June 2010
In response to a legal petition filed by PETA and Wisconsin’s Alliance for Animals, a Wisconsin circuit court judge ruled that several animal experimenters, staffers, and administrators at the University of Wisconsin–Madison could face criminal penalties for conducting excruciating and deadly decompression experiments on sheep. In addition to serious criminal penalties, the experimenters and administrators could face an injunction to permanently halt the deadly experiments. The judge appointed a special prosecutor to determine whether to bring charges against nine university employees. This is the first time that a judge has found probable cause for criminal charges related to the abuse of animals in a laboratory since PETA’s 1981 landmark Silver Spring monkeys investigation.
