On Monday, October 17, 2022, The Washington Post featured SHARK's drone work (there may be a paywall) exposing the suffering and dying beagles (see below) at the Envigo facility in Cumberland, Virginia. For decades dogs were raised, tortured and killed in horrific conditions at Envigo (previously LabCorp/Covance), unbeknownst to the general public until SHARK's drones documented and exposed them to the world starting in 2017 and again in 2019.




SHARK's work sparked the chain of events that led to the shutdown of Envigo and the rescue of 4,000 beagles destined to be tortured and killed for experimentation.

Unfortunately, the article states that only 3,776 dogs were removed from this hellhole, calling into question what happened to 224 dogs. Per the Department of Justice Press Release (see here) on Monday, July 8, 2022: The Justice Department worked with the HSUS to develop a plan to transfer the 4,000 remaining beagles from the Cumberland facility and make those beagles available for adoption. On July 7, SHARK publicly stated that HSUS should have had someone onsite ensuring the safety of the dogs during the transition process, and now 224 dogs are unaccounted for?!?

In mere months, HSUS raked in $2.2 million dollars (to go with their annual intake of over $100 million dollars) in donations while they distributed the dogs to other facilities to care for them. The SHARK team has been working on this issue since 2017, traveling to and from Virginia minus the much-needed donations to continue our work. 

In 2008, SHARK introduced drones into the animal movement to document and exposed animal cruelty. Since then, SHARK's drones have documented and exposed many forms of horrific animal cruelty previously unknown including:

* US Senator Jame Inhofe's live pigeon shoot fundraisers, which SHARK shutdown in three years
* Live pigeon shoot fundraisers in Alabama, which SHARK shutdown within three months after finding it
* Along with the group Fish Feel, documented and exposed the tournament slaughter of cow nose rays in the Chesapeake Bay and got a law passed to stop it before the species was wiped out
* Exposed and shutdown illegal cockfights in nine states and still counting
* Exposed and stopped a large pitbull operation in Illinois
* Documented and exposed Jeff Lowe's Zoo of starving and dying animals and pressured authorities to take action to remove all the animals and shut it down.
* Documented and exposed live pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania and shut most of them down (others are hiding)
* Exposed factory dairy farms in California
* Exposed Marshall Farms (now Marshall BioResearch) beagle breeding operation in North Rose, NY
* Exposed live pigeon shoots in Maryland and got a law passed to ban them
* Exposed factory egg-laying operation in California
* Exposed US Meat Animal Research Center where animals are experimented on and killed using our tax dollars
* SHARK's current drone operations include documenting Mexican rodeos including brutal steer tailing in Illinois and the contestants mercilessly beating and whipping their own horses! See video here. 

These are just a few of the many monthly drone operations SHARK has conducted leading to significant accomplishments for the animals! You can see more on our YouTube account.

SHARK receives information on many animal cruelty targets every week, but we lack the funds to document, expose and stop them. 

If you really want to stop animal cruelty, support SHARK's work. We are trained professionals conducting specialized investigations that are making a real difference for the animals! SHARK's work is highly effective and when we start a campaign, we finish it! We don't fundraise off of issues and then move on when the donations drop off like the big groups hoarding millions of dollars do. 



SHARK is glad our five years of work ultimately resulted in the shutdown of Envigo and release of nearly 4,000 beagles from the terrible conditions they were forced to endure before being subjected to horrific experimentation and a brutal death.

However, there are many other facilities like Envigo and Marshall Biorearch also raising animals for horrific experimentation and product testing and this needs to stop!

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is asking Congress for $5 million in new funding to support its nonanimal methods (NAMs) initiative in fiscal 2023. The program would be coordinated by the FDA’s Office of the Chief Scientist. Read article below:

US FDA seeks to slash animal testing

Please contact your legislators and ask them to approve the new funding for the NAMs initiative. Look up your elected officials here. See suggested letter below to copy and paste and add your own personal notes:

Dear (Legislator name):

Please approve the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) request for $5 million in new funding to support its nonanimal methods (NAMs) initiative in fiscal year 2023, beginning October 1. 

Animal models have played a critical role in bringing new therapies to market, but animal models don’t always predict toxicity in humans. Drugs are absorbed, distributed, and metabolized differently in different species. Many drugs fail because toxicity problems do not arise in animal models but appear in human clinical trials.

Therapies that may benefit people might not make it to market because of toxicity in animal studies, yet that toxicity may be irrelevant to humans. Examples: Ibuprofen kills dogs in five days, but is of tremendous benefit to humans! The polio vaccine was delayed for six years because of testing complications on animals!

But advances in new technologies, such as microphysiological systems—2D or 3D cellular systems that mimic human organs—combined with in vitro cellular tests and in silico computational models, “present new opportunities to improve our ability to predict risk and efficacy,” states David Strauss, director of the FDA’s Division of Applied Regulatory Science. These tools may also “help bring products to market faster."

In addition, physiochemical and in vitro methods can be used instead of animal studies to evaluate whether a drug can induce a photochemical reaction in tissues, leading to irritation or an allergic reaction. Also, reconstructed human cornea–like epithelium and 3D reconstructed human epidermis models have replaced rabbit tests for eye irritation and skin sensitization, he said.

Patients are suffering and dying of toxicities while waiting for more effective testing methods. 

Please quickly approve, the FDA's request for the new funding of $5 million to support its nonanimal methods (NAMs) initiative. 

Sincerely,
(Your name, address and phone number)



One of many thousands of suffering victims of Envigo's animal cruelty 

Our many trips to document this cruelty, as well as all of the other animal cruelty SHARK documents and exposes nationwide, are expensive.

Your donations go to our investigations, not exorbitant executive salaries or fundraising.

SHARK really can't continue without your support. Please donate here.