$28,500 Offered for Safe Return of UCI Lab’s Dogs

As animal rights activists applauded the abduction of 13 beagles being used in research at UC Irvine, a national crime-fighting organization and a UCI researcher offered rewards Monday totaling $28,500 for information leading to the dogs’ safe return.

A group calling itself the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for breaking into an open-air kennel on the north campus of UCI over the weekend and taking the beagles, which had been used in smog experiments.

University campus police had few leads Monday on the whereabouts of the animals.

The We Tip national crime-fighting organization announced a $23,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the theft. And Robert F. Phalen, director of the university’s Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory, announced that he was putting up a $5,000 reward for information leading to the beagles’ safe return.

“I’d like to see these dogs’ pictures on milk cartons, personally,” said an angry and shaken Phalen. His laboratory has been using beagles in its testing since 1975.

UCI Police Chief Michael Michelle met with campus researchers Monday to review what can be done to improve security in the area where the dogs are housed. The animals are kept in 5-foot-by-7-foot wire-mesh kennels surrounded by a wooden fence. Campus police said two locks were cut to get to the dogs that were stolen.

Seven Beagles Remain

The university still has seven other beagles that were housed inside a locked building at the time of the theft in preparation for experimentation. Research experiments have been suspended, however, until university officials decide whether they will have to replace the missing beagles. If so, university officials estimate, the cost could run as high as $20,000.

“The biggest impact will be financial, and all the effort that went into training them,” said William Mautz, one of four campus scientists who worked with the dogs.

Mautz said each of the dogs has to undergo about 100 hours of exercise training before it is ready to participate in research tests.

The smog research consists of putting the dogs on a treadmill and having them run the equivalent of 10 kilometers over a two-hour period, while breathing smog pumped through a face mask. The smog levels ranged from nondetectable up to the maximum amounts recorded in the Los Angles basin, Phalen said.

The Animal Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for animal abductions across the country in recent years. In the past, the organization has taken laboratory animals and given them up for adoption to families who want them as pets, according to members of less radical allied groups.

“I think that the Animal Liberation Front is the most effective asset of the animal rights movement,” television game show host Bob Barker, an outspoken animal rights supporter, said during a studio break Monday. “They are bringing the attention of the media to this terrible, terrible exploitation of animals.”

“They’re breaking the law out of frustration,” added Judy Stricker, president of the Society Against Vivisection in Costa Mesa. “They want to open up the labs and expose the fraud going on inside. We need to know what is going on inside these laboratories.”

Phalen and other UC Irvine officials insisted Monday that the beagles, ranging in age from 2 to 12, were given the best of care. Phalen attacked the abductors as a “lunatic fringe” who have subjected the beagles to the trauma of leaving familiar people and surroundings.

They also have been taken off special diets, Phalen said.

“They did not even take their name tags,” Phalen said. “The poor animals were stripped of their identity.”

The animals are identifiable to researchers through blue-colored codes tattooed inside their ears.

Eleven of the beagles had been used in smog research. The other two--including one pictured with an electrical diode atop its head in a photo released by the animal front Saturday--were used to test sleeping complications following tracheotomies, university officials said.

Beagles are used in the smog tests because they are easily trained and have lungs similar to humans, university officials said. The beagles at UCI were specially bred for laboratory purposes, they said.

Researchers performed tracheotomies on two dogs and then surgically implanted electrical wires around their heads to monitor sleeping patterns. The animals suffered no pain, Phalen said, because the surgery was conducted while they were under anesthesia. He likened the pain involved in the procedure to that of piercing an ear.

The main purpose of the smog research, Phalen said, is to determine how the human lung can defend itself against pollutants while performing strenuous exercise. Phalen said similar research convinced organizers of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics that athletes would be safe in competing here.

The beagles were free to shake off the face masks at any time and stop running any time they wished, Phalen said. But he said none seemed to mind the testing.

“They’re like little astronauts when they go through a study, and I think they enjoy it,” Phalen said.

Animal rights activists scoffed at that assertion.

“Would you believe for one moment that an animal would enjoy breathing smog and running on a treadmill?” asked Barker. “That is utterly ridiculous. It is also ridiculous to be wasting taxpayers’ money with those experiments when there are many people with respiratory problems who would welcome (participation in smog tests). You don’t have to work with animals.”

Animal experimentation nationwide is a multimillion-dollar business in which 80 million to 100 million animals are killed each year, according to Chris DeRose, president of Last Chance for Animals. Laboratories at many California universities, including Cal State Fullerton, commonly use animals in research, he said.

To protest this experimentation, a number of animal rights groups have sprung up in the last five years.

DeRose’s group advocates civil disobedience to present its views, and it has been involved in protests at several California universities. Members of Last Chance and allied groups were among 23 persons arrested last April in a protest at UCLA and 10 arrested in April, 1986, after chaining themselves to a medical sciences building at UC Irvine.

The Animal Liberation Front, which is reported by other groups to number several hundred members worldwide, employs more radical means of protest. It has claimed responsibility for such well-publicized crimes as:

- The December, 1984, break-in and theft of laboratory animals from the City of Hope in Duarte.

- The May, 1984, burglary of a University of Pennsylvania research laboratory, where baboons were being tested.

- The April, 1985, theft of more than 260 animals from a research lab at UC Riverside.

- The theft last June of five turkey vultures from a veterinary research facility at UC Davis.

The break-ins at the City of Hope and the University of Pennsylvania disclosed animal cruelty problems that were later remedied.

Members of the Animal Liberation Front could not be reached for comment Monday.

Phalen suggested that the activists singled out UC Irvine after they staked out the research facility and spotted a beagle named Clyde who had a diode fitted atop his head a few weeks ago. Phalen said the activists probably wanted to use Clyde’s picture for propaganda purposes.

“They were running out of photographs for the propaganda war,” Phalen said. “For the next 40 years, we’re going to be seeing that picture.”