Last April, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) announced that one of its employees had been working in a lab-animal facility at UNC, secretly videotaping mice, rats, researchers, and staff. Some of PETA's claims were alarming. But were they true? After six months of internal investigation and two independent reviews, here's what we've learned.

uring the early afternoon of April 18, 2002, I stood with reporters and photographers outside the Thurston-Bowles Building and heard three university administrators say, over the growl of buses climbing Manning Drive, that UNC-Chapel Hill had nothing to hide in its animal-research facilities. No, we would not retaliate against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for planting a spy in our midst for six months or for secretly videotaping our researchers and animal-husbandry staff. No, we had no plans to conduct background checks on prospective employees to weed out the spies. And yes, members of the press could come inside our animal facilities and have a look around.

Then, with the cameras rolling, Tony Waldrop, vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, made a promise that in one breath appropriated several thousand hours from dozens of faculty, administrators, and staff. "We will," he said, "investigate every aspect of every allegation."

Six months later, as I write this, we have honored that promise. Our investigators have conducted dozens of interviews, reviewed hundreds of records, endured 40-some hours of murky videotape, and we have submitted our reports. Here's the bottom line: There were some problems, a few of them serious. The university suspended the animal-research privileges of two researchers. Two others received probation, and several more have been required to modify their procedures or undergo additional training. One animal-facility manager has resigned. One new veterinary technician has been hired. We have turned over hundreds of pages of records, requested under North Carolina's public-records law, to PETA. Two external review teams have come to campus and independently put us under the microscope. And we have shipped a report of our findings to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) in the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

End of story? No. It will take time to upgrade staff and facilities, refine our new rules and procedures, conduct new training, and confirm that our safeguards are working. And even though we have answered hard questions from reporters, from reviewers, and from OLAW, we have not yet put our answers on the record for the citizens who support this university and its research. That's what this story is intended to do.

.: Photo by Neil Caudle; click to enlarge. :.

An Improbable Ally

he story begins, improbably enough, with Senator Jesse Helms. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has not, in the past, been one of Senator Helms' favorite institutions. But in the case of the Helms Amendment to the 2002 Farm Bill, university officials were squarely on his side. The amendment was intended to prevent provisions of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) from being extended to mice, rats, and birds. Like other research universities accredited by the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC), Carolina had already applied the equivalent of AWA-type coverage to rodents and birds, even though doing so was not required by law.

"A lot of people felt that extending the Farm Bill to cover rats and mice was an attempt by animal rights groups to bury us under a mountain of red tape," says Bob Lowman, associate vice chancellor for research. "It wouldn't have protected the animals any more. It would have just increased the regulatory burden and the cost of doing research."

n the afternoon of April 17, when we learned that PETA would the next morning claim, publicly, that Carolina was mistreating its laboratory animals, we knew that PETA's objective was to defeat the Helms Amendment. That press conference announcing PETA's undercover investigation was timed to hit the media just a few days before the vote in the U.S. Senate. PETA's website made the strategy clear: "This February, while Sen. Helms was making speeches on the floor of the United States Senate about how good rodents used in research have it, an investigator with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was in Helms' home state, working as an animal care technician inside the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, proving him wrong."

On the same web site, PETA claimed that "chronic understaffing, incompetence, indifference, neglect, and outright cruelty have resulted in the denial of such basic needs as adequate space, food, water, veterinary care, and even a humane death to rats and mice at UNC…"

For those of us who are members of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), the first reaction was disbelief. Twice a year, we have inspected the animal facilities, checking cages, feed rooms, and surgery labs. Each time, we have found a small number of minor infractions and required them to be corrected. But we have never seen signs of cruelty or outright neglect. Even so, none of us was ready to write PETA's accusations off as a publicity stunt. We would have to know the facts.

"Our job was to protect the institution," Waldrop says, "not from PETA, and not from the press, but from whatever might have gone wrong to compromise the care of our animals, threaten our reputation, and jeopardize our ability to conduct research."

.: By the numbers: Evidence of overcrowded cages prompted new policies governing the number of mice in cages used for breeding. And husbandry workers now have more authority to separate crowded animals. Photo by Neil Caudle; click to enlarge. :.

A Spy Among Us

efore April 17, when she resigned her job as a laboratory animal technician caring for mice and rats in Thurston-Bowles, most of us had never heard of Kate Turlington. Her application for employment listed a bachelor's degree in English and experience working with animals. In October of 2001, she began caring for mice and rats in Thurston-Bowles, giving them food and water, changing bedding, and cleaning cages. No one suspected that she was an employee of PETA who was secretly videotaping animals, researchers, and staff.

What had she found? We didn't know. On the morning of April 18, staff from Waldrop's office, the IACUC, and the School of Medicine quickly scanned IACUC files and talked with animal-husbandry workers. By midday, Waldrop, Provost Robert Shelton, Dean Jeffrey Houpt of the School of Medicine, and others had gathered around Houpt's conference table to review a summary of what we had found. From February 11 to April 4, Turlington had informally reported, by email, 13 separate problems or incidents involving mice and rats. Rhonda Lewallen, an IACUC staff member, had repeatedly thanked Turlington for her reports and had sent her a copy of the university's whistle-blower policy, assuring her that there would be no retaliation for reporting infractions. By the time Turlington resigned, the IACUC chair, Lester Kwock, and his staff had taken action on most of the issues she had revealed.

But some of those issues seemed serious, so administrators quickly agreed to acknowledge, publicly, preliminary evidence of problems in one of the university's animal-care facilities. Until we knew the facts, they said, there would be no denials, no excuses.

o this was the gist of the message when Waldrop, Houpt, and Shelton faced reporters that afternoon outside of Thurston-Bowles. They made brief statements and fielded a few questions, and then Waldrop led three separate groups of reporters through the facilities. "We didn't limit where the reporters could go or what they could see," Waldrop says. "Our attitude was, this is a public institution, and we won't hide what we do from the press."

In general, Waldrop says, the reporters filed stories that were accurate and fair. Having no hint of a cover-up to feed on, the story faded from the headlines. In May, the U.S. Senate passed the Farm Bill with the Helms amendment intact.