Top Five Reasons Why Chandler Should Say 'NO!' to Covance

1. In February 2006, Covance was cited and fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for serious violations of federal law. Sick and injured animals were deprived of veterinary care, and animals who had been subjected to painful procedures were not given pain relief. Workers slapped primates, threw them against cages, and screamed in their faces as supervisors looked the other way. Investigations into Covance facilities around the world have documented abusive treatment and neglect of animals; inviting Covance into Chandler would be like inviting a child molester into a community in order to see whether that person violates the law one more time.

2. In addition to using dogs in painful, lethal tests, Covance is one of the world's largest breeders of dogs for use in experiments. The USDA's investigation revealed that Covance was not exercising some dogs—they were only taken out of their cages so that they could be prodded, poked, injected, and pumped full of test substances.

3. In 1989 and 1990, Covance—then known as Hazleton—imported three shipments of Ebola-infected monkeys into the United States. Imported monkeys pose a substantial public health risk, because infectious diseases can jump the species barrier from monkeys to humans.

4. According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Covance is the largest importer of primates into the United States. In fact, it has brought 12,681 primates into the U.S. from China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Mauritius. Primates suffer terribly when they are transported—babies are often separated from their mothers, and all primates who are subjected to transport are extremely frightened by the experience. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has banned the importation of primates for use as pets because "exposure to imported [nonhuman primates] presents potential infectious disease risks, which may include emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola-Reston, B Virus (Cercopithecine herpesvirus 1), monkeypox, yellow fever, Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, tuberculosis, and other diseases not yet known or identified." But the CDC's attempts to stop all importation of primates into the U.S. have failed, because pressure from companies like Covance—which are driven by their desire for cheap laboratory animals—prevailed, putting the public's health in peril.

5. Construction by Covance in Chandler threatens property values. Following the Ebola incidents of 1989 and 1990, Hazleton vacated its premises in Reston, Virginia. The facility had been built for $12 million, but it sat on the market for six years, the asking price plunging from $4 million to $1 million. Eventually, the building was bulldozed and the land was given away.

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