Written by Jeff Mackey
PETA protesters wearing monkey masks and holding signs reading, "Deplane Monkeys," recently held demonstrations outside the Chicago headquarters of United Airlines and the U.S. headquarters of Air France in New York. PETA is urging the airlines to commit to a ban on shipping primates to laboratories, as almost every airline in the world already has, including Delta, American, US Air, and China Airlines.
PETA demonstrators also dropped a banner from a busy overpass next to United HQ, generating a lot of views and picture-taking:
United Airlines, which recently acquired Continental Airlines, is now the last U.S. air carrier without a policy prohibiting the transportation of primates to be abused and killed in crude, painful, and archaic experiments in laboratories.
The cruelty involved in laboratory experiments on primates and other animals should be self-evident: After hearing from PETA about the horrors that cats and dogs endure in labs, for instance, Nippon Cargo Airlines, which had been shipping dogs and cats from the United States to Japanese labs, implemented a worldwide policy against shipping any animals to labs.
When primates are shipped to laboratories, they're first separated from their families and locked inside dark, terrifying cargo holds for as long as 30 hours. Then they're delivered to facilities that will poison them, cut them up, and kill them. Many monkeys who are shipped to laboratories were first ripped from their homes in the wild.
Please join PETA in telling airlines that still transport monkeys to U.S. laboratories to adopt a policy against the transportation of nonhuman primates for use in experiments.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
It shouldn't happen to intelligent, sensitive cows, but it does: With holes cut into their sides, they are used as sideshow-like attractions to lure children and prospective students to university events and fundraisers. Distraught attendees at some of these recent events sent PETA these disturbing photographs:
The cows are part of common experiments that involve permanently removing a chunk of the animals' abdomens to expose their stomachs. Experimenters feed the cows various foods and then reach into the hole to take samples, even though there are modern non-animal methods for conducting these kinds of studies.
The "fistulated" cows are then often put on display at events, with patrons invited to "touch a cow's stomach" or "put your hand inside a cow." PETA often hears from upset students and parents who have witnessed such a display. Unfortunately, the only law that protects animals used in experiments, the Animal Welfare Act, does not extend to animals used in agricultural experiments, meaning these cows have no legal protection from cruelty.
Each time PETA hears about these hideous mutilations, we contact the school (and the group that visited the display) to ask them to stop the experiments and remind them that there are much more humane ways to teach students about science and animals than having them gawk at a mutilated cow. PETA also offers parents, teachers, and administrators resources to help students at every educational level achieve scholastically and compassionately. Visit TeachKind.org to download or order a wealth of free materials.
Navy veteran Bob Barker was appalled at what he saw in undercover video footage of U.S. Coast Guard trauma training leaked to PETA. In the video, live goats are stabbed, have their internal organs pulled out, and have their limbs cut off with tree trimmers. The goats moan loudly and kick while they are being mutilated, a sign that they were not sufficiently anesthetized, while an instructor cheerfully whistles and a soldier jokes about writing songs about mutilating the animals.
As a proud vet, Bob wants members of the armed forces to have the best possible training—and that means replacing archaic and cruel animal exercises with superior lifelike human simulators that can bleed, breathe, have their bones broken, and even "die." The simulators are already in use at many military facilities, and military regulations even require that non-animal methods be used when available. But the policy isn't being enforced.
Bob wrote to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on PETA's behalf to urge them to improve military trauma training by mandating that all programs use only advanced human simulators.
My own experience in the Navy left me with a strong belief that the brave Marines, sailors, Air Force members, and soldiers who risk their lives to protect our country deserve the best possible medical care, so this is not an issue that I approach lightly. It is clear from this video that dismembering and then trying to mend live goats in these crude procedures is worlds apart from treating an injured human on the battlefield. . . . I hope you will give this issue serious consideration and take steps to replace the armed forces' use of animals for trauma training with 21st century simulation technology.
What You Can Do
Join Bob in asking Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security officials to comply with federal regulations and replace all use of animals with human simulators.
Thanks to a brave whistleblower, PETA has obtained horrific undercover video of live animals whose limbs were cut off for an archaic military training drill. The course was held earlier this year in Virginia Beach, Virginia, by private contractor Tier 1 Group.
