New Violations of Federal Law at Johns Hopkins University: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
July 20, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Baltimore –

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Shalin Gala regarding the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s newly released citations of Johns Hopkins University for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including failing to consider alternatives to potentially painful surgical procedures conducted on chinchillas, sheep, and rabbits; locking a newborn rabbit in a cage without an essential nest box for thermoregulation, maternal care, and growth; failing to remove peeling paint and to clean “excessively dusty” ventilation filters in primate labs; risking food contamination and animal health by failing to clean hanging feeders “covered by a film of brown material” in sheep labs; and failing to clean “thick guano deposits” (bat poop) on water lines and laboratory walls, which presents “disease hazards for the animals”:

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is flouting state and federal laws left and right yet still receiving more taxpayer money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) than any other institution in the U.S. JHU repeatedly failed for years to obtain proper permits to use owls in invasive and deadly brain experiments and then skirted Maryland law, with the complicity of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, to continue harming and killing these birds. These newly released U.S. Department of Agriculture citations come on the heels of damning photos PETA obtained from earlier inspections by the agency of JHU’s labs, revealing that monkeys are locked inside cramped, barren cages, apparently driven by stress and a soul-crushing lack of stimulation to tear out their own hair and left suffering from untreated medical conditions.

Where can you torture owls, drive monkeys insane, and literally fail to remove poop from laboratory walls while still raking in more than $838 million from NIH in 2021? Apparently at JHU. NIH must cut its funding of JHU’s experiments on owls or risk being complicit in a blatant corruption of science and the law.

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