Adequate veterinary care is the cornerstone of a responsible animal care and use program. Animals at UNC in need of immediate veterinary care (e.g., pain relief, treatment, euthanasia, etc.) are at the mercy of a staff (principal investigators, or “PI’s,” research technicians, veterinarians, and veterinary care technicians) that exhibits incompetence, indifference, cruelty, and unethical behavior.

• There are more than 70,000 animals maintained at UNC but only two veterinary technicians. The technicians may recommend treatment or euthanasia but have no authority to order them or perform them. On several occasions, PETA’s investigator witnessed the veterinary technicians’ written recommendations being tossed into the trash by researchers’ assistants.
  
  
• A researcher killed 23 mice in the presence of our investigator by breaking their necks with a metal cage-card holder. When our investigator later removed the mice from the dead-animal cooler in which they were placed, she found one still alive but paralyzed with a broken neck. Finding live animals in the dead-animal cooler was a recurring theme during the investigator’s employment.
  
  
• A researcher was fascinated to see a mouse she had placed in a CO2 chamber (recently deprived of oxygen) gasping for air, telling our investigator, “Look!” It was not until our investigator told her to turn the CO2 on that the animal was put out of his or her misery.
  
  
• A researcher doused 8-day-old rat pups (pinkies) with ethyl alcohol and cut their heads off with scissors. He admitted that he is supposed to put the pups on ice for four minutes prior to cutting their heads off because “animal rights people” and the “committee” believe it is more humane. He said that when they write up their procedure reports, they say that they put the pups on ice as required by IACUC policy.
  
  
• Our investigator documented mice who lost eyes as a result of grossly substandard skill in performing orbital bleeding (sticking of a glass pipette into the back of the animal’s eye).
  
  
• Our investigator witnessed a researcher repeatedly attempt to insert catheters down the throats of several rats in order to inject an amount of alcohol that would simulate a binge. He told her that sometimes he holds the rats so tightly that they turn blue.
  
  
• Pinkies (baby mice and rats) who were supposed to be euthanized after being found in dirty cages waiting to go through the automatic cagewasher were placed on top of counters and washing machines during cage cleaning. While loud music blasted from a radio, and with no warmth or food, the babies were left there, sometimes all day, to die.
  
  
• Researchers and their assistants routinely shook rats in the air or swung them by the tail prior to injections in order to disorient the animals so that they wouldn’t be bitten, even though they wore thick protective gloves.