PETA Funding Helps Save Thousands of Mice From Shellfish Toxicity Testing

February 2014

For years, state fisheries have used a painful and deadly test on mice to study whether shellfish caught for human consumption contain toxins. In these tests, a sample of shellfish is mixed in a blender, and this slurry is injected into the abdomen of mice, causing them to endure seizures, paralysis, and death from suffocation. Thanks to the hard work of a PETA scientist and PETA’s funding, the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference, the cooperative body that manages and promotes the cleanliness of shellfish for consumption, approved the use of a method that uses tissue from one animal in place of 200 live animals to test for toxins, sparing the lives of tens of thousands of mice each year.