PETA detects hunger, strangulation and scalding of animals at UW

Group Demands End of Federal Funding for Laboratories

For immediate release:
May 4, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Seattle – PETA received documents showing egregious, ongoing violations of federal animal welfare guidelines at the University of Washington laboratories, including from its national primate of Washington.

Research Center. Among other incidents, workers’ negligence has resulted in dozens of mice starving to death and dozens more dying of dehydration. The experimenters allowed the monkey to strangle to death, caused hundreds of fish to die of suffocation, scalded 18 rats to death in a high-temperature equipment sterilizer, and caused the monkey to bleed to death. In 22 mice, the tips of their tails were cut off without anesthesia. The monkey choked on its own vomit and died after undergoing surgery without being properly hungry.

In total, from November 2017 to March 2021, the reports revealed 77 violations of federal guidelines and regulations.

PETA responded this morning with a letter to Patricia Brown, director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Laboratory Animal Welfare Office, urging her to withdraw UW Public Health’s animal welfare program, without which the school could not receive NIH funding. …

“UW has demonstrated that it is unwilling or unable to meet the minimum animal welfare requirements of the law,” says PETA Senior Vice President Katy Guillermo. “Our tax dollars – more than half a billion dollars last year – shouldn’t fund UW’s deadly careless and incompetent experimenters.”

The documents also show that UW employees allowed the monkeys to escape, resulting in injuries, including arm amputation, and misdosing the animals, including giving mice 1,000 times the flu virus they should have received, leading to their deaths.

The UW Institutional Animal Care and Utilization Committee (IACUC), which must enforce federal laws and guidelines, is mired in controversy over conflicts of interest among its members, which include the CEO and board members of an organization that received funding to promote experiments on animals. The IACUC didn’t even meet last month, saying there was nothing on its agenda.

PETA, whose motto is in part that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes arrogance, a worldview focused on human excellence. For more information please visit PETA.org or subscribe to the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram…