Sir Paul McCartney Working to Block Animal Testing Lab in Arizona

Taking on the world's largest animal-testing company, top musical icon Sir Paul McCartney has fired off an appeal to Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano asking that Covance, the company caught abusing monkeys during a PETA investigation, not be allowed to set up shop in Arizona.

"Arizona has a special place in my heart. It is where Linda loved to ride and it is where she lived her last days on our ranch. Linda was a champion for animals so it is for her and for all of us who want to protect animals from harm that I am writing to ask you not to let Covance, an animal testing laboratory, set up shop in Chandler."
—Sir Paul McCartney



What's Sir Paul's quarrel with Covance? It is the world's biggest breeder of dogs for use in experimentation and the largest importer of primates into the U.S. Damning video footage shot inside Covance's Vienna, Virginia, laboratory shows workers striking monkeys, throwing them against cage doors, shouting curses at the terrified animals, and psychologically tormenting them. Juvenile monkeys, desperate for physical contact, tugged at the gloves of PETA's investigator as—ironically—the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" echoed out from the radio. Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" also reverberated through the desolate cinderblock-walled rooms in which the monkeys would live, suffer, and die as, crazed from their barren surroundings, they frantically rocked back and forth in their cages.


Covance Responsible for Ebola Outbreak
In 1989, when Covance was known as "Hazleton Research Products," the deadly Ebola virus was discovered in sick monkeys brought in by the company from the Philippines. A tactical medical military team outfitted in biohazard suits entered the lab, killed all the animals, and sealed the facility. After Hazleton vacated the premises, the facility, which had been built for $12 million, sat on the market for years; eventually, the building was demolished and the land was given away.

Even today, Covance continues to import primates—more than 12,000 in 2005, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—and continues to harbor sick monkeys. While breeding monkeys in the U.S. would reduce the public safety risk, importing monkeys from countries like China, the Philippines, and Vietnam saves Covance money—and at Covance, public safety and animal welfare take a back seat to profits.

Read Paul McCartney's letter to Governor Napolitano.

Find out how you can join Paul McCartney to spread the word about Covance.