Drug testing company sues PETA over videos
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Covance Inc., a pharmaceutical testing firm, said on Monday it filed suit against animal rights group PETA, charging it with fraud and conspiracy for illegally videotaping animals at a Covance plant.
Covance said an agent for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals misrepresented herself to get hired by Covance and then violated her employee contract when she videotaped the firm’s Vienna, Virginia facility.
PETA in May disclosed videotapes of its nearly year-long “undercover investigation” into Covance, accusing the company of choking and striking animals, failing to oversee lab workers, and other acts it said were violations of the federal animal welfare law.
The Covance lawsuit charges PETA with engaging in a conspiracy with the woman, Lisa Leitten, to harm the company’s business and seeks an order preventing similar acts.
PETA, for its part, acknowledges that the woman is a PETA investigator but said the videos expose mistreatment and it did nothing illegal.
“We wouldn’t get very far would we if we said, “Hi, I work for PETA,” director of research Mary Beth Sweetland said. “No one is going to strike a monkey in front of PETA.”
Covance general counsel James Lovett said the Princeton, New Jersey-based company is engaged in medical research on animals to find cures to diseases like cancer and diabetes.
“She made these secret recordings in an effort to stop that kind of research,” he said.
Leitten, who had been hired as a technician in an animal room, left the company several months before PETA made its revelations.
Lovett said the videotapes Covance has seen are “distorted and taken out of context.”
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