New PETA Study Ranks Pitt As Nation’s Third-Worst Animal Welfare Violator Among Top-Funded Universities

For Immediate Release:
March 3, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

A newly published PETA study analyzing animal welfare violations at the 20 institutions of higher education nationwide that received the most funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) identified the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) as the third-worst offender, with a whopping 28 violations in just a two-year period.

PETA’s study, published in the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law’s Journal of Animal and Environmental Law, analyzed violations from NIH case reports dated October 1, 2021, through September 30, 2023. It includes incidents in which animals experienced pain, injury, and death due to neglect, incompetence, and disregard by experimenters and staff.

Among Pitt’s violations:

• A monkey escaped during a cage change and was injured by another monkey, requiring the partial amputation of four toes.
• Staff found two live baby mice in a carcass bag after a failed attempt to kill them by carbon dioxide gassing. A secondary method of euthanasia hadn’t been performed to confirm death. In a separate incident, a live rat was found in a cooler intended for dead animals.
• An experimenter performed invasive cell transplant surgery on four boxes of mice without providing the animals with adequate post-operative pain relief. 
• On eight separate occasions, animals died or were euthanized due to dehydration or starvation. In one incident, seven mice were found dead and one was euthanized after being left without food.

“Animals are in danger every minute at Pitt and other negligent, careless universities,” says study author and PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “Pitt should lose its NIH funding and schools nationwide must switch to modern, human-relevant research.”

PETA’s analysts documented 231 animal welfare violations across 20 educational institutions, which collectively received more than $11.8 billion from NIH in 2023 alone. The violations were self-reported, indicating the actual number may be even higher.

PETA’s study calls out other top offenders, such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison with 35 violations, the University of Washington with 29, the University of Michigan with 19, and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill with 17.

PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Now provides evidence of the failure of studies on animals and lays out a strategy for transitioning to cutting-edge, non-animal methodologies.

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.