https://www.npr.org/2023/06/10/1180761446/coastal-biomedical-labs-are-bleeding-more-horseshoe-crabs-with-little-accountabi

Accessibility links

  * Skip to main content
  * Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

  * Open Navigation Menu
  * NPR logo
  * 
  * 
  * NPR Shop
  * 

> Close Navigation Menu

  * Home
  * News Expand/collapse submenu for News
      + National
      + World
      + Politics
      + Business
      + Health
      + Science
      + Climate
      + Race
  * Culture Expand/collapse submenu for Culture
      + Books
      + Movies
      + Television
      + Pop Culture
      + Food
      + Art & Design
      + Performing Arts
      + Life Kit
      + Gaming
  * Music Expand/collapse submenu for Music
      + Tiny Desk
      + #NowPlaying
      + All Songs Considered
      + Music Features
      + Live Sessions
  * Podcasts & Shows Expand/collapse submenu for Podcasts & Shows
    Daily
      + [morning-ed] Morning Edition
      + [we_otheren] Weekend Edition Saturday
      + [we_otheren] Weekend Edition Sunday
      + [all-things] All Things Considered
      + [fresh-air] Fresh Air
      + [up-first] Up First
    Featured
      + [takingcove] Taking Cover
      + [ltar_s2_ti] Louder Than A Riot
      + [ibam_tile-] It's Been a Minute
      + [life-kit_t] Life Kit
      + More Podcasts & Shows
  * Search
  * 
  * NPR Shop

  * NPR Music NPR Music
  * Tiny Desk
  * #NowPlaying
  * All Songs Considered
  * Music Features
  * Live Sessions

  * About NPR
  * Diversity
  * Organization
  * NPR Network
  * Support
  * Careers
  * Connect
  * Press
  * Ethics

Biomedical labs bleed horseshoe crabs for vaccines with little
accountability Horseshoe crab blood is used to test vaccines around
the world. But while Europe has approved a synthetic alternative,
biomedical labs are bleeding more crabs from the Atlantic coast.

    Up First
    NPR
  * Investigations

  * LISTEN & FOLLOW
  * 
      + NPR App
      + Apple Podcasts
      + Spotify
      + Google Podcasts
      + Amazon Music
      + Amazon Alexa
      + RSS link

Investigations

Coastal biomedical labs are bleeding more horseshoe crabs with little
accountability

June 10, 20238:19 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
Chiara Eisner

Chiara Eisner

Coastal biomedical labs are bleeding more horseshoe crabs with little
accountability

Listen * 11:28 11:28
Toggle more options

  * Download
  * Embed
    Embed [<iframe src="https:/] <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/
    player/embed/1180761446/1181505898" width="100%" height="290"
    frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  * Transcript

[_dm30057_3]
Enlarge this image

Horseshoe crabs are bled at a facility in Charleston, S.C., in June
2014. Ariane Muller hide caption

toggle caption
Ariane Muller

Horseshoe crabs are bled at a facility in Charleston, S.C., in June
2014.

Ariane Muller

Horseshoe crabs used to be everywhere. Millions of years before
dinosaurs roamed the planet, each spring, the hard-shelled creatures
gathered to mate in massive mounds along the beaches of the Atlantic
coast. Later, migratory shorebirds like the robin-size red knot
learned to fly up from South America to join them for a feast. The
crabs' eggs gave the birds the energy they needed to keep flying
north to breed in the Arctic.

But humans began to want something from the crabs, too -- their blood.
In the 1960s, scientists discovered that the sky blue blood inside
horseshoe crabs would clot when it detected bacterial toxins.
Vaccines, drugs and medical devices have to be sterile before they're
put inside people. A better toxin-detection system meant less
contamination risk for patients, so fishermen soon started collecting
and selling the prehistoric animals to be bled.

A synthetic alternative was later invented and has since been
approved in Europe as an equivalent to the ingredient that requires
horseshoe crabs. But in the U.S., the blood harvest isn't shrinking.
It's growing. Five companies along the East Coast -- with operations
in South Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland --
drained over 700,000 crabs in 2021. That's more than any other year
since officials started keeping track in 2004. Since then, the number
of crabs bled by the industry has more than doubled. At least 80
million tests are performed each year around the world using the
blood-derived ingredient.

