For Immediate Release:
March 3, 2022
Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382
Harlan, Iowa – Following a video posted to TikTok showing two students—one of whom is wearing a Harlan Community High School T-shirt—making a fetal pig “dance” on a dissection tray, TeachKind, PETA’s humane education division, sent a letter to the school’s principal and district leaders calling on them to replace all animal dissection with humane, non-animal methods.
TeachKind notes that there is an epidemic of young people hurting animals and that behavior that makes light of animal suffering also violates leading science education organizations’ guidelines, which state that districts should ensure that animals are treated responsibly and that teachers should foster a respect for life.
“This video shows a clear disrespect for the animals who are being cut open for archaic exercises at Harlan Community High School,” says PETA Senior Director Rachelle Owen. “TeachKind would gladly donate modern, humane teaching tools to foster compassion instead of callousness in Harlan classrooms.”
In addition to causing animal suffering, animal dissection turns off some students from careers in science. As many as 25% of students oppose animal dissection, and students in the background of the TikTok video are visibly uncomfortable. Animal-free dissection methods—such as the hands-on SynFrog or eMind, which offers in-depth anatomy studies of frogs, pigs, cats, and other animals—teach students that they don’t have to harm animals for dissection.
TeachKind—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit TeachKind.org or follow the group on Facebook or Instagram.