In the shocking video, instructors repeatedly crack and cut off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stab the animals with scalpels to cause internal injuries, and cut into their abdomens to crudely pull out their organs. Some of the goats moan loudly and kick their legs during the mutilations, which veterinarians who viewed the video say are signs that the goats were not adequately anesthetized and may have even been feeling pain.
The disturbing video footage shows a callous course instructor who cheerfully whistles while dismembering goats as well as members of the Coast Guard who joke about writing a song about mutilating the animals.
According to the whistleblower, later in the day the goats were shot in the face with pistols and were hacked apart with an ax while still alive.
Today, there are high-tech humanlike simulators available specifically for military training that can breathe, bleed, cry, talk, and respond to medications. These human-based methods are obviously more humane and effective than cutting apart, blowing up, shooting, and killing thousands of animals every year. One shockingly realistic simulator is a special suit designed to be worn by a human actor that enables military personnel to safely perform emergency surgical procedures on a live human without any injury to the person.
Last year, PETA helped end an Army course that involved poisoning monkeys with chemicals, and we've saved ferrets and cats from other cruel military training courses by convincing military officials to switch to modern simulators.
The evidence of the superiority of these state-of-the-art simulation methods is so overwhelming that Congress has introduced legislation to phase out the use of animals in military training in favor of non-animal methods.
Military medical experts, veterans, and civilian physicians are joining PETA in urging U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and other military officials to immediately end the use of animals in military trauma training exercises. And we need your help, too!
In light of Merck's record of failing to provide even the most minimal care to animals used in its experiments, PETA has filed a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical giant for violating PETA's shareholder rights and refusing to include a proposal by PETA—a Merck stockholder—among the 2012 proxy materials that are being considered at the company's upcoming annual meeting. PETA is asking the court to order Merck to include the proposal and give shareholders the chance to cast an informed vote on it.
What Is Merck Trying to Hide?
PETA's proposal simply requests an annual report on Merck's "procedures to ensure proper animal care, including measures to improve the living conditions of all animals used in-house and at contract laboratories"—but the drugmaker has refused, apparently preferring to conceal from shareholders how Merck and its contractors have repeatedly violated federal animal welfare laws. Since 2008 alone, Merck's violations have included caging primates in isolation, inadequate anesthesia procedures and housing of animals, and lack of veterinary care and personnel training, just to name a few.
Merck's record is especially disturbing since, in the last three years alone, it has used tens of thousands of primates, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, and guinea pigs in experiments—including more than 16,000 animals in painful tests, thousands of whom were given no pain relief whatsoever. Shareholders have a right to know what the company is doing to prevent further violations of animal welfare laws, don't you think?
A big "Thank you!" is due to the Gratiot County Board of Commissioners for taking an important step toward ending the betrayal of homeless animals in Michigan.
You may recall that this past winter, the University of Michigan ended a cruel cat laboratory after PETA revealed that the school was purchasing homeless cats from R&R Research, a notorious Class B dealer. PETA also discovered that R&R obtained many of the cats from the Gratiot County, Michigan, animal shelter. Local citizens joined PETA in calling for reform, and the commissioners have now passed a resolution to strictly limit the number of animals that it releases to R&R Research.
He is of one of the cats who ended up at the University of Michigan and was killed
Gratiot County couldn't completely ban the release of animals to R&R because of a contract that runs through February 2014, but the commissioners voted to release only one animal to R&R in each of the next two years. While it's disappointing that two animals will still fall into R&R's hands, the commissioners are making the best of a bad situation—especially when you consider that, last year, the county animal shelter handed more than 30 animals over to that torture pimp. In addition, the county voted to end the barbaric use of gassing as a method for euthanasia at the shelter.
Mecosta County—the only other county in the state whose shelter was releasing animals for use in experiments—confirmed that starting July 1, its shelter will no longer do so. So when Gratiot County's contract with R&R expires, it will mark the complete end of pound seizure in the state of Michigan.
Please ask your congressional representatives to prohibit Class B dealers from selling lost, abandoned, and stolen animals to laboratories.
Written by PETA
After eight months of pressure from PETA and our supporters, the prestigious scientific journal Nature has confirmed that China Southern Airlines is no longer transporting primates to the United States for use in experiments.
