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A PETA undercover investigator went back inside the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, laboratories one year after we documented callous disregard and outright abuse of animals there. Had UNC cleaned up its act, given that hundreds of millions of dollars in research funds were at stake? No. In contrast to what UNC had assured the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the government agency that investigated our charges, we still found the animals severely overcrowded, left without veterinary care, and killed inhumanely. Pressure from the government, which opened its own investigation after PETA filed its first complaint, and news reports showing our footage of animals living and dying in misery made a difference but apparently only on paper. Our second investigator, hired to work in the same building and on some of the same experiments from January through November 2003, found that UNC has lied outright to NIH about cleaning up its act. The investigator found the following:
One experimenter was permitted to kill mice from whom she was taking
tissue by breaking their necks, an exception to the usual gas euthanasia.
However, our investigator observed her with a bag full of dead mice
who seemed to have been killed in this way—mice who had not had
any tissue removed and who were probably excess mice being killed to
reduce this experimenter’s chronic overcrowding. Hoping to stop
it, our investigator reported the violation to members of the Institutional
Animal Care and Use Committee, which is supposed to oversee experiments,
and asked them to come to the lab immediately to see the dead mice for
themselves. But even though the committee members knew that they were
supposed to keep a close eye on this experimenter because of repeat
violations, they acted scared of her and didn’t ask to look in
the bag. Once again, PETA has filed a formal, detailed complaint
with the NIH. We insisted that the government agency act immediately to investigate and close down UNC's animal laboratories. 
Government Report Proves PETA Right The government also agreed with PETA that UNC committed many other violations:
Click here to read NIH OLAW’s summary of its 30-page report about our first UNC investigation. Predictably, UNC told NIH that most of its problems with providing proper animal care during PETA’s first investigation were caused by the supervisor in that laboratory. UNC made a big display of hiring a new supervisor who, it claimed, would not allow the same things to happen that had happened during our first investigation. When our investigator reported the toe amputations to this supervisor, he said, “Stick to the script. … I just can’t be hearin’ this. You know that, right?” It was obvious that UNC had no respect for OLAW's authority. The fact that UNC thought that it could get away with treating animals so cruelly shows an arrogance that permeates many universities that are given exorbitant amounts of our tax money and trusted to "do what's right." Every day, mice and rats die in our nation's laboratories—without even the most basic, rudimentary protections of federal law. Please write to your members of Congress to ask them to amend the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) to include rats and mice. These rodents are intelligent, social beings who deserve protection just as much as the dogs, rabbits, and hamsters currently included in the AWA do. Click here to find contact information for your representative and senators. Please also consider making a donation to support PETA's vital work to stop this cruelty. |
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PETA’s Undercover UNC Investigation
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