Court Reject UK’s Appeal over Animal-Experimentation Records

PETA Prevails in Lawsuit Seeking Details About Animals Used and Killed in Archaic Classroom Experiments

For Immediate Release:
March 3, 2017

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

The Fayette County Circuit Court has rejected an appeal filed in 2015 by the University of Kentucky (UK) after the state’s attorney general ruled that the school violated the Kentucky Open Records Act by refusing to comply with a PETA request for records related to UK’s use of animals in classroom laboratories and training exercises.

The court order directs UK to provide PETA with protocols describing classroom experiments on animals, which PETA will use to monitor its compliance with the federal Animal Welfare Act, to educate the public about its use of animals, and to determine whether it is using animals in spite of the availability of superior and humane non-animal teaching methods. If that is the case, PETA will offer information about the use of modern, animal-free replacements.

“This court decision means that the University of Kentucky can no longer hide its use—and possible killing—of animals,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA will review these documents to push for the introduction of modern educational tools that are better for students and kinder to animals.”

In its denial of PETA’s 2014 records request, UK claimed that its teaching protocols were intellectual property and somehow novel. But its course descriptions and syllabi mention experiments that are basic, common, and widely cited in textbooks—such as muscle contraction and nerve physiology experiments in which animals are dismembered and their muscles and nerves removed and attached to electrical currents. Modern interactive computer simulations are available for these lessons and are not only more effective and humane but also less expensive.

PETA is represented by attorneys for the PETA Foundation and the ACLU of Kentucky.

Copies of the court’s ruling are available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA.org.