IT DOESN’T TAKE A monkey-brain surgeon to realize why the Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR) would rather PETA spent its time and money bailing out the District’s animal control program instead of successfully and repeatedly exposing FBR member organizations’ misbehavior (The Mail, 11/3)!

If PETA’s staff had been picking up strays, they might not have had the time to nail Wright State University on 41 counts of violating the federal Animal Welfare Act (among other things, lab workers actually ate one of the pigs in their lab after bludgeoning him to death with a hammer, and they also abandoned dogs in their cages to die from untreated wounds). Were we busy filling out bite reports, we might not have collected evidence used by the state of Michigan to convict a Hazleton Research Products supervisor who punched rabbits with his fists and broke their hind legs for “annoying” him. Had our teachers been cleaning the New York Avenue kennel, they might not have crimped animal suppliers’ sales by providing alternatives for students who object to cutting up animals in class.

FBR’s writer didn’t mention the other ax FBR has to grind. I ran the D.C. Animal Shelter for almost 10 years. Before then, the place was a feeding ground for experimenters who bought homeless dogs and cats for five dollars a head, carved them and tossed them out with the trash. Those days have gone. Sadly, so has the immeasurably capable Washington Humane Society’s city contract, although its agents still respond to cruelty complaints 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as they have for more than one hundred years, at no cost to the city.

Since FBR’s only interest in animals is in using them, perhaps it could donate some of its executives’ fat salaries to get the District’s traffic lights running?

Managing Director