Beagles — The shame of a nation of dog lovers

We always call ourselves a nation of dog lovers, don’t we? Over a third of every single household in the UK has a dog. We obsess over our pets, treat ‘man’s best friend’ like family, and we pour millions of pounds into charities to protect them. But there’s a disgustingly dark side of this country that the government and big pharma would rather we didn’t see. Tall security fences and barbed wire shroud this dark side, whilst rural ‘farms’ nestle deep in the countryside to evade prying eyes. And in these facilities hides a state-sanctioned torture regime that views beagles not as sentient beings but as experiments. For the thousands of beagles trapped in the UK’s industrial testing complex, life isn’t a series of scientific breakthroughs. It’s a choreographed sequence of betrayals.

Beagles — bred to betray

One of the most haunting things about beagle testing is why they choose this specific breed. It’s not like their biology is a perfect match for ours. In fact, 92% of drugs (PAGE 11) that pass animal tests go on to fail in human trials. And this is simply because we aren’t dogs. Why the fuck would testing on a dog accurately predict human reactions? Beagles are chosen because they’re naturally docile.

They’re the meaning of ‘man’s best friend’ for a reason. Beagles are forgiving, gentle and very eager to please. When put in a laboratory setting, these traits are weaponised. A beagle won’t bite the person who is about to hurt it. Instead, these beautiful creatures are more likely to freeze or, more heartbreakingly, will lick the hand of the technician.

And this betrayal begins the moment they’re born. Breeding facilities do not socialise puppies for life with a family; they train them for the lab. Technicians handle these dogs from birth to ensure they accept intrusive procedures without a fight. Staff train these pups to offer their necks and tiny paws for needles, to hang motionless in slings and to endure gas masks over their tiny muzzles. By the time the industry sells these dogs to a laboratory, it has twisted the spirit of cooperation we cherish. MBR Acres alone churns out between 1,600–2,000 puppies every single year, funnelling them into a short, agonising life of pharmaceutical horrors.

The standard procedures: force and poison

Once inside of the lab, the procedures begin. One of the most common is gavage, or force-feeding. To test the toxicity of chemicals, pesticides or drugs, workers force a thick metal or plastic tube down the dog’s throat and into its stomach, pumping in a precise dose of the substance. This continues daily, often for months. It is a violent process. Analysis shows that the procedure itself kills roughly one in 250 animals, regardless of the chemical being tested. Workers puncture the dogs’ throats or accidently insert tubes into their lungs, causing these terrified creatures to bleed out or drown.

Then there are the inhalation studies. Researchers strap dogs into metal restraints and fix masks over their faces, forcing them to inhale toxic fumes, vapours or tobacco smoke for hours on end. They cannot cry out, look away, escape the smell, or stop the burning in their lungs.

Beagles — the bleeding colony

Perhaps the most grotesque part of the industry is the bleeding colony. Under specific licences, facilities can drain 15% of a healthy beagle’s total blood volume as often as four times a month.

Technicians often draw this blood from the jugular vein in the neck. Some dogs endure this bleeding hundreds of times over several years, living in a constant state of anaemia. Their bodies battle relentlessly to replenish the lifeforce that the industry drains from them for profit.

When a dog is no longer ‘commercially viable’, so often when its veins have collapsed, it faces a terminal bleed. To ensure the blood is fresh and barbiturate free, the industry uses a cardiac puncture. While the beagle still lives, workers drive a long needle through the chest wall and directly into the heart. The industry then uses the living, beating heart as a mechanical pump to drain the last few drops of life into a collection bag for one final round of profit.

A decade of life stolen

A beagle in a loving home can easily live for 15 years. They’re high-energy, scent-loving animals that need grass, sunshine and mental stimulation. They get none of this in these windowless labs.

The industry kills the vast majority of beagles before they even see their first birthday, murdering them between their first six months and one year of age. But the indignities do not end there as they’re then carved up for ‘necropsy’. This is a post-mortem examination of their organs to see just how much we have fucked up their little bodies with our disgusting experiments.

They die having never felt dirt under their paws, or the sun on their coats. They spend their short lives in filthy industrial sheds, housed in harshly lit cages where the only sounds are the hum of industrial machines and the barks of hundreds of terrified peers. And even more fucked up is that this environment creates ‘learned helplessness,’ a psychological state where the dogs stop trying to escape or protest because they know that no matter how hard they try, the pain will never stop.

The industry hides behind the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, claiming that strict regulation governs its every move. But these rules date back to 1986 and any law that permits ‘moderate to severe’ suffering belongs in the dark ages, not a modern society.

It is finally time for us to put our money where our mouth is when it comes to being a ‘nation of dog lovers’ and actually stand up for man’s best friend. It’s time to blow the lid wide open on this cruel and outdated industry.

Featured image via the author