[2007-06-04]
Enlarge this image

A red knot flaps its wings on the beach in Fortescue, N.J., in 2007.
The shorebirds, designated as a threatened species, are dependent on
horseshoe crab eggs. Tim Shaffer/Reuters hide caption

toggle caption
Tim Shaffer/Reuters

A red knot flaps its wings on the beach in Fortescue, N.J., in 2007.
The shorebirds, designated as a threatened species, are dependent on
horseshoe crab eggs.

Tim Shaffer/Reuters

As the industry has expanded, coast-wide regulation has been limited
and the companies have become increasingly secretive. Records
obtained by NPR indicate that in some states, fishermen paid by the
bleeding companies have handled crabs in ways that research has shown
to cause harm or have violated harvest laws without punishment.
Meanwhile, the process of approving the alternative in the U.S. has
stalled even as the number of birds in the sky has plummeted.

The federal government designated one of the migratory shorebird
species that depends on horseshoe crab eggs, the red knot, as
threatened. About 94% of red knots have disappeared over the past 40
years. Horseshoe crabs have become moderately depleted along the
Atlantic coast, the International Union for Conservation of Nature
determined. The ones around New England are noted as particularly
vulnerable to extinction.

"We're up against this system that really prioritizes money over the
health of the stock," said Larry Niles, a wildlife biologist and
leader of the nonprofit Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition. "And the
consequences show it."

[img_0726-e]
Enlarge this image

Larry Niles is a wildlife biologist and leader of the nonprofit
Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition. Chiara Eisner/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Chiara Eisner/NPR

Larry Niles is a wildlife biologist and leader of the nonprofit
Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition.

Chiara Eisner/NPR

A profitable gray area

Depending on which state they're harvested in, the crabs are either
taken by hand from the beaches or pulled up from the bottom of the
ocean with nets. Hundreds are piled on top of each other in boats,
loaded into trucks and delivered to bleeding facilities. There, lab
technicians pierce the crabs through their hearts and drain them
alive, sometimes for eight minutes, which can deplete them of more
than half their volume of blue blood. In Massachusetts, some of the
bled crabs are then sold to be killed and used as bait. In states
like South Carolina and New Jersey, the animals are delivered back to
the fishermen, who return them to the ocean.

That makes the bleeding business unique among the industries it
straddles. It's an unusual fishery, because the animals are not sold
to be eaten. It's an atypical utilization of animals in medicine,
since the crabs are not bled in the research stage, and they're not
warm-blooded. They're not even crustaceans -- horseshoe crabs are more
closely related to scorpions than they are to snow crabs.

The business is also different from extractive industries like mining
and logging, because the harvested natural resource is supposed to be
returned to the environment alive.

"They sort of fall through the cracks a little bit in terms of what
you could call the regulatory imagination," said Rich Gorman, a
research fellow at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in England.
"Everyone assumes that everyone else is regulating it."

[gettyimage]
Enlarge this image

Nivette Perez-Perez, manager of community science at the Delaware
Center for the Inland Bays, holds a horseshoe crab at the James Farm
Ecological Preserve in Ocean View, Del., in 2022. Bastien Inzaurralde
/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
Bastien Inzaurralde/AFP via Getty Images

Nivette Perez-Perez, manager of community science at the Delaware
Center for the Inland Bays, holds a horseshoe crab at the James Farm
Ecological Preserve in Ocean View, Del., in 2022.

Bastien Inzaurralde/AFP via Getty Images

Family businesses used to own many of the smaller facilities in the
earlier days of bleeding. Now, the industry is dominated by giant
multinational firms, like a facility in Virginia owned by the
Japanese conglomerate Fujifilm, and Charles River Laboratories, a
publicly traded company based in Massachusetts that took over a local
operation in South Carolina.

Federal laws require some animals used by biomedical industries to be
treated humanely. The Animal Welfare Act protects some warm-blooded
animals, like monkeys, that are used in scientific research. The
Health Research Extension Act covers other vertebrates, like mice,
that aren't included in the Welfare Act.

