Sixty-four beagles, who had for been confined to drab kennels in a drug-testing laboratory since birth, have got a fresh lease of life after the State government rejected a request to use them for some experiments.
On Monday, 34 of them were released by the unnamed laboratory and accommodated in Hotel For Dogs, a venture run by Shravan Krishnan. “All of them were born in the laboratory. The oldest is 10 years old. They were overjoyed to play in the sand and just to run around in the open,” he said.
The rest are expected to be released in a week. Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA) — which facilitated the release — will hold an adoption drive for these long-eared canines on Saturday. Beagles are commonly used for testing due to their docile nature, making them easy to handle and to administer drugs. The medical laboratory had bred the dogs and applied to the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experimentation on Animals for permission to test certain drugs on them. However, when the proposal was rejected last week, the laboratory offered to release the dogs.
While 70 beagles were rescued in 2012, 102 were rescued from various laboratories in 2013.
