that the industry has built and behind which it hides. And we can use Marshall as an example to do this. So we say, let’s get people to see what Marshall does to dogs, and then to realize that not only do other entities treat dogs the same way, but this practice is part and parcel of the morally bankrupt animal research industry.

HANSEN:

I love what you just said about standing together. Rise for Animals was founded in 1895. That was 128 years ago. And, I feel like we’re still fighting the same battle against animal testing we were fighting over a century ago. Possibly one of the reasons for this is that the animal research industry operates as a very powerful united front, and they have the money and powerful influences to back them up. And while the animal rights and anti-vivisection groups efforts are certainly making a difference, I wonder how a unified front in our case could benefit us more? What your thoughts on how we can unify our movement…our cause…to be as powerful (or more powerful) as the animal research industry?

LINDSEY:

This is such an important topic because as we’ve touched on during our conversation, our movement’s ability to disrupt the vivisection industry relies so heavily on our ability to embrace one another and work toward a common goal. One of the most challenging aspects here, I think, stems from a long-time divide between the humane or animal welfare movement and the animal rights movement. Historically, we have seen the humane movement focus on the actions of individual animal abusers instead of focusing on institutional cruelties like vivisection.

And the reasons for this are several. But historians draw a connection to humane organizations receiving support and needing support from wealthy and influential community members with interests that were tied directly to these institutional actors. Cast in this light, the mainstream humane movement’s historical decision to hold vivisection at an arm’s length can be explained, which is to say that instead of challenging the practice of vivisection itself, the humane movement chose, perhaps by necessity, as it was getting its feet on the ground, to focus on the treatment of animals, subject to vivisection. They didn’t fight the industry on its use of animals, and today, welfarist organizations remain the largest and most powerful in the animal protection movement.

Of course, on the animal rights side—where Rise sits—the institutional exploitation of non-humans is wholly opposed, and we believe that animals should not be treated instrumentally, so as means to ends, and that it is their use itself rather than their treatment or the way that they are used that must be challenged. And because this view attacks the heart of biomedical science, it is of course much scarier. It’s a much scarier proposition for the many interests that benefit from the use of animals, but also for many members of the public who believe that vivisection is necessary, right, for human wellbeing, and have come to adopt a position that humans should have the right to utilize non-humans to their benefit.

The animal research industry has actually intentionally and really adeptly used this to its advantage. It succeeded in having the mass media tag animal rights groups as radical or fringe and really driving this wedge of fear between the movement, different factions of the movement, and the public.

One paramount example of this in the history books appears in 1989 when the American Medical Association or the AMA developed this quote unquote animal research action plan to counter anti-vivisection efforts, and this plan was leaked publicly. In its internal documents, the AMA specifically references exploiting the differences that already existed over goals and tactics between different animal protection groups and characterizing animal rights groups as violent, anti-science, and as a threat to the public’s freedom of choice. And at the same time, the AMA recognized that it could curry public favor by voicing support for the humane use of animals, right? Attempt to make at least some superficial inroads with the humane movement, which was less likely to challenge its use and focus on its treatment, allowing it to continue kind of business, even if there were tweaks to that business. And in this way, I think the AMA and the larger industry has been really successful in dividing us and redefining the vivisection debate.

This has been really detrimental to our movement’s efforts and by the estimation of many, has helped shield the industry from widespread public criticism. This ideological divide that we’re talking about is perhaps insurmountable, but I don’t think it means that the movement can’t achieve greater unity. Historically and today, many organizations that favor an animal rights ideology like Rise have come to operate pragmatically, meaning that they or we support measures that seek to reduce animal use, for example, in the hopes that such measures will, over time, move us closer to the abolition of the abusive practices for which animals are used.

And it would seem that both humane and rights organizations should be able to agree that we need to be hard-hitting in our investigation. questioning and critique of the animal research industry and its motivations, that we need to educate the public consistently, honestly, and frankly about what’s going on. And for us on the animal rights side, we need to join together to attack all of the vivisection industry’s propaganda, including its characterization of us as extreme or unreasonable or anti-science.

And at the end of the day, you know, we’re all motivated by concern for the morality of the practice of vivisection. And I think it’s been said perfectly in the past that if vivisection was not a moral issue, then humans would be used as experimental subjects. So we can think of the question as not whether vivisection is good or bad science, but whether it is morally justified. And it would seem that, at the least, we should be able to agree that with what we know today, it is absolutely not.