Anchorage, Alaska — Today, a 2-year-old dog named Bog, who was forced to race in the Iditarod by musher Isaac Teaford, collapsed near the Nulato checkpoint and died. Three of Teaford’s other dogs had already been pulled from the race due to exhaustion, illness, or injury. Video footage, available here, shows Bog lying motionless on the icy ground and Teaford trying to make him stand before lifting his limp body. PETA is calling for Teaford to be removed from the race.
Teaford is reportedly racing dogs belonging to notorious musher Dallas Seavey, whose long list of controversies includes spending eight hours en route to the next checkpoint instead of turning back to get immediate care after a dog named Faloo was critically injured by a moose last week and a November incident in which two of his dogs were killed by a snow machine during training. Dogs Seavey has forced to race have tested positive for opioids, and his kennel has been accused of killing dogs who didn’t make the grade.
“The death count keeps climbing for dogs who are forced to run until their bodies break down, all so the human winner can get a trophy while the dogs get an icy grave,” says PETA Senior Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA is calling for this despicable race to end before more dogs like Bog pay with their lives.”
Up to half the dogs who start the Iditarod don’t finish it. During last year’s race—which had the smallest field of mushers in the event’s history—approximately 175 dogs were pulled off the trail due to exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes, forcing the remaining dogs to run under an even greater strain. The race ended in controversy after the winner was caught on video dragging exhausted dogs toward a checkpoint.
The leading cause of death for dogs in the Iditarod is aspiration pneumonia—caused by inhaling their own vomit—and the race’s official death toll doesn’t include countless others who were killed simply because they weren’t fast enough or who died during the off-season while chained next to dilapidated boxes or plastic barrels in the bitter cold, a practice exposed in a PETA undercover investigation.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
PETA is pulling back the curtain on taxpayer-funded animal experiments at George Mason University (GMU) to reveal violations.
Official Animal Welfare Concerns at GMU
GMU, which includes the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, has used an untold number of animals—including elephant shrews, mice, and rats—in experiments.
Unlike most publicly funded animal testing facilities in Virginia, GMU doesn’t have a statement posted on its website regarding a commitment to the principles of the “3Rs”: Replacement of animal-based models with innovative technology, Reduction in the number of animals used in experiments, and Refinement of scientific methods to minimize pain and suffering.
Oversight agencies responsible for ensuring compliance with federal animal welfare standards have documented the following issues at GMU.
During a transcardial perfusion—in which an animal’s circulatory system is flushed with saline or a fixing agent through a needle inserted into the heart while the animal is deeply anesthetized but still alive—a mouse “exhibited signs of waking up,” then was “immediately re-anesthetized with isoflurane prior to continuing the perfusion and subsequent euthanasia procedures.” It was also determined that the procedure was performed in an area “not approved for animal use for this protocol.”
Expired pain-relieving drugs and antibiotics were administered to rats during 13 survival surgeries and recoveries over the course of four months. The drugs had expired two years before the time period covered by the violation. Although the attending veterinarian “did not believe the animals to be in pain or distress that required further veterinary action,” the university noted that “the severity in which these incidents of improper oversight of care and use to our most vulnerable animals who undergo survival surgery procedures is a serious deviation from Mason policies and Assurance” as well as Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (PHS Policy) and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
A “technician was practicing tail vein injections on a mouse under chemical restraint and used saline for the injection instead of a contrast agent approved to use” in the applicable Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee protocol. Although the mouse died before recovering from anesthesia, the university’s institutional official stated that the animal’s death “was determined to be an unfortunate event and not directly caused by the noncompliance.”
Examples of Experiments Involving Animals at GMU
The following experiments were recently conducted at GMU, and many of them were publicly funded:
Optimization of tissue sampling for Borrelia burgdorferi in white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus)
Wheel-running behavior is negatively impacted by zinc administration in a novel dual transgenic mouse model of AD
Mice who were injected with human gene mutations so that they would develop Alzheimer’s disease were subjected to “a battery of behavioral tests” before being used in the experiment. These tests included mazes intended to cause anxiety and the forced swim test, in which an animal is confined to an inescapable container of water to measure how long he or she fights to keep their face above water. During the experiment, mice were given zinc-supplemented drinking water and “tested for daily wheel running activity.”
Immune-modulating activity of hydrogel microparticles contributes to the host defense in a murine model of cutaneous anthrax
Spatial learning is impaired in male pubertal rats following neonatal daily but not randomly spaced maternal deprivation
Experimenters subjected baby male Long-Evans (aka “hooded”) rats to maternal separation by isolating them for three hours daily for 10 consecutive days starting when they were 1 or 10 days old. The rats then underwent surgery in which their skulls were opened and a drug-delivery tube was permanently implanted in their brains. At 40 days old, the rats were placed multiple times into a water maze, where they were forced to swim in a pool of water mixed with white paint until they found a hidden platform, and then they were killed. Virginia Tech (VT) was also involved in this experiment. (To learn more about animals used in experiments at VT, click here.)
A Novel Rat Model to Study the Role of Intracranial Pressure Modulation on Optic Neuropathies, Figure 1 | Michael P Fautsch | CC BY 4.0
In 2022, the Commonwealth of Virginia and its localities gave public universities more than $146 million for animal and non-animal research. Currently, no information is available indicating how much money is spent on animal experimentation in Virginia. The table below shows the total annual research funds received by GMU for the past nine years, including public funding.
GMU spent $5,607 on Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care accreditation fees in 2023.
Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo regarding the subpoena that PETA just received from the attorneys representing Cambodian government official Masphal Kry, who will go on trial next week for his role in an alleged monkey-laundering ring that supplied primates to U.S. laboratories:
PETA was surprised to receive a subpoena from Masphal Kry’s attorneys, demanding our communications and documents related to the extensive work that we continue to do to expose the cruel, violent, and deadly international trade in monkeys for use in experimentation. We had no role in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s five-year investigation or the U.S. Department of Justice’s prosecution. We’re watching this trial closely, as we believe it will expose the dirty underbelly of a monkey-trafficking scheme that has meant misery and death for tens of thousands of monkeys, but we don’t have what Kry’s attorneys are looking for.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
