VICTORY! Texas A&M to Release Last Golden Retrievers Transferred From Notorious MD Lab

Hard-Won PETA Campaign With Protests, Celebs, CD, and More Against Canine Lab Freed 60 Dogs and Ended Breeding Program

For Immediate Release:
November 4, 2022

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

Following a relentless six-year PETA campaign, which involved protests, lawsuits, and sit-ins, Texas A&M University has just confirmed that the remaining nine healthy dogs transferred to its veterinary school from its notorious canine muscular dystrophy (MD) laboratory will be released for adoption by the end of the year.

The news is the latest and last step that started with Texas A&M’s 2019 announcement that, under pressure from PETA’s campaign, it had stopped breeding dogs to develop the disease and began releasing them for adoption. The lead experimenter retired soon thereafter. More than 50 dogs have already been released for adoption.

“Texas A&M has finally committed to loosening its grip on the nine golden retrievers it held hostage in its veterinary school, determined not to concede PETA’s win,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “These dogs, like the dozens already released, will finally enjoy a real home instead of the barren steel runs of a laboratory.”

PETA first exposed the laboratory in 2016, when it released video footage revealing that golden retrievers and other dogs were specifically being bred to develop a crippling and painful form of canine MD that humans do not get. Many of the dogs struggled to walk and were forced to eat a soupy gruel, as solid food was too difficult for them to swallow. The dogs were used in painful experiments involving biopsies and a device that stretched their muscle tissue. Video footage showed them chewing on their cage bars, with no comfortable place to lie down. Despite 40 years of these experiments, no cure for muscular dystrophy has been developed.

Five hundred physicians along with numerous scientists and people with MD joined PETA’s campaigns, as did numerous celebrities, including Sir Paul McCartney, James Cromwell, Bill Maher, Lily Tomlin, Pamela Anderson, Casey Affleck, Richard Linklater, Nikki Sixx, and Ryan Tannehill. PETA supporters and others sent six million messages to Texas A&M calling for the release of the dogs.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.