Just six months after PETA announced that it had purchased stock in BIOQUAL—the company formerly known as "SEMA"—to urge it to phase out the use of chimpanzees in experiments, the Washington Post reports that the company is doing just that.

BIOQUAL's announcement comes 25 years after Jane Goodall called for the closure of SEMA after undercover video footage released by PETA revealed abysmal conditions in the lab. Baby chimpanzees were locked inside tiny steel boxes in complete isolation and exhibited signs of insanity, rocking incessantly in their dark cages. The misery of the SEMA chimpanzees is documented in PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's landmark book Free the Animals. 

Until this development, little but its name seemed to have changed at BIOQUAL. PETA recently used the Freedom of Information Act to secure descriptions of BIOQUAL's experiments on chimpanzees. We learned that in one experiment, six infant chimpanzees—some as young as 9 months of age—were taken from their mothers, caged individually, exposed to a virus, and subjected to months of painful liver, bone marrow, lymph node, and intestinal biopsies. This April, we pointed out in official comments submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that these and other experiments on chimpanzees at BIOQUAL were considered unnecessary by the Institute of Medicine in its landmark report on the scientific validity of experiments on chimpanzees, and we called on the NIH to discontinue its funding. 

What You Can Do

Chimpanzees are our closest relatives, with psychological and physical needs that are strikingly similar to our own. They are intelligent, have unique personalities, and are capable of experiencing profound suffering. However, this has not saved them from being imprisoned, stripped of their autonomy, and used in invasive and sometimes painful experiments. The U.S. is the only developed country that continues to use chimpanzees in invasive experiments, but the pending Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act would ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees and retire more than 600 federally owned chimpanzees.

Please tell your congressional representatives that all chimpanzees in U.S. laboratories should be sent to reputable sanctuaries and allowed to live out their remaining years in peace.

The 20^th-anniversary edition of PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's book Free the Animals has been released—get yours from the PETA Catalog—and the brilliant host of HBO's Real Time (and PETA honorary board member) Bill Maher has given it a rave review on the Huffington Post.

Bill gives an overview of some of the amazing victories PETA has won for animals in the two decades since Free the Animals was first published—and some of the things that still haven't changed enough—while touting it as "the riveting, real-life story of the people who put on disguises, use fake IDs or jimmy their way into laboratories in order to carry out the daring rescues of animals used in experiments and of the insiders, the whistleblowers, who risk their jobs to help them."

If you don't believe Bill, though, take it from Penny (the canine companion of peta2 Manager Ryan Huling), who is clearly spellbound by Free the Animals.

A lot has been happening this week at PETA: victories, anniversaries, and celebrations! We're after CareerBuilder, we stopped shipments of monkeys to laboratories, and we've done much more! Check out the latest news and victories:

PETA News on Tumblr

What a busy week it's been in the PETAsphere! Just in case you missed any of the big news, we've got you covered. Follow us on Tumblr for future news about animal rights, vegan living, and where in the world the PETA campaigners are now.

• Greece Bans Circus Animals

• House Mice Serenade Mates With 'Bird' Song

• AP Enterprise: Monkey Owners Flee Louisiana Crackdown

• Gorillas Grin 'to Reassure Friends'

• 'Free the Animals' by Ingrid E. Newkirk

•  The Scary Danger of Meat (Even for Those Who Don't Eat It)

• PETA Demo: Dupont Festival

• Group Opposes Plan to Make 'Toto' Breed Kansas State Dog

• 69 Percent of You Think Drinking Cow's Milk Is Unnatural; Here's Why

• PETA Demo: $eal $laughter

• PETA Demo: CareerBuilder: Stop the Animal Abuse

New Action Alerts

• URGENT: Help Stop Bull Torture 'Festival' in Mexico!—Urge officials to ban this bloody and sadistic "sport."

• URGENT: Goldfish Desperately Need Your Voice!—Tell The Bar that there are many drinking games that don't involve torturing goldfish.

• Tell 'Price Is Right' Producers to Keep Cruel Stampede and SeaWorld Out of Prize Packages—Join Bob Barker in telling The Price Is Right that the Calgary Stampede and SeaWorld are dead wrong.

New Features

• PETA's Champion Chicken Announced!—Who's the cluckiest chicken on the block? Meet Toro, our 2012 Champion Chicken.

• Too Hot for the Big Game: PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ads—You didn't get to see them during the Super Bowl. But that's OK—you can see them all here with no boring time-outs in between.

• Penélope Cruz Gives Fur the Cold Shoulder—The stunning Spanish actor and Academy Award winner turns a cold shoulder to fur.

New Living Articles

• Knowing Your Audience—Chimpanzees think before they speak.

• Must-Reads for Vegan Moms-to-Be—Vegan and pregnant? No sweat! Grab one of these books, cozy up on the couch, and read all about it. (Feel free to snack while you read—you're eating for two!)

• Dress Vegan for Success—Dressing to impress in the office or the job interview has never been so easy … or so animal-friendly!

• Win a Copy of the 'Spork-Fed' Cookbook—All hail the spork! Spice up your meals with a copy of Spork-Fed by spunky vegan sisters Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg. Enter now for a chance to win.