Written by Jeff Mackey
Following a complaint from PETA alleging the painful and horrific deaths of two monkeys at the hands of pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has not only confirmed the allegations and cited the company for egregious violations of the Animal Welfare Act but also took the additional rare step of fining the facility $2,625 for the violations.
PETA submitted the complaint to the USDA after a whistleblower reported that a monkey and a rat had been scalded to death at a Bristol-Myers Squibb laboratory in New Jersey when their cages were run through the high-pressure cage washer with the animals still inside. The trapped animals endured intense agony and terror as the blistering-hot water burned their flesh.
The whistleblower also reported that another monkey strangled to death after she was attached to the front of her cage—apparently by some sort of tether—then left unattended. PETA's complaint asked the agency to investigate these deaths and to hit the corporation where it hurts—in its bank account.
We hope the fine has gotten Bristol-Myers Squibb's attention, and PETA—which holds stock in the company so that it can raise these issues with the board and stockholders—will continue to push for an end to relying on cruel and unreliable animal tests by switching to superior, modern non-animal methods. Please ask Bristol-Myers Squibb to make sure that these recommendations are implemented.
The end is near for the military's cruel trauma training exercises, in which thousands of animals are maimed and killed each year!
PETA has discovered—and the U.S. Army's Office of the Surgeon General has confirmed—that the Army has implemented a major shift in policy that states, "Non-medical personnel are not authorized to participate in training that involves the use of animal models." These nonmedical service members, who previously were allowed to abuse and kill animals in these drills, will now be taught exclusively using non-animal "alternatives such as commercial training manikins, moulaged actors, cadavers, or virtual simulators."
This will likely prevent thousands of animals from being shot, cut apart, and killed each year in crude exercises like the disturbing military training drill that PETA exposed last year showing live goats who had their limbs broken and cut off.
But that's not all: According to the Army, this change is just one of several that will be unveiled as a result of a series of meetings that began in February about restructuring the military's medical training program. The shift is likely in response to PETA supporters' protests, as well as Congress' request that the Department of Defense (DOD) submit a detailed plan for the phase-out of all animal use in medical training drills in favor modern non-animal methods. That report, which has already been delayed once, is now due in early summer. We'll keep you posted as we learn more about the military's broader plans to make all its deadly animal laboratories history.
What You Can Do
This is momentous progress, but we're not done yet. Please urge military officials to end the cruel use of animals in training for all personnel immediately.
Update: In March, PETA reached out to Hainan Airlines, and representatives from the airline confirmed that its policy remains firm: It still does not ship primates to laboratories. In the written statement, Hainan Airlines representatives said that they "fully agree" with PETA on this issue and that they support our "effort in the protection of animal rights."
The following was originally posted on February 24, 2012:
Exciting news! Two more air carriers, TAM and Hainan Airlines, have announced that they will no longer transport primates for use in cruel laboratory experiments! PETA and other animal protection organizations put the pressure on the airlines after it was revealed that they were recently handling shipments of monkeys to laboratories in North America.
Richard Fisher | cc by 2.0
Now we're that much closer to stopping the transport of primates for use in experiments once and for all—but we're not there yet.
Please continue to tell the few remaining airlines that ship primates to laboratories—including Air France, China Eastern Airlines, and Continental Airlines—that cruelty should be grounded.
Written by PETA
Update: The European Commission has confirmed that it will uphold the original March 2013 deadline for the ban on the sale, within the European Union (EU), of any cosmetics or cosmetics ingredients that have been tested on animals. This marketing ban means that companies all around the world that want to sell cosmetics in Europe will have to abandon animal testing for cosmetics that they want to sell in the EU. The decision follows vigorous campaigning by PETA and its international affiliates that included public protests, phone calls, and more than 20,000 e-mails. New Commissioner Tonio Borg met with PETA U.K. to deliver the news personally, and the organization has sent a huge bouquet of flowers to the commission in thanks.
Originally posted on September 22nd, 2011:
PETA friend and animal advocate extraordinaire Pamela Anderson has written to European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy John Dalli urging him to honor the original 2013 deadline for banning the sale of cosmetics in the European Union that have been tested on animals. The European Commission is considering delaying the deadline for years—and perhaps indefinitely.
In her letter, Pamela states, "I love cosmetics, but there's no reason for animals to suffer for lip gloss and eye-liner; those cruel tests are from another era." She adds: "Today, there are effective and 100 percent humane non-animal testing methods. We also already know thousands of ingredients that have a long history of safe use. Hundreds of manufacturers have already been using them for years! Please, don't turn back the clock."