But coast-wide regulations regarding humane treatment of the crabs
are virtually nonexistent or unenforced. The Atlantic States Marine
Fisheries Commission manages stocks of fish meant to be quickly
killed, like sea bass and flounder. It also manages horseshoe crabs,
though the animals can spend dozens of hours alive above water during
the harvest and bleeding process.

"Thinking of horseshoe crabs as a fishery, it really complicates and
muddies the debate," said Gorman. "The aftercare that's involved in
any scientific procedure that's carried out on an animal is really
important."

The fisheries commission does publish a description of "Best
Management Practices" for the industry, but those are guidelines, not
laws. And they're often disregarded.

NPR obtained audio recorded during a meeting in January when those
best practices were being discussed. Participants on the call can be
heard mentioning that research shows picking crabs up by their tails
harms the animals. That can prevent the crabs from being able to
right themselves if they've flipped onto their backs, which can
eventually kill them.

"Picking up by the tail is not proper handling technique," said one
participant on the call. "Damage to the tail can increase their
chances of not being able to flip over and dying when coming up to
spawn."

But Benjie Swan, the head of a smaller company that bleeds crabs in
New Jersey, can be heard admitting to that and opposing changing the
practices to make it more clear that fishermen shouldn't.

"My people do pick the crabs up by the tail," she said. "I just think
that if we give too much detail, we're opening ourselves up for
scrutiny."

[20230321_h]
Enlarge this image

Remnants of horseshoe crabs are seen along the beach at the
Chesapeake Bay in Maryland in March. Keren Carrion/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Keren Carrion/NPR

Remnants of horseshoe crabs are seen along the beach at the
Chesapeake Bay in Maryland in March.

Keren Carrion/NPR

A biologist at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Steve
Doctor, added that fishermen in his state typically handle crabs by
the tail "all the time." Videos from South Carolina show fishermen
grabbing the crabs by the tail and tossing them on top of each other
into boats. Since at least 2020, instructions from the state's
Department of Natural Resources have said not to pick up horseshoe
crabs by their tails.

A representative for the fisheries commission on the call reminded
the group that even if the guidelines were changed to appear
stricter, they would not be required to follow them. State
governments, however, police the industry as they choose. Those
restrictions can vary widely.

In Maryland, fishermen are not allowed to begin harvesting female
crabs until after June 6, when Doctor, the biologist, says many of
the crabs have finished mating and the birds have had a chance to
devour some of their eggs.

"It's less stress on them if they're done spawning," said Doctor.
"We're trying to give them the most opportunity possible."

[20230321_h]
Enlarge this image

Steve Doctor is in charge of managing the horseshoe crab fishery for
the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Keren Carrion/NPR hide
caption

toggle caption
Keren Carrion/NPR

Steve Doctor is in charge of managing the horseshoe crab fishery for
the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Keren Carrion/NPR

Other states operate differently. Charles River Laboratories is one
of the industry's biggest players: It reportedly provides half of the
world's supply of the blood-derived test, called limulus amebocyte
lysate. Regulations in South Carolina have allowed fishermen for the
company to harvest in the early spring -- when the crabs are beginning
to mate and the migratory birds have started looking for eggs. The
fishermen have also been permitted to keep an unlimited number of
male crabs trapped in holding ponds located off the beaches before
they're delivered to the bleeding facility. Fishermen are not
required to feed the crabs while they're there.

Environmental groups are now suing the company and state.

"A black box of information"

Charles River Laboratories has been scrutinized for how its suppliers
treat animals before. The company is currently under investigation by
the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
over its shipment of monkeys from Cambodia, which it suspended in
February after links to a smuggling ring were revealed. In South
Carolina, fishermen supplying crabs to the company were repeatedly
caught taking horseshoe crabs from off-limits islands along the coast
and inside a national wildlife refuge.

But after two environmental groups sued the company and the South
Carolina Department of Natural Resources in 2022 for allowing
horseshoe crabs to be kept away from the birds in secluded holding
ponds, the agency asked the court to allow it to keep details about
the industry confidential in the court documents. The judge agreed.

"It's just really a black box of information," said Catherine
Wannamaker, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, one
of the groups that filed the lawsuit.

