PETA Statement: Incompetence at MRIGlobal, a Contract Lab, Kills 32 Rabbits and 2 Endangered Monkeys

For Immediate Release:
October 31, 2023

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding the critical citation posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against MRIGlobal, a contract laboratory based in Kansas City, Missouri, after staff negligence led to the deaths of dozens of rabbits and two endangered monkeys:

Incompetent staffers at MRIGlobal don’t follow simple instructions, and 32 rabbits and two monkeys suffered and died because of it. PETA is urging the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to bar the company—a scalpel-for-hire that experiments on animals for the highest bidder—from receiving future federal contracts.

According to a just-released U.S. Department of Agriculture report, staffers at MRIGlobal jabbed two long-tailed macaques—an endangered species—with an experimental substance in the wrong muscle. The monkeys were killed 11 hours after. Just two days later, staffers failed to follow instructions on how to dose 32 rabbits with eye drops for an experiment, giving them the wrong dosage and causing them unrelieved pain. The rabbits were euthanized as a result.

PETA urges federal agencies to direct funds away from hellholes such as MRIGlobal and toward modern, non-animal research methods that will actually help humans, and we urge officials there to adopt PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.

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 PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.