Please join Pamela in calling on the European Commission to stick to the 2013 deadline.
Update: Based on PETA complaints documenting abuse and neglect of animals in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston's laboratories, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken the rare step of fining the facility $9,143 for egregious violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act—including failing to supply veterinary care to a sheep who had been used in experimental back surgery and could not stand up, failing to supply adequate veterinary care to a goat who died on an operating table, and failing to supply post-procedural pain relief to three sheep used in experimental surgeries.
Originally posted on May 24th:
We've told you previously how the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston was cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) after PETA filed a complaint detailing the egregious abuse of animals in its laboratories. After obtaining internal documents revealing hellish conditions for animals in laboratories at the facility, PETA filed another complaint earlier this year—and now UTMB has been cited for the second time in 15 months for flagrant violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including failure to provide sick and injured animals with adequate veterinary care.
Following the initial successful complaint to the USDA (based on information provided by a laboratory insider), PETA submitted a Texas Freedom of Information Act request to UTMB asking for documents related to the treatment of animals in its laboratories. UTMB initially tried to use various legal exemptions to avoid releasing the records, but PETA's attorneys successfully argued the case, leading the Texas attorney general to order UTMB to hand over the documents.
Those documents revealed neglectful treatment of animals that had gone previously undetected by federal inspectors and that PETA identified and communicated to the USDA in March 2012, prompting the agency to cite UTMB for violations of federal law. The following are a couple of examples:
These heartbreaking stories show that animal experimenters—even those at supposedly top-tier institutions like UTMB—can't be trusted to abide by even the minimal standards of the Animal Welfare Act. As long as animals continue to suffer in laboratories, PETA will continue to be vigilant in monitoring what experimenters are doing. Animals in laboratories need each of us to stop the cruelty in laboratories at UTMB—and everywhere else!
Please urge Shriners International—which has funded UTMB's burn experiments on animals for more than 30 years—to stop supporting this cruelty.
PETA is asking the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to take back money awarded to the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF) for cruel experiments on monkeys in which federal animal welfare laws were repeatedly violated.
In 2011, federal inspectors cited UCSF for two violations of animal welfare laws over the school's abuse of a monkey named Petra, who is pictured below:
Photo: PETA via USDAPetra
UCSF was cited for continuing to torment Petra in a cruel brain experiment for nearly two years despite her deteriorating health and for failing to remove surgically implanted hardware from Petra's skull, as the experimenters were required to do.
Internal UCSF records obtained by PETA reveal that Petra developed a terrible bacterial infection in the wound where her head was cut open. She rapidly began to lose weight, circled endlessly in her cage, and ripped out her own hair—a common behavior in primates imprisoned in laboratories. Primates are highly social animals, but in laboratories, they are often isolated in small stainless-steel cages as Petra was. As a result, they suffer from severe depression and boredom.
NIH policy prohibits spending grant money on experiments that violate federal animal welfare laws. Yet NIH awarded UCSF more than $2.1 million just during the period when Petra was abused, so PETA is urging NIH to demand the return of these funds. UCSF is no stranger to violating federal animal welfare laws. In 2005, UCSF paid more than $90,000 for dozens of violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which is one of the largest fines ever paid by an animal laboratory.
Please contact the NIH and ask that they demand UCSF repay funds awarded during the period when experimenters violated the law by abusing Petra. Are animals like Petra suffering in your school's laboratories? Help save animals from misery and death in experiments by urging your alma mater to stop experimenting on animals.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has ordered the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) to pay more than $12,000 in fines for its cruel, incompetent—and sometimes fatal—treatment of animals, citing the institution for 10 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) in its laboratories between 2008 and 2010. Two of the citations in the penalty were the result of a 2008 complaint filed by PETA.
After PETA submitted information about archaic and deadly medical training exercises in which rabbits at UCHC had needles repeatedly stabbed into their chests, the USDA found that the facility didn't properly seek non-invasive alternatives nor did it adequately document how the animals were used. The other violations for which UCHC was cited and fined include rabbit deaths caused by improper anesthesia and poorly trained employees.