Still, not everything was kept secret. NPR reviewed a redacted copy
of the documents submitted in court. Though some of the words are
excluded from the documents, the files indicate fishermen for Charles
River broke permit requirements last year. Only male crabs were
allowed to be kept in the ponds. But the documents indicate something
else happened.

Page 69 of Redacted Preliminary Injunction and Public Exhibits Court
Documents
Page 69 of Redacted Preliminary Injunction and Public Exhibits Court
Documents
Contributed to DocumentCloud by chiara eisner (NPR) * View document
or read text

Additional documents obtained by NPR from the state's Department of
Natural Resources through an open records request reveal that no
fishermen were punished for breaking those rules. Wannamaker said
that is not unusual.

"Historically, those conditions have not been enforced or complied
with," she said.

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources declined to
comment, citing the pending litigation. Charles River Laboratories
declined an interview with NPR. In an emailed statement, a company
representative said they do their work with a "healthy respect for
the need to protect the horseshoe crab population for generations to
come."

The company also declined to allow reporters to visit its facilities.
But NPR licensed photos from one of the last photographers allowed to
witness the bleeding process, in 2014.

[_dm30027_3]
Enlarge this image

Horseshoe crabs are strapped down to be bled at Charles River
Laboratory's facility in Charleston, S.C., in June 2014. Ariane
Muller hide caption

toggle caption
Ariane Muller

Horseshoe crabs are strapped down to be bled at Charles River
Laboratory's facility in Charleston, S.C., in June 2014.

Ariane Muller

This year, fewer horseshoe crabs from South Carolina will likely be
harvested. Though both the state and Charles River Laboratories
denied liability in the lawsuit, the judge found the evidence against
them convincing enough to pause the collection of crabs from 30 of
the state's beaches in 2023. But Charles River is now paying
harvesters in other places. This season, fishermen for Charles River
are harvesting crabs from Cape Cod, Mass., and Chincoteague, Va.

Those states also withhold information about the bleeding industry.
When NPR requested annual reports from the five states where the
bleeding facilities are based, the state governments often redacted
the number of crabs collected and the numbers left dead owing to the
process. Most leaned on exemptions in public records laws that allow
trade secrets or business information to be kept hidden.

In response to an open records request from NPR, New Jersey redacted
the number of crab deaths and crabs collected despite a court order 
from a previous case that required the state to provide that
information to the public. When asked why the state did not share
those numbers though the courts required it before, a representative
from New Jersey did not respond with a comment by the time of
publication.

The states are not the only ones with access to the collection and
mortality numbers. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission
also knows them. But the group doesn't share the numbers publicly,
either. Instead, it publishes an estimate derived from research
studies that tried to mimic the bleeding process. Since some of the
mortality numbers published in those studies varied, the commission
settled on an approximation of 15%. That would amount to over 100,000
dead crabs in 2021. But some scientists say that underestimates the
long-term consequences of the process. Other research has shown the
crabs mate less after they're bled. And few of those studies tracked
how many crabs bled by the industry died more than two weeks after
they were released back into the ocean.

"It could be that they're bleeding so many crabs, they're not only
killing, but they could also be preventing crabs from spawning," said
Niles, the biologist from New Jersey. "We just don't know."

Representatives from the bleeding industry have said horseshoe crabs
are not harmed by the bleeding process. When NPR reached out,
however, all of the companies either declined interviews or did not
respond.

When turning down NPR's request for an interview in an email, one
representative took the opportunity to mention a new product his
company had recently started selling: a synthetic, recombinant copy
of the clotting ingredient inside horseshoe crabs that requires no
blood to keep vaccines free of contamination.

"It has been an exciting couple of years indeed," wrote Brett
Hoffmeister, the lysate production manager of a company that bleeds
crabs in Massachusetts, Associates of Cape Cod.

But the standard-setting body in the U.S. tasked with approving the
synthetic tests has stalled, and few pharmaceutical companies are
using them.

[img_4912-e]
Enlarge this image

Horseshoe crabs gather to spawn on the shore in the Delaware Bay
every spring. Chiara Eisner/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Chiara Eisner/NPR

Horseshoe crabs gather to spawn on the shore in the Delaware Bay
every spring.

