If you were to drive by this cluster of buildings, you might never imagine the pain and misery
behind their walls.
Dogs with holes drilled into their heads, cats suffocated under flipped-over litterboxes,
dogs injected with insecticides—this is what was documented by a PETA eyewitness at
Liberty Research, a laboratory hired by companies to conduct experiments on hundreds of dogs
and cats each year.
Liberty also breeds thousands of animals to sell for experimentation to veterinary pharmaceutical
giants, government agencies, and universities.
Hundreds of animals at Liberty are treated like inanimate laboratory tools and forced
to suffer in experiments each year, even when well-established non-animal methods
are available.
In one experiment, young dogs were injected with megadoses of an opioid.
They became lethargic and refused to eat.
In another experiment, a drill was used to bore holes into the skulls of 30 dogs so that
distemper virus could be injected into their brains.
Some dogs whimpered during the painful procedure, indicating that they were not properly anesthetized.
A senior worker said that one of the dogs repeatedly banged her head on the cage floor
and others foamed at the mouth or had seizures.
A cat named Jade by PETA’s eyewitness had seizures for weeks, each one causing temporary
paralysis, but he received no veterinary care to treat them.
When the decision was made to kill him, workers repeatedly failed in their attempts to sedate
him and let him stumble around and fall down before he was finally injected in the heart.
When Liberty needed room for an upcoming experiment, workers made space by killing a fully conscious
dog, taking more than seven minutes and four injections to do so.
Animals were kept in squalid conditions, and incompatible animals were frequently caged
together.
Two dogs—called Lumpyhead and Shitter by the workers—fought frequently but were not
separated for their own protection.
When a dog named Hank by PETA’s eyewitness was bitten by another dog, a senior worker
did not provide any care for the wound.
Cats were kept in severely crowded, barren, and stressful conditions, deprived of all
that is natural and important to them.
A cat named Neville had lacerations on his face that went untreated for months but he
was never protected from the other animals who had injured him.
Workers said (and federal documents confirmed) that some cats suffocated under flipped-over
litterboxes.
One worker said that another cat had died after being crushed under a collapsed resting
board.
A supervisor confirmed that the lives of the cats used in Liberty’s breeding compound
were just as miserable.
Liberty repeatedly used individual animals in more than one experiment—even though
this may have affected test results.
Sloppy and careless practices rendered already questionable experiments meaningless.
Liberty staff also admitted to shipping animals to the wrong clients.
In an experiment sponsored by Intervet, a subsidiary of Merck, workers injected an insecticide
into dogs.
Liberty’s clients include Merial, Bayer, Merck, the USDA, Michigan State University,
and the universities of Pittsburgh, Florida, and Louisville, among others.
Please visit PETA.org to learn how you can help the dogs and cats at Liberty.