For more than three decades, Last Chance for Animals has investigated and helped prosecute Class B dealers, who sell "random source” dogs to research facilities for cruel and invasive experiments.
These dealers often provide stolen companion animals or obtain animals from breeders, shelters, auctions and "free to good home” ads. Class B dealers are known for inflicting horrifying abuse and keeping animals in filthy, decrepit conditions.
LCA was the first animal rights group to ever investigate Class B dealers, as well as the first to procure state and federal prison sentences for their crimes.
Now for the good news: Based on findings from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health will no longer fund any research involving dogs from Class B dealers. The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the U.S., so this is a monumental decision. A similar ban on cats from Class B dealers was adopted in 2012, and now, as of October 1, 2014, dogs have the same protection. This means that dogs will no longer be ripped from their caring families, locked into cramped, filthy kennels and sold for brutal experimentation.
The facts:
• Through our investigations, LCA found that dogs at Class B dealers' kennels were routinely beaten and deprived of food and water, forced to fight over scraps.
• In one case, puppies were beaten to death and left in a frozen pile all winter. In another, dogs with heartworm were killed so the dealer could send the parasites to labs.
• HBO's Emmy-nominated documentary, Dealing Dogs, profiled LCA'S harrowing undercover investigation and subsequent bust of one of the nation's most notorious and prolific Class B dealers, C.C. Baird. All members of the National Academy of Sciences committee viewed this documentary as part of their deliberations, and LCA is recognized on page 83 of their report.
As proud and relieved as we are about the NIH ban on Class B dealers, our work is not over yet. Unfortunately, the NIH will continue to fund research involving dogs and cats from Class A dealers (commercial breeders who raise the puppies themselves).
LCA will continue to fight against invasive animal testing until the barbaric practice has stopped —
DID YOU KNOW?
Millions of dogs and cats in China are bludgeoned, strangled with wire nooses and literally bled to death, just so their fur can be turned into trim and trinkets. Frequently, products made from their fur are deliberately mislabeled as other species’ fur and exported to the United States to be sold to unsuspecting consumers in retail stores. MOST PEOPLE wearing dog and cat fur DON’T EVEN KNOW IT!
DID YO
