PHOTOS: PETA Takes Over UMass Campus to Call Out Animal Experiments—and More Is Coming
For Immediate Release:
September 5, 2023
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
PETA wrapped up a week of action today as students returned to the University of Massachusetts–Amherst (UMass) campus, culminating in a mobile billboard circling the campus and broadcasting video footage of monkeys imprisoned in UMass experimenter Agnès Lacreuse’s laboratory. Photos of all PETA’s actions are available here.
PETA’s alert to students and faculty about the school’s torment and killing of marmoset monkeys to study menopause—which they don’t even experience—also included holding a rally outside the new faculty orientation, chalking messages on campus, distributing pamphlets and “UMass: End the Marmoset Experiments” buttons on the first day of school and near the New Student Convocation, meeting with students, and distributing posters and door hangers around campus.
PETA’s mobile billboard is circling the UMass campus for eight hours today.
“All this week, students have expressed horror that an experimenter on campus would exploit marmosets’ gentle and cooperative nature in order to hurt and kill them,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “PETA will be on campus this week as well, calling on UMass to listen to concerned students and faculty who want to see this deadly lab shut down.”
Lacreuse subjects marmosets to years of captivity, multiple invasive surgeries, hormone manipulation, frequent restraint, fluid restriction, sleep deprivation, and a series of tests that induce fear and stress—before killing and dissecting them.
Lacreuse’s laboratory has racked up numerous violations of federal animal welfare regulations. Staff severely burned a monkey with hand warmers, leading to his death three days later. A staffer injured the tail of a monkey who had escaped from a restraining device so severely that it had to be amputated. Federal records also show that monkeys have gone without needed veterinary care.
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 investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
