Articles
Our president, Deb Newman, is a volunteer member of the Massachusetts Bar Association's Animal Law Section, which informs other attorneys on important issues related to advocacy, welfare, protection, and rights. As co-author, with MSPCA's director of advocacy, Kara Holmquist, of the section's newsletter, Deb writes a monthly article on a cogent topic, and she has the privilege to edit the submissions of other members.
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We want to share some of those articles with you.
ANIMALS IN THE LABORATORY
The “Beagle Bill,” which became a state law in 2022, promised to save the lives of tens of thousands of healthy cats and dogs (mostly beagles) who would otherwise be euthanized when no longer needed by research facilities in Massachusetts. Now these animals may be welcomed by rescue organizations for adoption as companions to caring people.
As wonderful as that sounds, thousands of their counterparts, as well as other species, remain behind bars in laboratories run by educational institutions, government entities, scientific enterprises, or medical industries. According to federal reports quoted by PETA, Charles River Laboratories, the world’s largest breeder of animals for application in experimentation, utilized in one year “16,460 nonhuman primates, 12,531 rabbits, 9,099 dogs, 4,815 guinea pigs, 2,739 hamsters, 2,086 pigs, 207 cats, 16 sheep, and hundreds of thousands of other animals who aren’t required by law to be counted.”[1]
Agencies that address the standard of care that nonhuman animals receive at federally-funded research establishments include the USDA, which employs only 120 inspectors who are responsible for ensuring compliance for more than 12,000 facilities, and the Public Health Service, which oversees testing at the FDA and the CDC, and is similarly understaffed and inadequate. The Animal Welfare Act, a federal law that addresses the standard of care for nonhuman animals at research facilities, provides only minimal protection and excludes roughly 95 percent of the species utilized, such as birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and overwhelmingly, rodents.[2]
Mice and rats comprise more than ninety percent of nonhuman animals used in experimentation, yet none of these sentient and social creatures are afforded even a minimal federal, state, or local legal buffer concerning humane treatment. Standards for the conditions and sizes of their cages, what they are fed (or not fed), how they are handled, and the amount of pain to which they must submit may be left, if at all, to the discretion of an administrator, but likely rests with the humans who perform the experiments. In other words, no one but those in direct contact with these animals, and the animals themselves, knows what they endure during their interminable subsistence in captivity. It’s hard to imagine the fear and despair for that multitude in each minute of every day.
Although other species used in research are permitted some legal oversight for the “care” they receive, their status as property limits the extent of the safeguards. Most of us are raised to accept the idea of nonhuman animals as commodities meant to service us, with little or no consideration given to the extent they suffer or are exploited. They are used as food, garments, organ mines, bomb sniffers, astronauts, and of course, subjects in countless laboratories. Affording them too much legal protection would compromise the comforts to which we humans are accustomed.
Development of pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, food additives, and cosmetics are heavily dependent on utilization of nonhuman animals who must endure countless invasive procedures. Testing is done to determine immediate and longterm effects on brain and body; therefore, little regard is paid to the level of harm inflicted, a level intentionally measured and recorded to avert what’s recognized as impermissible: potentially unpleasant, intolerable, or dangerous reactions in humans. However, about ninety percent of medicines tested on nonhuman animals ultimately fail in human trials![3] Just as inexplicably, the Three Rs Principle — which, for more than seventy years has sought to reduce the numbers of nonhuman animals in testing, refine their treatment, and replace current methods with in vitro protocols and the ethical use of human subjects — has miscarried its objectives.[4]
Non-animal alternatives do exist, and they are often not only faster and less expensive to employ, but also more accurate and effective at predicting how the human body will respond to drugs, chemicals, and treatments. But, until passage of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 in December 2022, the US government mandated that all investigational drugs be tested on nonhuman animals before being advanced to human trials. Now, fortunately, scientifically proven alternatives such as cell-based assays, 3D tissue cultures, stem cell research, microfluidic chips, computational and mathematical models using metadatabases, and clinical research on human volunteers, are allowed.[5] Yet, despite this myriad of cutting-edge options, the fallacy of a correlation between nonhuman and human outcomes for medicines, and, of course, the continued outcry from advocates, conventional testing remains a widely accepted practice. More humans need to ask why.
