Why This Matters: When a veterinarian declared unfit to practice medicine remains in charge of one of the country’s largest dog-breeding facilities for research, it proves that cruelty in the animal research industry isn’t accidental — it’s institutional. 

Last week, Wisconsin’s Veterinary Examining Board (VEB) — the state body that “defines professional standards and regulatory policies for veterinarians and veterinary technicians” — made a big move: it unanimously suspended the veterinary license of Richard Van Domelen, lead veterinarian and facility manager at Ridglan Farms.

The emergency suspension followed the VEB’s conclusion that Van Domelen “does not abide by many of the rules and laws pertaining to veterinary medicine” and engaged in ongoing conduct that compromises “public health, safety, and welfare.”

In plain terms, Wisconsin’s top veterinary regulators determined that Ridglan’s veterinarian has spent years violating the most basic principles of his profession — and that the risk he poses warranted immediate, emergency action by the State.

In its Petition and subsequent Order, the VEB detailed nearly 20 years of improper, unethical, and truly horrifying practices by Van Domelen — including improper and medically questionable (if not outright unnecessary) surgeries, improper delegation of veterinary procedures to other and untrained staff, and grossly insufficient recordkeeping. 

Earlier this year, after investigating Van Domelen, the VEB had permitted him to continue practicing veterinary medicine under a set of conditions meant to limit further regulatory violations. But, when inspectors conducted an unannounced visit to Ridglan on September 8, 2025, and reviewed 150 surgical and medical records, they discovered that Van Domelen had flagrantly and repeatedly violated those conditions, as well.

The VEB’s records document that, since at least 2008, Van Domelen has:

• “[I]nappropriately delegated veterinary acts,” “surgical procedures,” and “dental extractions” to others lacking the required licensure, education, training, and/or experience;
  
• “Engaged in unprofessional conduct” that “evidences a lack of knowledge or ability to apply professional principles or skills;”
  
• Committed “[g]ross, serious, or grave negligence, as compared to less serious or more ordinary acts of negligence, in the practice of veterinary medicine;” and
  
• “[A]ided and abetted in violations substantially related to the practice of veterinary medicine.”

In addition, the VEB concluded that Van Domelen has consistently failed to perform proper pre-surgical exams, to properly assess surgical risk, to establish appropriate anesthetic and pain management protocols for surgical procedures (including dental extractions, spays, and neuters), and to document medical necessity for numerous “cherry eye” surgeries despite being explicitly ordered to do so. 

The scope, severity, and duration of these violations — and the animal suffering they represent — are staggering.

And, yet, in response to his emergency suspension, Ridglan Farms announced that Van Domelen will remain its facility manager.

By retaining a veterinarian the State has formally deemed unfit to practice medicine — and, separately, to have violated state regulations in the mutilation of hundreds of dogs — Ridglan has eliminated any pretense that Van Domelen is a rogue bad actor. 

Van Domelen’s conduct, and the culture that has allowed and continues to allow it, is clearly institutional, not individual.

Ridglan’s decision lays bare its condonation of Van Domelen’s perverse practices — and, it would seem, even his self-acknowledged ineptitude: before the VEB, Van Domelen himself claimed not to understand what, according to the State, he’s supposed to be doing or how.

As reported by FOX6, Van Domelen sought to ward off a suspension by comparing his failings to those of a confused child: 

“When helping your child with math homework, do you simply tell your child that the answer is wrong, do it again, repetitively? Or do you explain what the mistake was and how he or she should do it correctly? That’s all I’m asking for today,” Van Domelen said.

You read that correctly: The doctor of veterinary medicine responsible for thousands of animals bred and harmed for animal research (including on his watch at Ridglan) publicly likened his professional misconduct and incompetence to a child struggling with basic math.

And Ridglan is keeping him in charge.

For anyone familiar with the animal research industry, this should not (unfortunately) come as a shock.

Illegal and unethical behavior among “laboratory animal veterinarians” is not rare — it is routine, and it is institutionally protected. A mere handful of recent whistleblower reports document:

• A Penn State veterinarian repeatedly doctoring animal records and instructing others to do the same, all while being fed inside information about concerns raised by those observing this conduct.
• A GlaxoSmithKline attending veterinarian helping the institution to “cover-up animal welfare violations.”
• JOINN Laboratories allowing unqualified employees to provide “veterinary services” to animals.
• Sound Technologies’ veterinarians being “on their phones watching” Netflix while “[in]sufficient” and “[im]properly trained staff” handle and monitor animals.
• A Turner Scientific veterinarian withholding information from an animal’s medical record — and directing others to do the same — to avoid anyone getting “in trouble.”
• University of Utah veterinary staff “putting diagnosis and treatment onto” other staff “instead of doing their job.”

These reports represent neither exceptions nor isolated incidents. Rather, they reveal a systemic pattern: veterinary misconduct normalized, institutionalized, and protected from consequence by the animal research industry.

It is also no coincidence that Ridglan’s suspended veterinarian has acted — and will continue to act — as the facility’s manager.

As career “laboratory animal” veterinarian Larry Carbone explains, it is quite common for research facility vets to also act as facility directors — a frequent and NIH-endorsed “arrangement” that gives veterinarians like Van Domelen a financial and professional “stake in actually increasing the amount of animal use and thereby maintaining staff and budget.”

The type of dual role held by Van Domelen intentionally blurs the line between supposed monitor and industry enabler.

Carbone traces the allegiance between researchers and veterinarians back decades. Before federal law required the presence of veterinarians in regulated animal research settings, veterinarians sought out roles in “the lucrative professional space” occupied by animal research. Without any requirements that they be allowed in, veterinarians’ ability to break into this space “depended on [their] staying in the good graces” and providing benefits to research program administrators and scientists. Veterinarians achieved both by taking on the role of “public defenders” of animal research (and of the very programs they would later be formally tasked with monitoring).

Tragically, then, it turns out that “part of the veterinarians’ ability to secure a place in the laboratory rested” — not on their interest or skill in animal care but — “on their willingness to be prominent opponents of the animal protectionists’ agenda”, on “their utility in combating antivivisectionists who were calling for tight restrictions on animal research.”

In other words, veterinarians gained their foothold in animal research labs not by protecting animals, but by protecting the industry that harms them.

And, that legacy persists.

Veterinarians like Ridglan’s Van Domelen hold power over animals, but that power is grounded in and tethered to institutional and industry allegiance. Their authority depends on remaining ingratiated with the very system their role is supposed to check. 

The result? Despite the cultural image of veterinarians as champions of animal welfare, “veterinarians as a group” have actually been “far more active than the scientists who experiment on animals in battling pressure from the animal protectionists to change things.”

Now, Ridglan gives us a glaring example of how this dynamic plays out: despite the State finding that Van Domelen has violated veterinary and other regulations for nearly two decades, Van Domelen remains both the public face of and the lead actor at Ridglan.

Let this remind us that when the humans charged with monitoring animal welfare are the same ones inflicting harm — and when institutions keep them in power even after their abuses are exposed — there can be no pretense of oversight, no claim of ethics, and no belief that the animals can be protected in any way short of liberation.

Share this article on X or Bluesky.
Or copy, paste, and share this link anywhere else:
riseforanimals.org/news/ridglan-vet/