Is Your School’s Animal Care Committee Corrupt? Tip Off PETA Today!
PETA discovered that potentially thousands of animals endured unimaginable pain, fear and death at the University of Washington (UW) while for years their last line of defense, the school’s animal care and oversight committee, was improperly stacked with experimentation industry insiders in apparent violation of federal law and policy.
PETA called for immediate action from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the agency confirmed it’s investigating.
The corrupt Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee* at UW may only be the tip of the iceberg. We need your help to flush out this corruption and abuse from every university that experiments on animals.
Thumbing the Scales at UW
It took years of a pitched legal battle, but PETA finally forced UW to give up the full names and membership of its Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
What we found was a mockery of federal law and policy. The university intentionally thumbed the scales, appointing industry insiders to seats reserved for non-scientists and for unaffiliated members, suggesting that the panel’s oversight functions were, at best, perfunctory.
For at least 32 months between 2020 and 2025, the university’s corrupt committee reviewed and decided on an estimated 1,500 experiments involving thousands of animals.
Those decisions killed animals. How many, we don’t know. We do know the university’s contempt for federal standards and guidance only made it worse for them.
Repercussions
Universities that stack their animal care committees do so at great risk to their current and future funding. PETA has called for UW to return millions in NIH grants used during the years its committee was improperly constituted.
Improperly constituted animal care panels could affect a university’s ability to secure future funding as well. It could also likely negatively affect the ability to publish scientific findings, or, worse, have publications retracted, because the experiment should never have been approved to begin with.
Help Us Help Animals
PETA NEEDS YOUR HELP to expose every improperly empaneled animal care committee across the country and root out corruption that jeopardizes science, careers and animals.
If you believe the animal care committee at your university or facility is improperly constituted, please IMMEDIATELY contact PETA at [email protected].
*Because solid ethics and transparent accountability are infrequent companions of animal experimentation, the federal government mandated that a committee stand between experimenters and the animals they torment to review proposed tests and ensure there is a modicum of reason and compassion in the decision to experiment on animals in federally funded laboratories.
These important panels are called Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees. Every facility and university that imprisons animals and receives federal money must have one. They are charged with evaluating proposed experiments, ensuring they abide by the meager protections of the Animal Welfare Act.
These panels are the last line of defense for animals in laboratories. They are supposed to reject experiment proposals that are too grisly, redundant, unnecessary, or lack scientific rigor.
Animal lives turn on every decision. The problem is there is no one policing who is appointed to these panels. And when no one’s looking, bad things can happen.
