Video: Birds Drowned, Other Animals Killed Slowly at Dissection Supplier

Amid Criminal Probe, PETA Files State and Federal Complaints Against Bio Corporation, Asks Schools to Switch to Modern Teaching Methods

For Immediate Release:
November 22, 2017

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

A new PETA video exposé of Bio Corporation in Alexandria, Minnesota, shows workers at the classroom dissection supplier drowning fully conscious pigeons in a vat of water, injecting live crayfish with liquid latex dye in order to kill them, and discussing how frozen turtles shipped to the facility sometimes came “back to life” and were refrozen.

PETA has prompted a criminal investigation, which is ongoing, and filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration. PETA’s humane education division, TeachKind, is sending letters urging the dozens of school districts nationwide that purchased dead animals from Bio Corporation to eliminate dissection from their schools.

“This classroom dissection supplier was a warehouse of horrors, where birds were drowned, crayfish were pumped full of latex dye, and staff boasted of freezing turtles alive,” says PETA Senior Director of Youth Outreach and Campaigns Marta Holmberg. “PETA is calling on schools to stop paying for animals to suffer and die by replacing animal dissection with modern, sophisticated virtual dissection.”

Animal shelters sell dead cats—typically for a few dollars each—to dissection suppliers like Bio Corporation, which made $9.8 million in 2016. Workers at the company kept dozens of dead cats’ collars hanging from a shelf as a “tradition.” Workers without respirators injected dead animals with buffered formaldehyde, and faulty formaldehyde lines sprayed workers in the face. The eyewitness’s air-quality monitor consistently showed “severely polluted” and “hazardous” conditions.

PETA offers dissection software through its educational grants program. Non-animal educational tools have been shown to teach anatomy as well as—and, in many cases, better than—dissection.

Broadcast-quality footage is available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.