PETA Saves Thousands of Animals by Making Test Accessible in the U.S.

May 2012

For years, state fisheries have used a painful and deadly test on mice to study whether shellfish caught for human consumption contain a lethal concentration of algal 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 suffer seizures, paralysis, and death from suffocation. Following years of work on this issue both in the U.S. and in the E.U., PETA learned of a promising method developed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that will prevent the slow, painful deaths suffered by mice for shellfish toxicity detection. When PETA became aware that an FDA scientist had successfully developed a drastically more humane replacement method for detecting these deadly toxins, PETA jumped at the chance to fund this new method and ensure its use. The new test will save thousands of animals, is scientifically superior, and is vastly less expensive.