Short Wave - The Secrecy Of The Horseshoe Crab Blood Harvest

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

For decades, humans have harvested the blood of horseshoe crabs, which is used to test whether many of our vaccines and medicines are contaminated with harmful bacterial toxins. But the horseshoe crab harvesting industry has few regulations and a lot of secrecy. NPR investigative reporter Chiara Eisner talks to us about expansion of this industry and why synthetic alternatives to the blood aren't being widely used in the United States.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers, Regina Barber here with Shortwave first-timer, Kiera Eisner, a reporter on NPR's Investigations Unit. Hey, Kira. Hey, Regina. So for this first story, I want to take you back millions of years. Let's do it. Hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the planet. Horseshoe crabs are one of the few animal species that have survived all five of the major mass extinction.

that have happened on planet Earth. I love horseshoe crabs. There are these prehistoric animals that look like stingray-shaped crabs, and they can live up to 30 years. They spend most of their lives at the bottom of the ocean. Yes, and once a year, though, they come up from the bottom onto the beaches to mate. They mate in these giant mounds all along the Atlantic coast. And migratory shorebirds come from the south of the globe.

They fly north, and they stop along the island. the same beaches because some of them want to eat the eggs of the horseshoe crab. But humans want something from the crabs too, and that's their blood. Yeah, so we take horseshoe crabs from the ocean for their blood, which is sky blue, by the way, because scientists discovered that that blood would clot when it detected bacterial toxins. Yeah, I've heard they're used in the medical field. Is that right? Yes. So vaccines, drugs, medical devices, anything that's put directly into the human body, that has to be sterile.

And horseshoe crab blood is better than almost anything else on the planet at detecting the toxins. So companies use this not as an ingredient in the vaccines or in the drugs, but as a way to test to see whether those products are safe. So how big is this industry? It's getting bigger. There are five companies along the eastern coast. They have operations in South Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Maryland. And the number of crabs that were bled has more than doubled since officials started keeping track almost two decades ago. This must be hurting the horseshoe crab population.

It could be. There are other human activities that do take crabs from the ocean too. So that's the bait industry. And then there's accidental bycatch when people are fishing for other animals. But fishermen paid by the biomedical bleeding companies have handled the crabs in ways that are known to cause harm. And they've violated some harvest laws meant to support conservation without any consequences. Around 80 million tests using this horseshoe crab ingredient are still performed each year. But it's not the only way to do this.

There are synthetics available. Today on the show, as the horseshoe crab blood industry has expanded, coastwide regulations have been limited, and the companies have become increasingly secretive. And we'll talk about the state of approving synthetic alternatives in the U.S. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Okay, so Kiarra, let's get into the horseshoe crab harvest, like what's happening on the Atlantic shoreline of the U.S.

Like, how are those birds you talked about earlier? So one of those birds is called the Red Knot. That's a migratory shore bird that eats horseshoe crab eggs. And over the past 40 years, about 94% of that species has disappeared. Now, that could be because of things like coastal destruction and climate change, but it could also be because of what's happening with the horseshoe crabs. The crabs provide an important food source for the birds. So what about the horseshoe crabs?

Tell me more about them. So for the horseshoe crabs, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has determined that the crabs have become moderately depleted along the Atlantic Coast. And about as many crabs are caught for bait as for bleeding, but what happens to them after they're pulled out of the ocean is very different depending on what type of fishermen pulls them out and where that happens along the coast. So how does this work? The crabs can be taken either by hand from the beaches or they're pulled up from the bottom of the ocean with nets. In Maryland they do it with nets. In South Carolina, they do it by hand. And hundreds of these crabs are piled on top of each other in these fishing boats.

They're loaded into trucks, and they're delivered to the bleeding facilities. There, the lab technicians pierce the crabs through their hearts and drain them alive, sometimes for eight minutes. That can deplete them of more than half of their volume of blue blood. And they're alive when they're being drained. This is horrifying. Don't they die? So that might be a more controversial question than you realize. Wow.

We know that some of them die because they're sold to the bait industry later after they're blood. those die for sure. That's what happens in Massachusetts. And I should say, the crabs around New England are known to be particularly vulnerable to extinction. In other states like South Carolina and New Jersey, the animals are delivered back to the fishermen after their bled and then dropped back into the ocean. Now, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, they're a coastal group that manages the fishery. They estimate that 15% of the crabs die from the bleeding process. But that's just an estimate derived from, a limited amount of research studies, and we know from some other research studies that within two weeks of being released, more of them die. Now, almost no research has been done on how many crabs die more than two weeks after the crabs are released back into the water, but research has shown that depleting the animals of that much of their blood can reduce their reproductive capabilities. It can slow them down physically, and all of those are things that could contribute to population decline in the long term. I talked to Larry Niles, a walkie. I talked to Larry Niles, a

Wildlife Biologist who leads the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition along one of these beaches in New Jersey. Like the problem for horseshoe crabs is the same problem for all the species in estuaries like Delaware Bay. Nobody's protecting them. So why aren't they being protected? Aren't there laws requiring humane treatment of animals when you were dealing with medical research? Yes. So there are federal requirements for research animals like the Animal Welfare Act, which protect some warm-blooded animals like monkeys. Then you have the Health Research Extension Act, which covers other kinds of

vertebrates like mice. But horseshoe crabs aren't warm-blooded. They're not vertebrates. And they're not technically being used for research here. Wow. The companies that bleed crabs aren't researching anything. They're making a commercial product. So there aren't any federal laws that protect horseshoe crabs when they're bled? Well, coastwide regulation regarding the humane treatment of crabs that's actually virtually non-existent or unenforced. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that I spoke to you about earlier, that's not a federal agency. It's a group that manages fisheries along the Atlantic. That group does solicit advice from different stakeholders like state government representatives and commercial fishing industry leaders. And they publish a list of what they call

best management practices for people in the horseshoe crab harvesting industry to follow. But no one is required by law to follow those recommendations. And I obtained a tape that shows people often don't. Okay, so what is wrong with picking the horseshoe crabs up by their tail? Research shows that can harm them long term. So that area of their body is very weak. And if it's disturbed, it can make it difficult for the animals to flip themselves over when they get overturned on the beach and that can kill them. But in at least three states, fishermen do this. Okay, and that's a best practice, right, to handle crabs in a way that doesn't cause harm, not picking them up by their tails. So are there any more enforceable policies, maybe like even state regulations that fishermen may actually follow?

