UC Davis Racks Up Federal Violations After Monkeys Suffer Burns, Injuries, and Death: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
September 12, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel regarding just-posted citations issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the University of California, Davis for three violations, two critical, of the Animal Welfare Act. In one, two monkeys escaped their cage, injuring one whose right leg was torn open, Achilles tendon severed, and fibula visibly broken. Instead of providing veterinary care, experimenters opted to euthanize the monkey “due to study endpoint timelines.” In another, staff injected “inappropriately warmed” fluids into a monkey, burning a human hand-sized wound into the animal’s back, requiring months of wound treatment. In the third, multiple monkeys were locked in cages too small for their bodies:

Mere months have passed since the University of California, Davis’s last display of deadly depravity, and again bodies of sensitive monkeys are piling up inside the school’s California National Primate Research Center, where the use of fatal force is clearly favored over providing basic care. Failing to secure cages, injecting overheated fluids, and, in consultation with the principal investigator, killing an injured monkey rather than providing treatment, are not isolated mistakes—they are signs of a system where negligence has become routine and cruelty is excused as convenience. A monkey with repairable injuries was killed, not because they couldn’t be treated, but because saving him would inconvenience the experimenter’s timeline—a decision that betrays both science and the most basic oath of veterinary medicine.

PETA urges the National Institutes of Health to stop funneling millions of dollars to all seven National Primate Research Centers, which repeatedly prove that they cannot meet the bare minimum requirements of federal animal care regulations.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.