School’s Deadly Vape Oil Tests on Fish Prompt PETA Action

Rochester School Must Not Repeat Horrendous Experiments on Aquatic Animals, Says Group

For Immediate Release:
January 15, 2020

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Immediately upon learning that Lincoln K–8 District-Wide School reportedly had students conduct experiments on zebrafish in which they dropped toxic vape oil into the animals’ tanks—resulting in not only blood clots, stunted eye growth, and the inability to swim upright but also deaths—TeachKind, PETA’s humane education division, sent the school’s principal an urgent letter.

In it, the group requested that he put an end to these cruel, harmful, irrelevant experiments and implement humane, non-animal studies in the classroom instead—and pointed out that the activity that took place is directly at odds with the National Science Teaching Association’s advisement that teachers not conduct any experiments on live animals that involve causing them harm or distress.

“As violence sweeps through our schools, the last thing students should be taught is that it’s acceptable to treat animals as disposable test tubes and that killing sentient beings is OK,” says PETA Director of Student Campaigns and Influence Rachelle Owen. “TeachKind is urging Lincoln K–8 District-Wide School to foster an educational atmosphere that doesn’t involve poisoning animals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information, please visit TeachKind.org.