Prior to last month, when it announced (after a vigorous PETA campaign) that it would no longer experiment on animals from shelters, the University of Utah (the U)  regularly conducted cruel and deadly experiments on lost, stray, and abandoned cats and dogs. One of these unfortunate souls was a dog named Sunny, whom employees at the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter (NUVAS) described as "very sweet" and "timid."
 

 
When Sunny was dropped off at NUVAS by the police, shelter workers scanned her and found a microchip indicating that she belonged to a rescue group called the Utah Animal Adoption Center (UAAC). Even though state law says that shelters must make "a reasonable effort to … find the rightful owner of the animal," NUVAS didn't even bother to call UAAC to try and find Sunny a safe and loving home. Instead, it sold her to the U for $50. The U also scanned her for a microchip, found that it lead back to UAAC, and, again, made no attempt to reach the group. Instead, according to the Associated Press, she was used in an experiment and killed, and her heart was cut out.

A simple phone call would have saved her life. No one at UAAC knew about the fate Sunny had met until it was too late.

PETA and UAAC have filed complaints with the state and will continue to seek justice for Sunny.

Thankfully, animals in Utah shelters are no longer at risk of being tormented and killed in experiments like Sunny was.

You can help save other animals from suffering in laboratories as well by taking a moment to e-mail your U.S. representatives asking them to divert public money away from cruel and crude animal experiments and give it to humane, relevant, and lifesaving non-animal research.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

We recently told you about how an intensive year-long campaign that was launched in the wake of PETA's shocking undercover investigation at the University of Utah (the U) finally prompted the school to stop experimenting on cats and dogs from local animal shelters. The U's laboratories were the last in the state to buy animals from shelters, which means that cats and dogs in Utah animal shelters are no longer at risk for having holes drilled into their skulls or having their chests cut open for cruel and deadly experiments. But even we are still learning that this is only one of the many ways that animals' lives are being saved by our campaign in Utah.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, some U experiments have "completely halted" now that faculty members can no longer exploit animal shelters as a cheap and easy source of test subjects. The inability to obtain animals from shelters may have also helped prompt the U and the Primary Children's Medical Center to end the use of cats for intubation training (which PETA had also vigorously protested) and to switch to infant-patient simulators.

As part of our efforts to end the sale of shelter animals to the U, PETA had also erected a billboard urging the last shelter in the state that was still selling animals to the U to end the shameful practice. While our intent was to expose the shelter's complicity, the effects appear to be much more far-reaching. The shelter's leadership has stated that PETA's billboard actually boosted adoptions at the shelter, presumably because compassionate people who learned from our billboard about the possible fate of these animals flocked to the shelter to save the dogs and cats from misery in a laboratory. And since the U agreed to stop buying animals from this shelter, several rescue groups are now working to lower euthanasia rates by getting the shelter's animals placed into foster programs and permanent, loving homes.

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What started as an undercover investigation to expose the horrors of animal testing at one university has changed the lives of animals all over Utah forever. None of it would have been possible without your support. Thank you.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

It's time once again for the not-so-coveted Vivisector of the Month award. Of course, all vivisectors deserve the "prize" for their mad science, but we've narrowed the field to two particularly nasty candidates. We're asking you to vote for the person you would most like to see in a stockade getting beaned in the head with fruit.

Mark Lowell is a faculty member at the University of Michigan (UM) who seems to have forgotten that when he went through medical school he swore an oath to do no harm. Lowell directs a Survival Flight course for nurses; in the course, cats and pigs are tormented even though superior human simulators are used to teach the same skills in other courses at UM. Cats have hard tubes repeatedly forced down their windpipes for intubation training, and many of them are killed. Pigs have holes cut into their limbs, throats, and chests and are stabbed with needles in their bones and the tissue surrounding their hearts. PETA, students at UM, the campus newspaper, the student government, and even UM alum Iggy Pop are vigorously urging Lowell to shut down this nasty operation.

In the other corner, weighing in at "cold and callous," is Bradley Greger. This peach of a person is one of the experimenters we've been telling you about at the University of Utah (the U) who buys cats from the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter and subjects them to cruel experiments before killing them. Greger also drills holes into monkeys' and cats' skulls and implants electrodes into their brains. He screws titanium pins into the monkeys' skulls and attaches an aluminum head-restraint device to immobilize the animals in chairs for up to eight hours per day for brain experiments.

You can use our form to e-mail the University of Michigan and the University of Utah and tell them that you support modern, humane science—not cruel animal experiments.

So who will it be: Mark "Lower Than Low" Lowell or Bradley "The Butcher" Greger? Get your moldy oranges ready, aim, and fire.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

UPDATE: The University of Utah has announced that it no longer will purchase animals from North Utah Valley Animal Shelter or any other shelter for experiments!

If the folks at the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter (NUVAS) were hoping to quietly continue betraying the animals in their care, they've just had their bubble burst. The  billboard that we've placed on the interstate less than a half-mile from NUVAS says it all.

Utah County residents who don't happen to drive this stretch of highway won't miss the message. We're taking it to their front door—literally—in the form of a door hanger with photos of some of the dogs who should have found a haven at the shelter but were instead sold like pieces of laboratory equipment. Anyone who lives in the area is welcome to help distribute the door hangers. 

NUVAS has no excuse. Following a PETA investigation of the University of Utah (the U), Utah legislators amended state law so that animal shelters would not be required to sell animals to laboratories. NUVAS is the only shelter in the state that still engages in this shameful practice. Shelter dogs recently purchased by the U are currently being used in an experiment in which their chests and necks are cut open and pacemakers are implanted in their hearts to induce an irregular heartbeat. All 45 dogs used in this experiment will be killed and have their hearts cut out and dissected.

Sweet Sheena, who was rescued from the U after being sold by NUVAS, took a trip to see PETA's billboard recently.

You can help by sending an e-mail to Utah County officials urging them to force NUVAS to end this unethical and outdated practice.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

UPDATE: The University of Utah has announced that it no longer will purchase animals from North Utah Valley Animal Shelter or any other shelter for experiments!

Remember the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter (NUVAS)? You know, the only animal shelter in Utah that still betrays dogs and cats by selling them to the University of Utah for invasive, painful, and deadly experiments? PETA recently obtained photos of nearly 50 dogs whom NUVAS had sold for experiments, and here are two of them:

These sweet dogs, who were probably once someone's companions, may have ended up like other dogs who were recently purchased from NUVAS: killed and dissected after having holes cut into their necks and chests and pacemakers implanted in their hearts in order to induce an irregular heartbeat.

How many more animals like Chance and Scout will NUVAS betray? Perhaps none—if we all share these dogs' photos online and call for an end to NUVAS' shameful practice of selling animals for experiments—and get our Facebook friends and Twitter tweeps to do the same.

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post