![]() State governments, however, police the industry as they choose. Since at least 2020, instructions from the state's Department of Natural Resources have said not to pick up horseshoe crabs by their tails.Ī 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. Remnants of horseshoe crabs are seen along the beach at the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland in March.Ī 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. "I just think that if we give too much detail, we're opening ourselves up for scrutiny." "My people do pick the crabs up by the tail," she said. "Damage to the tail can increase their chances of not being able to flip over and dying when coming up to spawn."īut 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. "Picking up by the tail is not proper handling technique," said one participant on the call. That can prevent the crabs from being able to right themselves if they've flipped onto their backs, which can eventually kill them. Participants on the call can be heard mentioning that research shows picking crabs up by their tails harms the animals. NPR obtained audio recorded during a meeting in January when those best practices were being discussed. The fisheries commission does publish a description of "Best Management Practices" for the industry, but those are guidelines, not laws. "The aftercare that's involved in any scientific procedure that's carried out on an animal is really important." ![]() "Thinking of horseshoe crabs as a fishery, it really complicates and muddies the debate," said Gorman. It also manages horseshoe crabs, though the animals can spend dozens of hours alive above water during the harvest and bleeding process. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission manages stocks of fish meant to be quickly killed, like sea bass and flounder. The Health Research Extension Act covers other vertebrates, like mice, that aren't included in the Welfare Act.īut coast-wide regulations regarding humane treatment of the crabs are virtually nonexistent or unenforced. The Animal Welfare Act protects some warm-blooded animals, like monkeys, that are used in scientific research. 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.įederal laws require some animals used by biomedical industries to be treated humanely. Nivette Pérez-Pérez, 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.įamily businesses used to own many of the smaller facilities in the earlier days of bleeding. At least 80 million tests are performed each year around the world using the blood-derived ingredient. Since then, the number of crabs bled by the industry has more than doubled. That's more than any other year since officials started keeping track in 2004. Five companies along the East Coast - with operations in South Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland - drained over 700,000 crabs in 2021. But in the U.S., the blood harvest isn't shrinking. ![]() A better toxin-detection system meant less contamination risk for patients, so fishermen soon started collecting and selling the prehistoric animals to be bled.Ī synthetic alternative was later invented and has since been approved in Europe as an equivalent to the ingredient that requires horseshoe crabs. ![]() Vaccines, drugs and medical devices have to be sterile before they're put inside people. In the 1960s, scientists discovered that the sky blue blood inside horseshoe crabs would clot when it detected bacterial toxins. The crabs' eggs gave the birds the energy they needed to keep flying north to breed in the Arctic.īut humans began to want something from the crabs, too - their blood. Later, migratory shorebirds like the robin-size red knot learned to fly up from South America to join them for a feast. 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. Horseshoe crabs are bled at a facility in Charleston, S.C., in June 2014. ![]()
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