The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has ordered the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) to pay more than $12,000 in fines for its cruel, incompetent—and sometimes fatal—treatment of animals, citing the institution for 10 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) in its laboratories between 2008 and 2010. Two of the citations in the penalty were the result of a 2008 complaint filed by PETA.

Learning the Hard(-Hearted) Way

After PETA submitted information about archaic and deadly medical training exercises in which rabbits at UCHC had needles repeatedly stabbed into their chests, the USDA found that the facility didn't properly seek non-invasive alternatives nor did it adequately document how the animals were used. The other violations for which UCHC was cited and fined include rabbit deaths caused by improper anesthesia and poorly trained employees.

UCHC was previously fined $5,500 by the USDA in 2007 for AWA violations, including injecting unapproved substances into a monkey's brain and an incident in which a monkey was dragged so roughly by a metal collar that his eyes bled. That penalty resulted from complaints filed by PETA Associate Director Justin Goodman, who was then a UConn grad student leading a successful campaign to end experiments on primates at the school. Not only were the experiments permanently shut down, but following a PETA complaint, the laboratory was also ordered to return $65,000 in federal funding.

And that's not all: In 2001, UConn's main campus paid $129,000 in USDA fines for 99 violations of animal welfare laws. You'd hope the university would have learned its lesson by now, but as long as animals are suffering in school laboratories, PETA will be working to stop the violence.

Rabbits are frequent victims of animal experimenters because they are mild-tempered and easy to handle, confine, and breed—more than 241,000 of them are abused in U.S. laboratories every year.

What You Can Do

Last year, the University of Connecticut's Health Center and main campus received more than $63.5 million from the National Institutes of Health, of which more than 40 percent will be spent on animal experimentation. Please ask the federal government to stop funding cruel and antiquated animal experiments and to put your tax dollars toward modern, humane, and superior research methods.

The military contractor that was responsible for hacking apart inadequately anesthetized goats in a crude military trauma training exercise exposed by PETA wants to conduct 24 more training courses—but it won't get the chance if Congress can help it.

Violations Abound

Tier 1 Group, LLC, was made infamous when PETA released a video exposé of a U.S. Coast Guard trauma training course in which Tier 1 Group instructors cut off goats' legs with tree trimmers, cut into the animals' abdomens to pull out their organs, and stabbed the animals with scalpels as the goats moaned and kicked. PETA filed a complaint, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited Tier 1 Group for violating the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). It was Tier 1 Group's second AWA violation in as many years. A U.S. Coast Guard investigation of Tier 1 Group following a PETA complaint is still ongoing.

Congress Steps In

So when this law-breaking company was awarded yet another military contract worth nearly $1.8 million of taxpayer money, members of Congress were aghast. A group of 11 representatives contacted Gene Dodaro, comptroller general of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and called for an investigation into why Tier 1 Group received the new contract. They cited regulations that clearly require federal contractors to abide by the law, including the AWA. The representatives assert that Tier 1 Group's history of repeatedly breaking the law may be sufficient cause to revoke the new military contract and to prevent the company from ever receiving any more taxpayer funds.

There Is a Better Way

The congressional representatives' actions speak loud and clear: The government should not pay anyone to torment animals illegally. And it doesn't have to. Superior humanlike simulators are already in use in military training courses in the U.S. and around the world. The simulators are so realistic that they can cry, talk, respond to medications, bleed, breathe, and even "die," so it's easy to see how such a training tool would better prepare soldiers for what they may encounter on the battlefield than would crudely hacking apart an animal.

What You Can Do

A bill, the Battlefield Excellence Through Superior Training (BEST) Practices Act (H.R. 1417/S. 3418), currently pending before Congress, would responsibly phase out the U.S. military's use of animals in trauma training entirely and require the use of modern simulation technology. Please send a polite e-mail to your congressional representatives and ask them to cosponsor this lifesaving legislation today.

Following PETA's undercover investigation into Triple F Farms, a massive ferret-breeding operation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has fined the company nearly $17,000 for violating at least eight regulations under the Animal Welfare Act.

A Bad Business

The violations were discovered during USDA inspections conducted in response to PETA's submission of video footage and other evidence.  

Documents recently obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division show that Triple F President Jack Fallenstein also agreed to pay 28 employees more than $28,000 in back wages to settle 38 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act following a federal investigation prompted by PETA's complaint to the agency.

Triple F: Failing Ferrets

PETA's investigation into the ferret mill lasted nearly four months and documented systematic and often fatal neglect and abuse of ferrets. We found that Triple F owners, supervisors, and workers left newborn ferrets for dead when they fell through wire cage bottoms 3 feet onto the filthy concrete floor, housed ferrets in severely crowded conditions, and deprived ferrets with bleeding rectal prolapses, gaping wounds, herniated organs, and other painful conditions of veterinary care or euthanasia. PETA's investigator also saw ferrets thrown into the trash—and into the facility's incinerator—while still alive.

Triple F sells ferrets to pet stores and laboratories around the world. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has had contracts worth more than $1.5 million with the company. The CDC signed even more contracts with this filthy factory farm after PETA shared its evidence and the USDA's findings with CDC brass. PETA has called on the agency to rescind Triple F's contracts and disqualify it from future contracts. The National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Navy have also had contracts with Triple F worth nearly $400,000.

What You Can Do

Please urge the director of the CDC's Procurement and Grants Office to stop the agency from funneling taxpayer dollars to Triple F.

In response to a series of significant animal welfare violations and complaints filed by PETA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken the rare step of fining the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) almost $12,000 for repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. ONPRC imprisons, sickens, terrorizes, and mutilates thousands of monkeys each year in experiments with impunity, so it's good to know that the facility will be punished for causing animals to suffer more by failing to uphold even minimum standards.

A Record of Recklessness

The violations, which took place in 2009, included the escape of nine monkeys from the facility as well as the deaths of five other monkeys from a variety of causes, including from dehydration, being injected with unapproved compounds, and improper procedures performed by an inadequately trained employee. Following the escape, PETA called on the USDA to investigate and issue a fine to ONPRC.

In 2007, PETA conducted a shocking undercover investigation, which exposed horrific laboratory conditions at ONPRC. The next year, the USDA issued an "official warning"—the precursor to a fine—to ONPRC. Internal documents obtained by PETA had revealed that a sick pregnant monkey died after being denied veterinary care, that a surgical sponge was left in a baboon—causing an abscess—and was discovered only after he was killed for an experiment, and that experimenters mistakenly performed surgery on the wrong monkey. After repeatedly finding negligence and callous disregard, federal investigators are finally speaking the only language that ONPRC understands: dollars and cents.

What You Can Do

Take a stand for the animals imprisoned at ONPRC. Ask the National Institutes of Health to stop funding cruel and useless nicotine experiments on animals at ONPRC and elsewhere.