Kategorie: Animals

PETA scientists presented a new study at an international conference, revealing that the University of Pittsburgh is one of the five worst violators of federal animal welfare guidelines among schools with taxpayer-funded laboratories. The presentation took place at the 12^th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, in Niagara Falls, Canada.

The study’s authors used federal reports to examine the 25 leading recipients of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—totaling over $9.5 billion—and documented 632 animal welfare violations in just a 41-month period. The University of Pittsburgh is responsible for 59 of these violations for incidents that include one in which two newborn mice were found alive in a bin intended for dead animals after carbon dioxide gassing failed to kill them. In another incident, a monkey escaped from their cage and sustained injuries that required the partial amputation of four toes on one foot. In more than 30 separate incidents, mice were found to have been left without food or water, causing them agonizing and painful deaths. In just one incident, eight adult mice confined to three cages were found to have no access to food. Seven of the mice were dead upon discovery, and the eighth mouse was in such poor condition that they had to be euthanized. The school received $675,447,236 from NIH in 2022.

Under the Health Research Extension Act of 1985, institutions that receive funding from NIH must comply with federal animal welfare guidelines in their treatment of vertebrate animals.

“The University of Pittsburgh’s failure to comply with the bare minimum of federal animal welfare guidelines illustrates the extent to which animals suffer in its labs,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA is calling on the school to modernize with more effective, non-animal research methods and to stop flouting the law while gobbling up hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.”

The other top violators are the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Washington, and the University of Minnesota for incidents in which animals endured agonizing pain, injury, and death due to neglect, incompetence, and disregard.

At the 12^th World Congress—the premier conference for scientists set on reducing and replacing flawed and archaic animal studies—PETA also provided practical roadmaps for ushering in 100% animal-free science and education with information on PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Deal.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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The University of Washington (UW) is one of the five worst violators of federal animal welfare guidelines among schools with taxpayer-funded laboratories, according to a new study by PETA scientists presented at the 12^th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, in Niagara Falls, Canada.

The study’s authors used federal reports to examine the 25 leading recipients of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—totaling over $9.5 billion—and documented 632 animal welfare violations in just a 41-month period. UW is responsible for 53 of these violations, for incidents that include one in which three rats who had been subjected to spinal injury surgeries died during or after the procedure, in which they were administered a drug that was five times the approved concentration. Five mice died of hyperthermia after an experimenter left them unattended under a heat lamp. In 14 separate incidents, mice were found to have been left without food or water, causing their agonizing deaths. In just one incident, 19 mice died of starvation after being left for 12 days without food. The left arm of a juvenile monkey confined at UW’s Arizona facility was amputated after staff members failed to notice that a feeder was missing a lock. This negligence allowed the monkey to escape, climb another cage, and become injured by the monkey confined there. The school received $591,635,989 from NIH in 2022.

Under the Health Research Extension Act of 1985, institutions that receive funding from NIH must comply with federal animal welfare guidelines in their treatment of vertebrate animals.

“The University of Washington’s failure to comply with the bare minimum of federal animal welfare guidelines illustrates the extent to which animals suffer in its labs,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA is calling on the school to modernize with more effective, non-animal research methods and to stop flouting the law while gobbling up hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.”

The other top violators are the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Minnesota for incidents in which animals endured agonizing pain, injury, and death due to neglect, incompetence, and disregard.

At the 12^th World Congress—the premier conference for scientists set on reducing and replacing flawed and archaic animal studies—PETA also provided practical roadmaps for ushering in 100% animal-free science and education with information on PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Deal.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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Bob Barker has passed on, but PETA has begun talks with Los Angeles City Council Member Hugo Soto-Martinez to honor the contributions of the legendary game show host and animal rights advocate to both the City of Angels’ entertainment industry and animal welfare by renaming the Echo Park portion of Sunset Boulevard, where the Bob Barker Building, PETA’s L.A. headquarters, is located.

