Campaign Updates: Utah State University Torments Rats in Psychology Course

Semester after semester, undergraduate students at Utah State University (USU) who are enrolled in a course called Advanced Analysis of Behavior (PSY 3400) are required to lock rats inside barren metal boxes where the animals are trained to push a lever to receive food pellets, all while being bombarded with random bursts of bright light—even though numerous animal-free teaching methods exist. PETA is demanding an end to this pointless cruelty, and you can help.

PETA Calls for Federal Probe after Injured Rat Apparently Given No Pain Relief at Utah State University

March 27, 2025

Utah State University, where undergraduate psychology students torment rats in archaic and pointless classroom experiments, continues to prove its disregard for animal welfare, so PETA is calling on the feds to step in. PETA recently obtained university records showing that a laboratory staff member noticed a possible fracture in the tail of one of the rats used in the school’s PSY 3400 course. That employee relayed the injury to a graduate student. That person told two others. At that point, although the tail injury was obvious, records make no mention of any pain medication or treatment being administered. As if that weren’t bad enough, no one bothered to reexamine the animal for another 29 days.

Shrugging your shoulders at an animal’s pain is unacceptable. It indicates serious problems at the school’s animal care and use program. Since the university apparently has not followed federal animal welfare regulations, PETA has asked the National Institutes of Health, which oversees animal welfare guidelines to which the school is obligated to adhere, to investigate and sanction the university, if warranted, for allowing this to happen.

USU Professor Urges University to Ban Animals in Psych Course

May 1, 2024

In her op-ed published in The Herald Journal, USU professor Michelle Rossi criticizes the cruel and unnecessary use of animals in the school’s Advanced Analysis of Behavior course. Students are required to place rats in stressful conditions in attempts to learn about psychology in humans and other animals.

“I also believe that our school is failing some Aggies by forcing them to perform cruel experiments on animals to pass a class.”

—Professor Michelle Rossi, USU