UCHC was previously fined $5,500 by the USDA in 2007 for AWA violations, including injecting unapproved substances into a monkey's brain and an incident in which a monkey was dragged so roughly by a metal collar that his eyes bled. That penalty resulted from complaints filed by PETA Associate Director Justin Goodman, who was then a UConn grad student leading a successful campaign to end experiments on primates at the school. Not only were the experiments permanently shut down, but following a PETA complaint, the laboratory was also ordered to return $65,000 in federal funding.
And that's not all: In 2001, UConn's main campus paid $129,000 in USDA fines for 99 violations of animal welfare laws. You'd hope the university would have learned its lesson by now, but as long as animals are suffering in school laboratories, PETA will be working to stop the violence.
Rabbits are frequent victims of animal experimenters because they are mild-tempered and easy to handle, confine, and breed—more than 241,000 of them are abused in U.S. laboratories every year.
Last year, the University of Connecticut's Health Center and main campus received more than $63.5 million from the National Institutes of Health, of which more than 40 percent will be spent on animal experimentation. Please ask the federal government to stop funding cruel and antiquated animal experiments and to put your tax dollars toward modern, humane, and superior research methods.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
Update: After reviewing evidence submitted by PETA, the National Institutes of Health has reprimanded the University of Colorado–Denver (CU) for repeatedly violating federal animal welfare guidelines in its laboratories, criticized it for not reporting the problems, and ordered the university to repay grant money used for noncompliant experiments on animals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's investigation into CU's laboratories is still underway.
Originally posted January 29:
It's starting to feel like déjà vu: PETA has once again filed formal complaints with the federal government about the abuse of animals in laboratories at the University of Colorado–Denver (CU). Through a state open-records request, PETA has just learned that the same neglect and incompetence that we documented there in a 2007 investigation are still occurring.
The records show that during just the past two years, at least 60 animal welfare incidents—dozens of which may constitute violations of federal law and guidelines—have occurred, including the following:
Based on PETA's undercover investigation, in 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited CU for serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act and also issued the university an official warning letting it know that it would be fined $10,000 per incident if it were found violating the law again. It's time for the government to follow through on that warning and stop CU's abuses for good.
Please ask the federal government to stop funding cruel animal experiments and to put your tax dollars toward modern, humane non-animal research methods.
PETA's Air Cruelty campaign has flown from success to success, and it's still soaring—three top cargo shipping companies have joined the still-growing list of carriers that refuse to transport any animals to be burned, blinded, poisoned, and cut up alive in laboratories!
iStockphoto.com/EcoPic
As reported in Nature magazine, after talks with PETA, UPS adopted a worldwide ban on transporting animals destined for laboratory experiments. FedEx (already our hero for its role in helping Ben the bear get his freedom) and DHL have also confirmed to PETA that they have policies in place that ban the shipment of live animals to laboratories.
To give you an idea of how big a development this is, FedEx and UPS are the world's top two largest cargo airlines, and DHL is close behind. They join the majority of major airlines—including Cathay Pacific, Korean Airlines, Qantas, and others—that won't transport any animals destined for experiments.
Animals aren't safe from being caged, neglected, and tortured as long as even one airline will deliver them into experimenters' hands. Please urge holdout airlines such as Air France and United to step up and refuse to ship primates to laboratories.
In response to a series of significant animal welfare violations and complaints filed by PETA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken the rare step of fining the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) almost $12,000 for repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. ONPRC imprisons, sickens, terrorizes, and mutilates thousands of monkeys each year in experiments with impunity, so it's good to know that the facility will be punished for causing animals to suffer more by failing to uphold even minimum standards.
The violations, which took place in 2009, included the escape of nine monkeys from the facility as well as the deaths of five other monkeys from a variety of causes, including from dehydration, being injected with unapproved compounds, and improper procedures performed by an inadequately trained employee. Following the escape, PETA called on the USDA to investigate and issue a fine to ONPRC.
In 2007, PETA conducted a shocking undercover investigation, which exposed horrific laboratory conditions at ONPRC. The next year, the USDA issued an "official warning"—the precursor to a fine—to ONPRC. Internal documents obtained by PETA had revealed that a sick pregnant monkey died after being denied veterinary care, that a surgical sponge was left in a baboon—causing an abscess—and was discovered only after he was killed for an experiment, and that experimenters mistakenly performed surgery on the wrong monkey. After repeatedly finding negligence and callous disregard, federal investigators are finally speaking the only language that ONPRC understands: dollars and cents.
Take a stand for the animals imprisoned at ONPRC. Ask the National Institutes of Health to stop funding cruel and useless nicotine experiments on animals at ONPRC and elsewhere.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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