The beagle emancipation was cloaked in secrecy. Almost no one was allowed to see the dogs leave Envigo. Photos and videos were forbidden. So were cellphones. The rescuers were banned from talking with Envigo’s employees.
LIZZIE JOHNSON: The first beagle out that day had brown eyes and a chunk missing from his left ear. His tail was a nub. It went from tan to white, then disappeared, maybe bitten off in a fight or caught in a cage door. The 1-year-old had never been given a name — just an identification code, ‘CMG CKA,’ tattooed in blue-green on the flap of his left ear. Like the thousands of other beagles bred for research at Envigo, a sprawling complex tucked deep in rural Virginia, he’d spent his entire life in a cage surrounded by the relentless barking of other dogs. Now, on a Thursday in late July, that was about to change. Uno, as he was immediately dubbed by his rescuers, and 3,775 other beagles were being sprung from their misery in an unprecedented animal welfare seizure.
After years of alarm from animal rights advocates and state legislators, after U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors found maggot-infested kibble, 300 dead puppies and injured beagles being euthanized, after an undercover investigation by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and after a lawsuit filed against Envigo by the Justice Department, the Indianapolis-based company had reached a settlement with the federal government. It agreed to shut down the Virginia breeding operation — admitting no wrongdoing and receiving no punishment or fines — rather than make what the CEO of its parent company called “the required investments to improve the facility”…
In July, U.S. District Court Judge Norman K. Moon approved the surrender of Envigo’s beagles to the Humane Society of the United States, giving the nonprofit group just weeks to organize the biggest rescue in its 67-year history… But the beagle emancipation was cloaked in secrecy. Almost no one was allowed to see the dogs leave Envigo…
Photos and videos were forbidden. So were cellphones. The rescuers were banned from talking with Envigo’s employees. When the meeting with the marshals ended, Ramer said, the rescuers drove to the breeding facility in Cumberland, about 50 miles west of Richmond. As lawyers in suits looked on, workers rolled out scores of beagles in carts — or carried them from their cages individually — to a Humane Society representative, who plopped them into the rescue workers’ arms.
When Ramer was handed Uno, the longtime rescuer started crying. He only had a few seconds to process the significance of this moment. He believed the beagles — sold to laboratories around the world for prices that could reach nearly $1,000 per dog, according to company receipts from 2020 — had been saved from certain death. Ramer loaded Uno into a crate, sliding the limp, 18-pound beagle to the side of the transport van he’d brought from Wyoming. Ramer, 50, dried his eyes and went back for the next dog…
Once the van was full, Ramer and his wife, Katy Collins, drove down Envigo’s long gravel driveway and out the gated entrance, past a surveillance camera. “YOU ARE BEING WATCHED AND RECORDED,” a sign warned. The cacophony of thousands of barking dogs, concealed behind a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire, faded. On the long drive back to Wyoming, the two dozen male beagles, known for their characteristic howling and baying, huddled in their crates. Most of them made no sound…
They had been raised on a 322-acre campus ringed by woods and open fields, with birdsong lilting through the air. But the beagles had never experienced it. Their lives had been spent on concrete or wire grating, according to USDA reports and Humane Society officials. Their teeth were rotted. Their bodies were scarred. They’d never worn a collar or walked on a leash. They’d never heard music or felt the crunch of an autumn leaf underfoot. They’d never even stepped on grass. SOURCE…
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