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[1] https://headlines.peta.org/what-charles-river-laboratories-doesnt-want-you-to-know/
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452302X1930316X
[4] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02611929241241187
Nibi The Beaver and the Battle to Protect Wildlife
By Adam E. Teper, Esq.
This is indeed a “Dam” remarkable legal milestone for Nibi the Beaver, with all puns intended.
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Newhouse Wildlife Rescue, Inc. v. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts arose from a significant conflict between Newhouse and MassWildLife, concerning the future of an orphaned beaver named Nibi, affectionately referred to as “The Diva Beaver” by her rehabilitators and attorney. Despite having no prior interaction with Nibi or understanding her specific circumstances, MassWildLife planned to release the captive-bred beaver into the wild. This decision was made less than a month before trapping season and during the autumn/winter period when native beavers had already prepared for winter and established their territories. Such an action would likely result in Nibi's death, contradicting the mission statement of MassWildLife.
Newhouse received notice from MassWildlife on the morning of September 30, 2024: MassWildLife would be taking Nibi from her Rescue at 9:30 a.m. on October 1, 2024, for immediate release. Jane Newhouse, who has a worldwide following, took to Facebook to alert the world of Nibi’s plight. Attorney Adam Teper, whose mission statement is to “Promote, Protect, and Preserve the Fundamental Rights of Animals,” knew he had to get involved. Luckily, Teper’s mentor, rehabber and fellow attorney, Dara Sandau, was good friends with Newhouse, so he was able to contact Jane immediately. Then Teper, Sandau, and Newhouse began a collaboration to donate their time to save Nibi.
Teper filed a verified complaint, along with an ex-parte emergency motion for injunctive relief, on the basis of breach of an implied contract and violations of the Code of Massachusetts Regulations (CMR). According to 321 CMR, § 2.13, “Rehabilitate means the provision of care and treatment to sick, injured, debilitated, or orphaned wildlife for the purpose of returning such animals to the wild in a condition which enables them to survive independent of human aid and sustenance.” Nibi, having been rescued at only one week old, had never associated with other beavers. And, for the first five months of her life, no other orphaned beavers were available anywhere in New England for her social integration. By the time another beaver was located, in Rhode Island, Nibi was accustomed to human interaction, and she wanted nothing to do with the other beaver. Therefore, when MassWildLife came knocking on Newhouse’s door to claim and release Nibi, it was clear to everyone, except MassWildLife, that to survive Nibi needed to remain in human care because, by very definition of the CMR, she could not "survive independent of human aid and sustenance." Ergo, the legal intervention based on Teper’s straightforward question: “We have all these laws supposedly to protect animals, but at the end of the day, are they being properly applied?”
After extensive discussions between Teper Legal and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, Mass WildLife was persuaded to re-classify Nibi, for her own welfare, as unreleasable. This triumph also had been significantly influenced by Governor Maura Healey’s intervention during the pursuit of injunctive relief. Since then, Nibi has received an educational license, which will allow her to continue raising awareness about the vital role of her keystone species and the significance of beavers in maintaining some of our planet’s delicate ecosystems.
State Representatives, Wildlife Rehabbers, and Teper Legal are now at work to draft and propose Nibi’s Law, which will focus on giving our invaluable wildlife rehabbers a voice. Wildlife rehabbers are all trained and licensed volunteers who devote their own time, energy, and money, towards the care of wildlife – yet, they have no representation on Mass Wildlife’s Board. They have no voice in the decisions regarding the wild animals in their care. These are the problems Nibi’s Law hopes to rectify.
Nibi’s success story is rare; hers is only one among many that end tragically. With a new law in place, Nibi will become a voice for all!