School Savings: New Guide Offers Solutions to High Cost of Animal Dissection

For Immediate Release:
March 13, 2023

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Today, PETA is releasing a new guide for school districts, available here, that breaks down the high cost of animal dissection compared to state-of-the-art non-animal methods, such as eMind digital dissection software, Emantras Frog Dissection App, and virtual reality options, that cost far less.

“PETA’s cost comparison is a resource to help schools switch from animal dissection to far less costly but more up-to-the-minute biology teaching tools,” says PETA Senior Director Rachelle Owen. “We crunched the numbers and found compelling reasons, including thousands of dollars in savings, to embrace interactive software and hyperrealistic models that leave animals in peace.”

Each year in the U.S., an estimated 10 million animals are killed for dissection. Many of them come from biological supply houses that sell cats who could have been someone’s lost or stolen companion, fetal piglets who were cut from the wombs of pigs killed in slaughterhouses, and frogs who were taken from their natural habitat—a practice that wreaks havoc on local ecosystems.

Studies show that students who use non-animal methods perform as well as, if not better than, their peers who dissect animals, according to a systematic review coauthored by PETA and published in The American Biology Teacher, a leading, peer-reviewed science-education journal. PETA’s humane–science education division, TeachKind Science, works with educators to replace animals in the classroom through donations of interactive dissection software.

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