UW-Madison Closes Cruel Cat Lab

Following an extensive PETA campaign to expose and end cruel and archaic brain experiments on cats at the University of Wisconsin–Madison—which included an open records lawsuit, demonstrations, ad campaigns, federal complaints, pleas from Bill Maher and James Cromwell, and more than 369,000 protest letters from the public—the studies were ended and the laboratory closed its doors for good. The four cats remaining in the laboratory were adopted into private homes. During the campaign, PETA’s actions prompted the government to take the rare steps of suspending the project for six months and fining the facility for violations of federal law.