Because there remain few viable options for exporting primates from China, primate breeders and experimenters are currently in a panic about how to bring monkeys into the U.S. to torment in laboratories. This victory comes after the airline canceled a shipment of 80 monkeys to the U.S. last August, where they were to be mutilated and killed in cruel experiments. China Southern halted the shipment after receiving thousands of e-mails and hundreds of phone calls from PETA supporters as well as a visit to its Los Angeles office from a PETA employee dressed in a monkey costume.
China Southern is China's largest airline, and it joins Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Lufthansa, British Airways, and Virgin Atlantic, among others, in refusing to transport primates to be tortured.
Members of PETA and Stop UBC Animal Research converged on the Animal Transportation Association meeting in Vancouver, Canada, on Sunday to urge the few remaining airlines that still deliver primates to desolation and torture in laboratories to stop accepting blood money and ban the practice.
Help end shipments of primates to laboratories by asking this dwindling list of airlines to transport only willing passengers.
What do you get when you mix PETA, a company that tests on animals, and a roomful of eco-friendly executives? A round of applause, which is what happened when an animal advocate stood up during the Industry Water Award Ceremony in Stockholm and asked Nestlé Chair Peter Brabeck-Letmathe when its tea brand, Nestea, will stop carrying out painful and deadly experiments on animals and switch to cruelty-free non-animal testing methods.
A few weeks ago, Nestlé USA CEO Brad Alford got the same surprise inquisition at the Grocery Manufacturers Association Conference in Colorado Springs.
Experimenters working for Nestea have injected mice with toxic chemicals in order to give them diabetes, then force-fed them tea ingredients before killing them. In another experiment, mice were force-fed tea extracts and then had their leg muscles cut open before being decapitated. In still another test, mice bred to suffer brain damage and rapid aging were locked in dark chambers, and painful shocks were administered to their sensitive feet before the mice were killed.
Not only are these tests not required by law, the results also aren't even admissible as proof of tea's health benefits—the very reason that Nestlé claims it conducts the experiments. You can give Nestlé executives a surprise of your own by visiting PETA's new website, NesteaCruelTEA.com and e-mailing AlfordCEO of Nestlé S.A. Paul Bulcke and to ask them to call off the killing.
After thousands of e-mails, hundreds of phone calls, and a PETA "monkey" paying a visit to China Southern Airlines' L.A. office, the airline—which is the largest in China—has made the compassionate decision to cancel its plans to ship 80 monkeys from China to the U.S., where they were going to end up in the hands of Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL) and Harlan Laboratories and be tormented in cruel experiments.
RedCoat/CC BY-SA 2.5
Now, we're urging China Southern Airlines officials to join with many other major airlines, including Delta, American, United, British Airways, and Virgin Atlantic, and refuse to transport primates to laboratories ever again. You can also write to them here. We'll keep you posted!
Update: After reviewing our evidence, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected UTMB’s laboratories and confirmed our findings of multiple Animal Welfare Act violations.
A whistleblower at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has contacted PETA to report horrifying—and potentially illegal—abuses of dogs, sheep, monkeys, mice, and other animals who were tormented for experiments in the school's laboratories.
The insider reported that as a result of experiments in which dogs were cut open and had tubes surgically implanted in their colons, one dog died during surgery and another suffered in pain and died when staff members didn't provide post-operative painkillers. UTMB experimenters also induced spinal cord and nerve damage in sheep, and in one instance, a sheep apparently couldn't stand for three days following surgery and was given no pain relief. Mice apparently died from dehydration, and a monkey was locked in a room all by himself, even though monkeys require social contact with other members of their species to maintain sanity and physical health.
In other procedures conducted in this hellhole, experimenter Daniel Traber subjected sheep, pigs, and mice to third-degree burns on up to 40 percent of their bodies by searing off their skin with a Bunsen burner or a scorching-hot metal rod and forced the animals to inhale smoke.
PETA has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling for an immediate investigation into these disturbing allegations. You can help by sending an e-mail to UTMB President David L. Callender urging him to investigate these allegations and, if abuses are confirmed, to discipline those responsible.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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