For Immediate Release:
September 16, 2020
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Olympia, Wash. – Today, PETA sent a letter to the state auditor urging an audit of the use of public money, personnel, property, equipment, and space by Washington State University for animal experiments deemed non-essential during the COVID-19 pandemic. This apparently led to the euthanasia of animals in the school’s laboratories.
In its letter, PETA notes that the university received nearly $233 million in state appropriations in 2018, some of which may have gone toward funding animal experiments that were ultimately postponed or canceled. In March, Washington State University urged its experimenters to have a “depopulation” plan, prioritize “critical research activities that address major needs,” and postpone “new studies that have not yet started”—directives that likely led to the killing of hundreds or more animals the school deemed extraneous. PETA questions why state funds were wasted on experiments considered non-essential.
“Washington State University’s experiments on animals were undoubtedly cruel, and apparently not even the school can justify them,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is calling on state officials to follow the money and prevent taxpayer waste—and animal suffering—in laboratories that should never have received funding in the first place.”
Numerous published studies have shown that animal experimentation wastes resources and lives, as more than 90% of basic scientific research—much of it involving animal experimentation—fails to lead to treatments for humans. (Please read under “Lack of benefit for humans” here.) In addition, 95% of new medications that are found to be safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.
