Carnegie Mellon Cited for Animal Welfare Act Violations After Monkey Suffers Broken Arm in Botched Restraint—PETA Demands Funding Cut
For Immediate Release:
March 28, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding two newly posted citations issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against Carnegie Mellon University for separate violations of federal animal welfare regulations—including one critical violation in which a monkey named Frank was improperly restrained, causing him severe distress and leading him to struggle against the restraint, resulting in a painful arm fracture. Veterinarians initially slated him for euthanasia. However, the experimenter instead subjected him to an unauthorized, off-protocol spinal surgery he was never intended to undergo—before ultimately killing him:
Using animals in invasive, painful, and deadly experiments is inherently cruel, but Carnegie Mellon University has compounded this suffering by violating federal animal welfare regulations. Rogue experimenters who can’t abide by their own protocols should be fired, and PETA is urging the National Institutes of Health to revoke the school’s funding, which surpassed $37.4 million in taxpayer dollars in 2024, due to its blatant disregard for even the most basic legal protections for animals.
The university runs perverse tests on monkeys in which experimenters strap them to a chair for hours on end, force them to stare at a screen, and give them mere drops of juice to ensure their participation. In one, monkeys are held steady in different positions using mechanical restraints or braces while experimenters record their brain activity through electrodes implanted in their brains.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