So yes, each state has its own set of rules. In Maryland, fishermen have to wait until June to start collecting the crabs. And that's to give the animals a bit of a head start so the crabs can mate and the birds can eat some of their eggs. But in other states like South Carolina, the fishermen are allowed to harvest them right away in the beginning of the mating season. In South Carolina, those fishermen work for Charles River Laboratories. That's the bleeding company that makes half of the world supply of LAL, the product that's derived of horseshoe crabs. And they're also allowed to keep the crabs in holding ponds there. Okay, so what are these holding ponds?

There are these massive, almost football field-sized pits that are filled with water. water. The fishermen are allowed to keep an unlimited amount of male crabs there until they want to deliver them to the lab for bleeding. One fisherman told me that gives them a competitive advantage. The state recently changed its policy to forbid fishermen from keeping female crabs in those ponds. Is that regulation followed? Are people only putting male crabs in these holding ponds? Well, I obtained court documents that seem to show that, no, last year, the fishermen went against those rules and did put female crabs in there. I requested all the tickets received by Harvester's last year to see if anyone was punished for that, and they weren't. But I have to say, I wasn't able to see all the details about this in the court documents because a lot of the information was covered up. It was redacted. Why all the secrecy?

All I know is all of the states are secretive about this kind of thing. So mortality, how many crabs die, how many crabs are collected, that's something that's covered up, redacted in documents provided by all of the states where there is. a horseshoe crab bleeding industry. Wow. So given all this, the secrecy, the harm to the population, it seems like a viable synthetic alternative is more important than ever. I know you said that there is one out there. Can we talk about that and what it is?

Definitely. So technically, there's even more than one kind of synthetic. Now, this synthetic is a type of recomminant. That means it's a product that's made in a lab using genetic material. Here's how Jay Bolden, who's a scientist at the pharmaceutical company, Eli Lily explained it to me. So you can copy the DNA, the exact DNA sequence that produces the natural protein in horseshoe crabs, and you can basically put that into a cell and have that cell make that protein for you, and then you purify it. And these synthetics work just like

LAL, because it's essentially a copy of that same natural ingredient. So is this synthetic already being used? It is being used in some places. It's different. across the globe. The U.S. Pharmacopoeia hasn't approved the synthetic as an equivalent to LAL. So what is the U.S. Pharmacopoeia? Yeah. So the U.S. Pharmacopoeia is actually a nonprofit. It's not a government agency, although it kind of sounds like it would be one. They're the group that's in charge of setting a lot of the medical drug standards. They decide which products are safe to be used. And the FDA actually looks to the pharmacopoeia for those standards. And it's done that for hundreds of years. So the pharmacopoeuvre. So the pharmacopoeuvre

The pharmacopoeia is not the government, but the FDA is getting suggestions from them. This all sounds like a very secretive process also. It can be in the sense that documents that they produce aren't subject to public records requests the way FDA would be. There's also no mandated time limit for how long these expert committees have to take to make their decisions. They set their own timelines. So the pharmacopoeia did not approve the synthetic. Did they give a reason why? So the U.S. Pharmacopoeia said in 2020 that they wanted to wait to approve it as an equivalent

until there was more data to support its safety. And some people have told me that that's sort of a chicken and egg situation, though, because the pharmaceutical companies say that they're reluctant to start using it until it's approved. And the U.S. Pharmacopoeia says they don't have the data to ensure that it's safe. that kind of data would come from the pharmaceutical companies that have started using it. And that's what Eli Lilly has done. And that was the data that actually helped convince the European Pharmacopoeia that it was safe and it was ready to be approved as equivalent. Okay, I like a silver lining. But is that possible here? Like, what is next for the horseshoe crabs

and the birds that depend on them? So I'll be watching to see whether the U.S. Pharmacopoeia will approve this synthetic as an equivalent to LAL this year. I should say this is not a new idea. This is often just how medicine works. Insulin also used to be made from animal-derived ingredients, and now it's made with synthetic alternatives, and millions of people take it every day. And another thing that I'm going to be trying to see is how many pharmaceutical companies start following Eli Lilly's lead and start using the synthetic on their own. There's also work being done by environmental and animal advocates. Some of them say that what's important and what they're trying to push for is more transparency. This is Dr. Rich Gorman. He studies the ethics of animal use in medicine

at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School in England. I think it's really important for the pharmaceutical manufacturers in this sector to actually be a lot more transparent and open about it. And I think for the horseshoe crab, it is time to begin to think about the welfare implications of this a lot more openly and honestly. Kira, thank you so much for this reporting. I have had no idea all of this was going on with the horseshoe crab. Thank you so much for letting me talk about my favorite animal. By the way, we've reported on horseshoe crabs before. We'll link to our episode on the horseshoe crabs in medicine in our episode notes.

This episode was produced by Burley McCoy and Monica Estatiava, edited by our managing producer Rebecca Ramirez and Barry Hardiman. Kiarra and Barbara Van Warcom check the facts. Robert Rodriguez was our engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director of programming and Anya Grunman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Regina Barber. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.