Victory! Brazil Bans Use of Animals in Cruel Classroom Experiments
After receiving input from PETA, Brazil has taken a major step in advancing humane biomedical education nationwide. In November 2016, PETA contacted the Brazilian government’s National Council for Control of Animal Experimentation to urge the agency to take concrete steps to replace Brazil’s use of animals in various biomedical and life science education areas. Thanks to efforts by PETA and key local initiatives by leading biologist Dr. Róber Bachinski and the Brazilian Network for Humane Education, the Brazilian government has announced that by April 17, 2019, it will end the use of animals in cruel observational and demonstrative teaching activities.
Examples of classroom experiments that are prohibited by this law include cutting apart animals to demonstrate the location or functioning of organs and systems, injecting animals with drugs to observe their effects, and observing the behavior and expressions of animals used in psychological tests.
This new regulation, published in the Federal Official Gazette of Brazil as Normative Resolution No. 38/2018, states the following:
The use of animals [for these purposes] . . . shall be fully replaced by videos, computer models, or other resources provided with sufficient content and quality to maintain or improve learning conditions.
PETA applauds the Brazilian government for this huge step forward in modernizing biomedical education. We will continue to work for the end of all such animal use.
Brazilian law mandates the use of non-animal medical training methods when available. Considering this and that such humane methods are available in abundance—including in medical and veterinary education—Brazil can still do more to spare animals suffering in ineffective, expensive, and unethical experiments.
Do Your Part Here in the U.S.
Did you know that schools here in the U.S. still use animals for horrific, wasteful experiments? At Texas A&M University (TAMU), experimenters breed golden retrievers to develop canine muscular dystrophy, which ravages their bodies and causes progressive muscle wasting and weakness. For more than 35 years, dogs have suffered in these experiments, but neither a cure nor a treatment to reverse disease symptoms in humans has been discovered.
Click the button below to urge TAMU to close its dog laboratory and redirect its resources into humane research methods:
