Researcher Defends Dog Torture, Has Lies Exposed on Camera
Late last week, FOX6 Milwaukee aired another damning investigation into Ridglan Farms – the Wisconsin-based breeder (and user) of dogs for experimentation.
And, in the face of public outrage, one animal researcher lunged to defend the indefensible.
Craig Reinemeyer – board-certified veterinarian, founder of private animal research lab East Tennessee Clinical Research, Inc., and self-proclaimed dog experiment enthusiast – jumped in front of the camera to sing Ridglan’s praises.
In doing so, though, he exposed the depravity and dishonesty of his own industry.
Reinemeyer boasted about buying hundreds of puppies from Ridglan each year and made clear that he plans to keep doing so – because, as he says, he and Ridglan Farms “understand each other”.
Of course they do. They both profit off the mass production and brutalization of dogs. They both see sentient beings not as individuals but as tools to be used and discarded. Reinemeyer even described Ridglan’s dogs as “very uniform” and showing “very little variation”…
This is not surprising for someone who admits to “genuinely enjoy conducting pilot or proof-of-concept studies” on animals – which include experiments on dogs for “big name pharmaceutical companies”.
At least he was honest about that part – his disturbing enjoyment of harming and killing dogs – because his honesty ended there.
Reinemeyer claimed the “folks at Ridglan” are “good solid Midwesterners”. Really? Most Midwesterners would be (and are!) horrified by what happens inside Ridglan’s walls: dogs experiencing “immeasurabl[e]” physical and mental suffering (including psychosis) – even before they’re experimented on and killed. Dogs having scissors shoved down their throats and their vocal cords cut out, tossed on the floor, and hosed down the drain.
I would hold the dogs [during devocalization surgeries]. . . . Basically, [Ridglan staff members] would go through and do 30 to 40 [devocalization surgeries] at a time. . . . They would start at the beginning of a cage, and give [to the dogs] what I think was some sort of a paralytic type agent that would render [the dogs] immobile — they seemed to be awake but they couldn’t move. . . . I would hold the dogs, and between [Ridglan staff] Jim and Al, one would hold the flashlight and some sort of [device] to keep the [dog’s] mouth open, and then they would just reach down the throat with the scissors and cut the vocal cords, and throw it on the floor to be washed down the drain later.
— Matthew Reich, former Ridglan employee (testifying in court)
Then, came a most jaw-dropping (and ridiculous) claim: Reinemeyer argued that the “average dog” experiences “a hell of a lot more pain, trauma, [and] distress” getting spayed or neutered at a vet than being warehoused and brutalized at Ridglan or his own lab. That’s not just false. It’s obscene.
Reinemeyer tried to pivot, saying the public only opposes dog experimentation because “people just don’t know what [animal researchers] do”. But we do know what you do, Craig.
We know because brave former employees have come forward, because courageous investigators have documented it, and because, sometimes, even you can’t help but admit it – before scrambling to cover it up.
Just ask FOX6, which uncovered the second page of a letter Reinemeyer had intentionally withheld from the media (to which he provided only the first page and claimed the second page “wasn’t really relevant”). A letter he submitted to Wisconsin’s Veterinary Examining Board in defense of Ridglan’s veterinarian. A letter in which Reinemeyer claimed that cutting out dogs’ eye glands without anesthesia or anesthetic doesn’t qualify as cruelty.
Here’s what Reinemeyer is defending, as described by a former Ridglan employee:
Yes [I participated in cherry-eye surgeries at Ridglan]. . . . Basically there would be a gland that would pop up on the lower part of the [dog’s] eye, and on occasion it would be a little slit, they could barely see. . . . I would hold the body of the dog in my right arm and . . . close my hand around the snout [to avoid their biting], because literally all [the staff] did was take tweezers, pull [the eyelid] out, take the scissors, and cut it. And that was the extent of the ‘surgery.’ That was pretty common. That’s how they always dealt with it. . . . It was shocking, the first time I had to participate in that.
No [anesthesia or pain medications were not administered], not that I saw. It would bleed profusely for several minutes — sometimes [blood] would start pouring out of my hand. . . . [Another dog] would often lick the blood off of them. It was a very graphic scene.
— Matthew Reich, former Ridglan employee (testifying in court)
And here’s what Reinemeyer is defending as testified to by a veterinary expert:
To just go ahead and cut off a piece of the eye without preventing any kind of pain . . . definitely causes suffering. . . . To not use haemostasis [surgical blood loss prevention techniques] would cause excessive [and] unnecessary blood loss for the dog, and could even possibly lead to death. . . . I would consider [cherry eye removal surgery as done at Ridglan to be mutilation] because it’s being done by a non-veterinarian and it is causing harm to the dogs . . . and without anesthesia, it’s definitely mutilation.
— Dr. Sherstin Rosenberg, veterinarian (expert witness, testifying in court)
Bottomline: amid all the grotesque realities he tried to downplay or deny, there was only one “pain” Reinemeyer acknowledged – and it wasn’t the dogs’.
No. Reinemeyer said he “doesn’t like to see” Ridglan Farms “going through this kind of pain”.
That’s right. The only victim Reinemeyer sees is the perverse, for-profit industry he serves – not the dogs it tortures and sells; not the puppies he tortures and kills.
This is the sickness at the heart of the animal research industry, which is not about care or science. It’s only about profit, power, and protecting the status quo – no matter how many lives it destroys.