Written by PETA
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!
Written by Michelle Sherrow
Update: Based on PETA complaints documenting abuse and neglect of animals in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston's laboratories, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken the rare step of fining the facility $9,143 for egregious violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act—including failing to supply veterinary care to a sheep who had been used in experimental back surgery and could not stand up, failing to supply adequate veterinary care to a goat who died on an operating table, and failing to supply post-procedural pain relief to three sheep used in experimental surgeries.
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.
Update: On October 11, the Puerto Rico Senate approved Senate Resolution 1514 to "[e]xpress the most forceful objection" to Bioculture’s plans, and will now officially "request that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) deny any and all permit requests by Bioculture Mauritus, any of its subsidiaries or Bioculture Puerto Rico, Inc. with the purpose of importing macaca fascicularis [macaque monkeys] into Puerto Rico."
Bioculture—a company that sells nonhuman primates to laboratories—has been dealt a massive blow after the municipality of Guayama, Puerto Rico, and its mayor, Glorimari Jaime Rodríguez, unanimously approved two landmark ordinances banning the import, export, breeding, and use of monkeys in experiments. Bioculture must now terminate its plans to capture more than 4,000 wild monkeys, confine them to cages, breed them in Guayama, and sell their offspring to laboratories for use in painful and deadly tests. Bioculture's client list included hideous labs such as Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories, Charles River Laboratories, Pfizer, and Covance, among others.
PETA, other organizations, world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, leading Indian politician Maneka Gandhi, and Puerto Rico–born actor Benicio del Toro have campaigned hard to get Bioculture's cruel plan stopped. We protested the company and joined Guayama residents in filing a lawsuit, which prompted a Superior Court judge in Puerto Rico to temporarily halt construction of the facility because of Bioculture's flagrant violation of local laws.
In case Bioculture has ideas about setting up shop elsewhere in Puerto Rico, we have also worked with Sen. Melinda Romero Donnelly, who sponsored Senate Resolution 1514 to formally urge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture not to grant any licenses or permits to Bioculture for the importation and breeding of animals in Puerto Rico.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
We know that chimpanzees have keen intelligence and advanced cognitive skills, so it's no surprise that scientists observing wild chimpanzees in Guinea watched them deliberately set off snare traps designed to catch and kill them (and any other passing animal)—while avoiding harming themselves. The researchers believe that this lifesaving skill has been passed down from one generation to the next.
Just like us, non-human animals of all species want to live in freedom, avoid pain, and seek out comfort. Like us, more than anything, they want to live.
But life skills and ingenuity can't save animals who are deliberately bred for laboratory experiments. Please help us stop a plan to breed monkeys for vivisection in Puerto Rico.
A new study that will probably leave you grimacing in frustration finds that mice make facial expressions when they're in pain.
We certainly didn't need any more evidence that these small animals are more than test tubes with whiskers and are capable of feeling pain and suffering. And it makes me wince to think about the horrible things they did to mice to elicit expressions like squeezed eyes and bulging cheeks that indicate "key signs of pain."
For the study, mice were videotaped as they suffered after experimenters injected different noxious chemicals into their abdomens, ankles and paws, placed them on hotplates, placed their tails in hot water, put metal binder clips on the tips of their tails, and performed various surgeries on them without administering pain relief after the operations.
While, if anything, the results should bolster the argument that these sensitive, intelligent animals suffer like we do and should not be used in experiments, it appears that the self-interested authors of the study instead want to use the results to create a "pain scale" that can be used as a measuring tool for, you guessed it, more pain experiments on mice.
World Science reports that the study's authors declined its request to republish photos from the study, for fear of "the inflammatory effect such pictures might have on animal rights activists." Gee, ya think? Luckily, WIRED published the heartbreaking photos here.
I hope this story inflames you enough to write to your Congressperson and urge him or her to support an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act to extend legal protections to the 100 million mice and rats who are languishing in U.S. laboratories and who currently receive absolutely no protection under the law.
Written by Alisa Mullins
PETA always tries to explain to people that what is done to animals inside laboratories would be illegal if it happened anywhere else. Burning, shocking, or poisoning a dog would typically land someone in jail. But paradoxically, as long as the abuse happens in a laboratory and is called "science," the people responsible for it are exempt from prosecution under cruelty laws in almost every state. Fortunately, there are some instances in which animal experimenters can be held legally accountable for tormenting animals, but we're learning that even in those cases, experimenters seem to be above the law. As you probably could've guessed, we're fighting to make sure that justice for animals is served!
Last year, Madison, Wisconsin's Alliance for Animals filed a complaint with the district attorney of Dane County alleging that experimenters at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (remember them?) had violated the state's Crimes Against Animals statute by killing sheep in U.S. Navy–funded decompression experiments (killing animals by decompression is specifically prohibited by Wisconsin law). The animals were placed in high-pressure hyperbaric chambers, and some died from the excruciating pain of decompression sickness ("the bends"), which occurs when bubbles of nitrogen gas form in the blood, muscles, and organs, including the brain. Did we mention that the French Navy and the U.K. Ministry of Defence no longer conduct decompression experiments on animals?
Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard investigated and concluded that UW-Madison did in fact violate state law by killing sheep by decompression. Incredibly, he decided that it wasn't worth his time and effort to pursue charges.
