CAAT - Coulston UPDATE May 19, 2002

USDA Blasted for Failure To Act on Lab's Imminent Collapse

Alamogordo, NM (May 15, 2002) - Only weeks after the U.S. Department of Agriculture found The Coulston Foundation on the brink of financial collapse, the primate testing lab has failed to make payroll, In Defense of Animals (IDA) announced today.

IDA's network of courageous whistleblowers - which has been instrumental in providing the evidence of repeated violations of federal law that has brought the lab to its knees - has informed the animal protection group of the anger and concern displayed by Coulston's remaining staff after their paychecks bounced.

"Do chimpanzees have to start dying by the dozens before the USDA does anything?" asked IDA Research Director Eric Kleiman. "Apparently Coulston can't even afford to pay for the little staff it has left, or fruit and toys for the chimpanzees, or basic equipment and emergency drugs for their care. If the USDA's failure to take over the lab and permanently retire the chimpanzees is not a searing indictment of both the agency and the Animal Welfare Act, I don't know what is."

According to Kleiman, the USDA not only knows of Coulston's increasingly dire situation, but also has documented much of it. The agency's March 13 inspection revealed the lab's financial ruin. The report is available at http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/Coulston/tcf_insp_030602.pdf

Coulston is currently facing foreclosure after defaulting on over $1.1 million in loans. The lab is also facing unprecedented sanctions from the Food and Drug Administration that prohibit it from conducting any FDA-sanctioned testing. Coulston permanently lost two-thirds of its income last June after the National Institutes of Health halted funding, while the lab's private client base has shriveled to practically nothing.

Coulston also continues to run afoul of the USDA. Last July, the agency filed an unprecedented fourth set of formal charges against the lab for the grossly negligent deaths of the chimpanzees Donna and Ray, inadequate veterinary care and staffing, multiple research oversight violations, and violating a legally binding August 1999 consent decree with the agency.

According to Kleiman, the USDA's "pathetic" prosecution of the case - like the agency's failure to take over the lab and permanently retire the chimpanzees - makes a mockery of both law enforcement and the law.

"The USDA has scheduled a hearing on the charges for December 10, 2002," said Kleiman. "This is more than three years after Donna's gruesome death from a severe infection and ruptured uterus after carrying a large dead fetus for weeks. The agency knew Donna's death egregiously violated the Animal Welfare Act within six months. Yet the USDA waited a year and a half after Donna's death to file the charges against this rogue facility, and another eight months to even bother to request a hearing."

"The only way the USDA can even begin an attempt at erasing this stain is to take over Coulston and permanently retire the chimpanzees," concluded Kleiman.