Kategorie: Animals

PETA is urging officials to bar Emory University from obtaining any new monkeys after the school was cited for violating federal law by allowing caged monkeys to live in unsanitary conditions for up to three months and blaming a staffing shortage.

In a letter sent today, PETA is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to prevent the university from breeding or acquiring any new monkeys in light of its inadequate staffing. PETA also filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health, urging it to investigate the school’s noncompliance with federal animal welfare standards.

The USDA cited Emory for using a labor shortage as an excuse to leave caged monkeys in their own filth for up to 12 weeks, saying inadequate staffing isn’t an excuse for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act, which requires that no more than two weeks pass between cage sanitizations. The feds also cited the university because of an incident in which a monkey died after her head became stuck in a gap in an outdoor enclosure.

“If Emory can’t find enough people to clean cages or keep animals safe, the last thing it should do is acquire more primates,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on federal officials to investigate and block Emory from roping in new victims and asks the school to take this staffing shortage as a sign that nobody wants to work in a monkey-abusing laboratory.”

Labor shortages that delay cage cleaning—designed to prevent dirt, food scraps, excrement, and other waste from accumulating and potentially harming animals as well as posing a disease risk to humans—could easily contribute to other deficits in animal care, such as insufficient health checks and a lack of food and water.

The school has a long history of flouting laws. Monkeys have died from starvation, strangulation, suffocation, heatstroke, choking on their own vomit, self-mutilation, being scalded to death, trauma, shock, and sepsis. The USDA previously investigated Emory following a complaint from PETA that a surgical sponge had been left in a monkey’s body for four months after staff subjected her to a C-section surgery.

For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post PETA Urges Feds to Stop Emory U. From Adding Any New Monkeys It Can’t Properly Care For appeared first on PETA.

PETA is calling on Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to stop acquiring and breeding monkeys since staff can’t clean the cages in accordance with federal law.

In federal documents obtained by PETA, the school cited a labor shortage in its decision to violate the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) by allowing the monkeys’ cages to be sanitized only half as often as required. A staff shortage isn’t an excuse under the law.

In a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent on August 10, PETA urges the agency to investigate and cite the university, just as it did in a similar instance that occurred in February at Emory University.

“OHSU should take its staffing shortage as a sign that nobody wants to work at a monkey-abusing laboratory and should switch to superior, human-relevant research methods that leave animals alone,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on the USDA to investigate these alarming conditions and for the school to stop subjecting monkeys to suffering and neglect by no longer breeding or acquiring them.”

Labor shortages that delay cage cleaning—designed to prevent dirt, food scraps, excrement, and other waste from accumulating and potentially harming animals as well as posing a disease risk to humans—could easily contribute to other deficits in animal care, such as insufficient health checks and a lack of food and water.

Last year, the school was fined $38,000 by the USDA for nine serious violations of the AWA from February 2018 to February 2022, including botched brain surgeries on marmosets and the scalding deaths of two monkeys whose cage was run through a high-temperature washer while they were trapped inside. In August, primate center employees protested low wages and forced overtime due to understaffing— and some workers suggested that the crisis could lead to the deaths of monkeys.

PETA also has a campaign urging OHSU to stop using live animals in its obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) residency training program for physicians.

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

The post PETA Urges OHSU to Stop Acquiring and Breeding Monkeys It Can’t Properly Care For appeared first on PETA.

Documents and video obtained by PETA and from the European organizations TheCampBeagle.com and Anima Denmark have revealed that 335 dogs from the now-shuttered Envigo dog-breeding facility were sent to Europe to be used in experimentation.

Envigo sent the dogs in 11 shipments between April 2021 and May 2022, according to documents that PETA obtained. Envigo shipped 96 of those dogs to its U.K. facility, possibly fearing that its Cumberland facility would close after it was cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for dozens of serious violations of animal welfare regulations and amid mounting pressure from Virginia legislators. According to the documents, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) is among the airlines that have sent more than 5,300 beagles to Europe to be used in the experimentation industry since 2021.

PETA’s groundbreaking undercover investigation blew the lid off neglect, intense confinement, suffering, and death at Envigo’s massive beagle-breeding facility and sparked a domino effect that led to its closure. PETA’s 2021 exposé was followed by the seizure of nearly 450 dogs and puppies “in acute distress,” federal citations for dozens of violations of animal welfare laws, and a legal battle between Envigo and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Envigo’s parent company, Inotiv, announced that it would close the Cumberland facility, and a federal court approved the DOJ’s plan to remove all 3,776 surviving dogs for a chance at adoption.

“The documents obtained by PETA suggest that even as Envigo was preparing to close up shop in Virginia, it was trying to squeeze every last cent from these dogs by shipping nearly 100 of them to Europe,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling for an end to this bloody business and is urging SAS to stop partnering with these cruel facilities by refusing to transport dogs to their deaths.”

The dogs from Envigo were headed to, among other facilities, Charles River Laboratories in Hungary, several pharmaceutical laboratories, and Envigo facilities in the Netherlands and the U.K. Charles River conducts painful tests on animals for companies that produce industrial chemicals, pesticides, food additives, and pharmaceuticals by force-feeding them test compounds, smearing experimental chemicals onto their shaved skin, and forcing them to inhale toxic substances.

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.

The post VIDEO: PETA Exposes Further Envigo Horrors After Hundreds of Dogs Were Sent to European Labs appeared first on PETA.

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the citations posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against the University of Oklahoma–Norman and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center for their violations of federal animal welfare regulations:

These latest “[c]ritical” federal citations against two branches of the University of Oklahoma show that animals caged there have as much to fear from the incompetence and negligence of laboratory staff as they do from the pointless experiments conducted there, underlining why the university doesn’t deserve another red cent of taxpayer money. PETA filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health, calling on the agency to investigate and sanction the institutions.

According to a just-posted inspection report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a rabbit’s leg was so badly damaged after becoming trapped in a pen during “exercise time” that the animal had to be euthanized and 20 chinchillas endured post-surgery pain because staff didn’t bother to give them pain relief medication—for two months.

The University of Oklahoma should redirect its resources toward modern, non-animal research methods that will actually help humans, and we urge officials there to adopt PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.

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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In a win for PETA regarding accountability and transparency, the Suffolk County Supreme Court just ordered Stony Brook University (SBU) to pay PETA $140,000 in legal fees after the school failed to comply with New York public records laws. PETA served its public records request in 2016 after federal inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited SBU for the death of a rabbit and for breaching protocol during Dr. Craig Evinger’s experiments on rabbits’ eyes.

“This victory sends a strong message that institutions like SBU can’t get away with concealing public records to evade scrutiny of controversial tests on animals,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “SBU will now have to pay the price for trying to hide its painful experiments on the delicate membranes of rabbits’ eyes from PETA and the public.”

On July 6, 2016, the USDA cited SBU for four violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act regarding experimenters’ removal of rabbits’ nictitating membranes—a translucent third eyelid that some animals have to help protect and moisten their eyes. SBU was cited for failing to consider alternatives to the “painful procedure,” for removing a rabbit’s nictitating membrane without proper approval, for failing to monitor the health and well-being of rabbits during the procedure, and for the death of a rabbit who became wedged between the grill openings of a cage.

In response to PETA’s records request, SBU produced 451 pages of heavily redacted documents, including 338 pages of redacted veterinary care and medical records. Only after years of litigation did SBU finally agree to provide revised copies of the requested records that eliminated nearly all redactions. In awarding PETA its legal fees, the court found that PETA “was reasonable in its requests” and had attempted to obtain the records without litigation but “was met with resistance every step of the way and was compelled to litigate almost every step of the way.”

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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