Chiara Eisner/NPR

"We have seen that it is better"

As the pandemic raged, the experts at the European Pharmacopoeia were
poised to take action.

It was those scientists' job to determine whether there was enough
data to conclude the synthetic tests worked just as well or better
than the crab-derived ones. By 2017, they had already decided the
research did support that. And in 2020, Eli Lilly, a major
pharmaceutical company, was putting the science into practice. The
company produced all of its COVID-19 antibody medications using the
newer method.

"It's actually been cost advantageous for us," said Jay Bolden, the
scientist who pushed Eli Lilly to use the synthetic, a move that
required additional approval from the FDA since the U.S.
Pharmacopoeia does not recognize it as equivalent. "Then from a
quality perspective, we have seen that it is better."

Using the synthetic also made sense for making the production of
medicines more sustainable, Bolden added, since the old method relied
on diminishing natural resources. When the European Pharmacopoeia
announced its decision to approve the synthetic as an equivalent in
July of 2020, it made the same point.

"The world currently relies on a single source of lysate, the
horseshoe crab family," the European Pharmacopoeia told the press.
The approval was "a significant step towards alleviating the need for
animal resources."

As Europe took steps, the U.S. Pharmacopeia appeared stalled. In
2020, it published a statement defending its expert committee's
decision to wait for more evidence. The horseshoe crab-derived
product had kept American patients safe for 30 years, the group said,
so it was reasonable to hold on until more data supported the
alternatives. Two years later, after almost no public updates on its
progress, the Pharmacopeia suddenly dismissed everyone on the
committee.

[dsc_0040-e]
Enlarge this image

A dead horseshoe crab lies upside down on the beach in Assateague
Island, Md. Meg Anderson/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Meg Anderson/NPR

A dead horseshoe crab lies upside down on the beach in Assateague
Island, Md.

Meg Anderson/NPR

Jaap Venema, the Pharmacopeia's chief science officer, said that
considering the synthetic is a priority for the 20 new members that
started to meet in 2023. But as it was with the experts those people
replaced, the pace they move at is up to them. As of June, there were
no upcoming deadlines or votes scheduled, the Pharmacopeia confirmed
to NPR.

It's also up to pharmaceutical companies to determine whether and
when they want to switch to using synthetic tests before the U.S.
Pharmacopeia takes more action, like Eli Lilly did. This year, Roche
Pharmaceuticals began using the synthetic in its manufacturing
processes and has started preparing to test some of its medicines
with it, too.

"Ultimately, patient safety is our number one priority," said Lindsey
Silva, a senior scientist involved with the project. "We've been able
to confirm that it's fit for its intended use and safe for patients."

Still, most pharmaceutical companies continue using the tests that
require horseshoe crabs to be bled alive. Conditions generally evolve
faster for species that are complex and mammalian like humans, said
Rich Gorman, the researcher at the Brighton and Sussex Medical
School. But the crabs underpin the global pharmaceutical industry. He
believes the best way to improve their situation -- and that of the
birds that depend on them -- is to have more open debate about the
consequences of how they're used.

"It remains this really shadowy area," Gorman said. "For the
horseshoe crab, it is time to begin to think about the welfare
implications of this a lot more openly and honestly."

The audio for this story was produced by Monika Evstatieva and Meg
Anderson. It was edited by Barrie Hardymon with research by Barbara
Van Woerkom. Photo editing by Emily Bogle. A portion of the audio of
the red knots was provided by the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab
of Ornithology.

  * horseshoe crab
  * biomedical research

  * Facebook
  * Flipboard
  * Email

Read & Listen

  * Home
  * News
  * Culture
  * Music
  * Podcasts & Shows

Connect

  * Newsletters
  * Facebook
  * Instagram
  * Press
  * Public Editor
  * Corrections
  * Contact & Help

About NPR

  * Overview
  * Diversity
  * NPR Network
  * Accessibility
  * Ethics
  * Finances

Get Involved

  * Support Public Radio
  * Sponsor NPR
  * NPR Careers
  * NPR Shop
  * NPR Events
  * NPR Extra

  * Terms of Use
  * Privacy
  * Your Privacy Choices
  * Text Only
  * 

Sponsor Message

Become an NPR sponsor