University of Colorado Boulder Ends Classroom Animal Labs, Creates New Policies

September 2015

Following a PETA campaign, human physiology courses at the University of Colorado-Boulder replaced classroom animal laboratories in which students cut off frogs’ heads and cut open live rats in order to apply drugs to their exposed, beating hearts.  More than 600 animals were used every three years for these experiments, which have now been replaced with non-animal teaching methods.  As a result of a review prompted by a PETA complaint, in two other courses that have not yet ended their animal laboratories, the university now requires that students be given the opportunity to opt-out of animal use and instead complete alternate assignments.