Fortunately, there is a Wisconsin law that allows private parties to request that a circuit judge order the filing of a criminal complaint in cases in which a crime has been committed and the D.A. refuses to take action. So PETA and Alliance for Animals have stepped in to petition for prosecution.
We'll keep you up to date on this case as it unfolds. In the meantime, please help us put an end to laboratory atrocities that are still taking place in campuses across the U.S.
Written by Karin Bennett
Pop quiz: For the creation and testing of which of the following types of consumer products do some companies still force animals to suffer in invasive and deadly laboratory experiments?
If you answered "D," you're correct! But here's an important update: After more than two years of behind-the-scenes discussions with PETA, Japan's ITO EN, Ltd., the world's largest manufacturer of green tea—with more than $3 billion in annual sales and ranked by Deloitte among the top 250 global consumer-product companies—has recently gotten out of the animal-testing business. Writing to us, the company said, "[W]e have decided to stop animal tests on our beverages and foods, considering recent movement and circumstances in other countries on this subject."
We're happy to report that the new policy prohibits all animal testing and makes ITO EN the first major Japanese company that we know of to do so, proving that no animal must be killed in order to make safe and healthy food products.
ITO EN joins other progressive companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Ocean Spray, Welch's, POM Wonderful, and others who have recently ended animal testing after discussions with PETA.
Please thank ITO EN for its responsible and compassionate decision to ban animal tests, and then learn how you can become a more caring consumer.
P.S. Always remember that for every product you can imagine—including dog food, cigarettes, and, yes, even drinks—there are versions that aren't tested on animals.
Blasting as many as 30 monkeys with radiation and then imprisoning them for the rest of their lives in tiny steel cages in order to assess how the radiation damages their bodies is wrong on too many levels to count. And it also appears to violate NASA's own guidelines—and federal regulations too.
According to new information obtained by PETA through the Freedom of Information Act, NASA appears to have violated its own grant guidelines and the Code of Federal Regulations by approving the outlay of nearly $2 million in taxpayer money on this cruel and wasteful experiment before they had even been evaluated for scientific validity by one of the facilities where they would be taking place and even though the lead experimenter had missed crucial deadlines for receiving approval for the project.
NASA's guidelines state that grant applications that don't meet the relevant requirements will be "declared noncompliant and declined without review," so PETA has filed a complaint with NASA calling for an immediate investigation and asking for the misguided project to be disqualified from receiving even one penny of our tax dollars.
Join us in stopping this abuse of monkeys before it happens by urging Congress to end the barbaric plan.
Written by Logan Scherer
Victory Update: Following a year of vigorous campaigning, PETA has learned that government officials have grounded plans for a cruel and ineffective radiation experiment on monkeys. Learn more about this victory for monkeys.
Shouldn't every day be "Bring Your Daughter to the Demo" Day?
This adorable girl joined other proud PETA supporters outside Johnson Space Center in Houston yesterday to urge NASA to ground its misguided plans to torment monkeys in cruel and ineffective radiation experiments. They educated tons of passersby about the more than two dozen monkeys who will be zapped with a large dose of radiation in NASA's crude experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. After the experiment, the monkeys will be shipped off to Harvard's McLean Hospital and forced into years of experiments to assess how the radiation deteriorates their brains and wreaks havoc on their bodies.
Facebook posts speaking out against the cruel experiment have flooded NASA's page—to the point that NASA created a new discussion board solely dedicated to this issue. And we're tweeting at astronauts on the International Space Station (retweet, anyone?) asking them to take action:
@Astro_TJ Pls tell @NASA 2 #savethemonkeys from cruel & ineffective radiation experiments & replace 'em w/ humane/modern research methds!
Join the thousands of people signing PETA's Twitter petition and urging Congress to halt NASA's cruel plan.
Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the promised release of Robert—the tabby who was purchased by the University of Utah (the U) for $15 from the Davis County Animal Shelter and used in a cruel experiment in which his skull was cut open and electrodes were implanted in his brain. Robert has been adopted into a new home, but the majority of the 105 dogs and cats who were purchased from Davis County Animal Control last year remain caged in the U's labs and won't be given the same chance.
In the two months since we first released footage of our undercover investigation inside the U, PETA has repeatedly attempted to obtain documents related to the purchase of animals like Robert, but county officials have failed to cooperate, in what appears to be a violation of the state's Government Records Access and Management Act. So this morning, PETA filed a lawsuit against the county demanding access to these documents, which will shed more light on Davis County's betrayal of both animals and community members who are unaware that the beloved companions they surrender may be mutilated and killed in laboratories.
Today, PETA is also launching a new video called "Betrayal of Trust," which reveals the plight of some of the dogs and cats whom the U purchased from local animal shelters for its cruel and deadly experiments. The video contains footage from inside the Davis County Animal Shelter and the U's animal laboratories, including a clip of Lady, a friendly German shepherd whom the U purchased from the shelter for $20. Experimenters cut open her neck and implanted a medical device for a heart experiment. At the end of the experiment, Lady will be killed and "go to the dump," as one vet tech in our new video explains.
PETA's working overtime to ensure that shelter animals will no longer be betrayed by Davis County and the University of Utah. Please take just a few moments to help by contacting the school and demanding an end to this shameful practice.
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.
Follow PETA on Twitter!