01/29/2026
The Ontario government regularly inspects all “Animal Research Facilities”, under the Animals in Research Act.
We acquired inspection reports from 2022 to 2024 for Nucro-Technics, Scarborough. The docs are heavily redacted, but here are some of the “Needs Improvement” recommendations made in the 2024 inspection:
-Stabilize ambient temperature in several rodent rooms, and increase types and quantities of nesting and burrowing materials.
-Provide larger “enrichment tubes” for double-housed rats. The observed tubes were too small for the rats to lie together in; instead, “they had to stick their heads into tubes from either end”.
-Avoid single housing of rats. When solitary housing is “necessary”, the Inspector advises that “serious consideration should be given to increasing the quantity of crinkle paper provided” for burrowing and enrichment of the isolated animals.
-Ensure that Animal Care Committee members “fully understood what they were approving” vis “procedures to be carried out, or the test products to be studied”.
We commend Dr. Denna Benn, Chief Veterinary Inspector, for her advocacy on behalf of Ontario lab animals. We also commend Nucro-Technics for working to address the Inspector’s concerns. We encourage the Inspector to consider the following additional recommendations in her next inspection of Nucro-Technics:
-Stop pouring corrosives and irritants into the eyes of animals.
-Stop injecting toxins into animals.
-Stop force-feeding animals with toxins.
-Stop caging, sickening, mutilating, and killing animals.
Indeed this last recommendation would apply to almost all Ontario animal labs.
Here are Nucro-Technics’ reported animal use numbers for 2024. Again, it’s a heavily redacted document - no numbers on dogs, guinea pigs, and mini-pigs, for example - but it does show totals for mice, rats, and rabbits:
339 mice
5580 rats
129 rabbits
