PETA Files NIH Complaint Against University of Illinois–Chicago After Animals Bake to Death in

For Immediate Release:
October 5, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding a just-obtained federal report documenting critical animal welfare violations at the University of Illinois–Chicago:

The federal citation issued against the University of Illinois–Chicago (UIC) won’t undo the pain and terror experienced by four mole rats who were trapped in their enclosure with no opportunity to escape while an electric space heater placed under their metal rack slowly cooked them to death—but it shows that the school shouldn’t be trusted with one more penny in taxpayer funding for experiments on animals.

UIC received more than $146 million in taxpayer money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) last year—but such largesse brings with it a legal expectation that the university will comply with minimum animal welfare laws. UIC’s negligence and incompetence are tantamount to animal abuse, and PETA has filed a complaint with NIH, calling on it to turn off the money spigot to the school. The university should modernize its research program by leaving cruel and archaic experiments on animals behind and using only sophisticated, human-relevant research methods instead.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org  or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.