PETA Wins International Prize for Exposing Secret Tests on Animals

LUSH Cosmetics Awards Group $40,000 for Raising Public Awareness of Cruel Laboratory Experiments

For Immediate Release:
November 14, 2013

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA’s Laboratory Investigations Department (LID) received the prestigious LUSH Prize Public Awareness Award in a London ceremony last night.

PETA’s LID team of scientists, educators, attorneys, and researchers exposes cruelty to animals in laboratories and advocates for replacing the use of animals in experiments, product tests, and education with modern non-animal technology.

The award recognizes PETA’s work to end the abuse of animals in laboratories by educating and mobilizing the public through undercover investigations, whistleblower exposés, thought-provoking advertisements, scientific research, company shareholder resolutions, corporate negotiations, online campaigns, and colorful protest actions.

The LUSH Prize specifically recognized PETA’s recent campaigns to expose and end the use of animals in horrific military training exercises in the U.S. and the EU, convince major airlines to stop transporting primates to laboratories, and uncover invasive brain experiments on cats at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. PETA was also acknowledged for its peer-reviewed research showing a significant increase in the public’s opposition to animal experimentation, which now stands at more than 40 percent among the general public and more than 50 percent among women and young adults.

LID Director Justin Goodman accepted the trophy and the prize of $40,000 on the group’s behalf. Photos from the event are available here and here.

“Since its landmark Silver Spring monkeys case in 1981, PETA has been dedicated to exposing the horrific abuse of animals in laboratories and mobilizing the public to help end it,” Goodman says. “Now more than ever, the public knows that experiments on animals are cruel and ineffective and that superior non-animal research methods exist, and we’re finally seeing government regulations and corporate policies evolve to reflect that.”

In the past year, because of PETA’s public campaigns, the U.S. Army issued a new policy scaling back its use of animals in deadly training drills, five of the last seven major airlines still shipping monkeys to laboratories ended the practice and people have sent more than 5 million protest e-mails about animal-experimentation issues through PETA’s website.

LUSH—which never tests products on animals and marks its vegan items with a bright green “V”—awards $400,000 each year to individuals and organizations working to end animal testing. The LUSH Prize is the biggest monetary award in the animal-free testing industry.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or LUSHPrize.org.