Photos: PETA

“An honorary ‘Bob Barker Boulevard’ would be a fitting tribute for the television icon, who never hesitated to help when animals were in trouble and who was the man responsible for PETA’s opening of its West Coast headquarters in the entertainment capital of the country,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Bob Barker was compassion personified, so we look forward to working with the city to remember him in a way that will inspire anyone who spots his name on the sign to make kind choices every day, just as Bob did.”

Barker’s many collaborations with PETA included urging families to stay away from SeaWorld, demanding the closure of cruel bear pits masquerading as tourist attractions, imploring Hollywood to take action to protect animals used in films and television, and, as a Navy veteran, calling for the end of military medical drills on live animals.

PETA’s Bob Barker Building—established thanks to a generous donation from Barker—features a portrait of him in the foyer as well as a display shelf with one of his Daytime Emmy awards (1998), his MTV Movie Award for Best Fight (1996), and his WWE Slammy Award for Best Raw Guest Host (2009).

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Come on Down … to Bob Barker Boulevard! PETA Wants Road Renamed to Memorialize Longtime Animal Ally appeared first on PETA.

Today, PETA received a report of a cat who has (at best) been hiding but who is possibly trapped inside an air conditioning duct on the roof of a locked community center at 430 Dumont Ave. in Brooklyn, New York, and has reportedly been there for up to a week.

Evidently, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which owns the building, has prohibited the fire department from accessing the vent in order to perform a rescue if appropriate, and this office only refers PETA to police, who obviously aren’t the answer. And although maintenance workers have reportedly been to the roof to see if they could spot the cat, no traps have been set and further detection efforts are not in the works to our knowledge. Meanwhile, the cat’s guardian and a local activist at the site have confirmed hearing the distressed animal vocalizing from inside the duct. Your voices are needed now!

Please politely urge NYCHA to do its due diligence and ensure that this cat is not left to starve to death inside this area that only the housing authority as access to.

Contact NYCHA at 718-707-7771 (press 1 for maintenance repairs, then 3 for a new or existing maintenance request) as well as NYCHA’s CEO and the NYCHA Board. Politely ask them to rescue the cat who is trapped inside an air conditioning duct on the roof of a Brooklyn community center that the housing authority owns.

Call NYCHA at 718-707-7771 (Press 1 Then 3)

Send a Message to NYCHA’s CEO

Send a Message to the NYCHA Board

Thank you for your advocacy. Please forward this alert far and wide!

The post URGENT: Speak Out for a Cat Possibly Entombed in a Vent! appeared first on PETA.

Students arriving on the Harvard University campus for the first day of classes will be greeted by a PETA supporter wearing a welding mask and a bloody lab coat, sitting eerily in a rocking chair, as a black-draped crib nearby emits the sound of a monkey screaming.

When:    Tuesday, September 5, 12 noon

Where:    Johnston Gate, Harvard Yard entrance at Peabody Street, Cambridge

The chilling display will mimic the experiments of Margaret Livingstone, who rips newborn monkeys away from their mothers, cages them alone, and makes her staff wear welding masks so that the infants never see a face. She’s even sewn some baby monkeys’ eyelids shut as part of sensory deprivation studies.

“Livingstone’s pointless experiments are abuse, not science,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is urging Harvard to shut down this house of horrors and retire the survivors to a reputable sanctuary now.”

            Photo: Harvard University Program in Neuroscience’s Ph.D. Program

In cruel experiments that have no relevance to human health, baby monkeys in Livingstone’s laboratory are torn away from their mothers and raised in emotionally impoverished conditions, without the possibility of seeing any faces—human or monkey—for a full year.

Earlier this year, more than 380 experts—including primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, conservationist Dr. Ian Redmond, and Harvard anthropologist Dr. Richard Wrangham—joined Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic in urging the National Institutes of Health to end funding for Livingstone’s “cruel monkey experiments at Harvard Medical School.” That action followed a letter last September from 261 scientists around the world to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asking it to retract Livingstone’s publication, emphasizing that her work is unethical and noting that it fails to advance scientific knowledge.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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