BREAKING: PETA Pressure Ends Texas A&M Dog Breeding Program
Update (November 4, 2022): VICTORY! Texas A&M University has confirmed that it will release the nine healthy golden retrievers it had transferred from its failed canine muscular dystrophy laboratory to the veterinary school!
This momentous news comes after PETA’s hard-fought campaign that began with our shocking exposé of the school’s deplorable laboratory. Our relentless pressure ended its cruel breeding of dogs to develop this crippling disease and led to the release of more than 50 dogs.
But we never gave up on these nine betrayed golden retrievers. We campaigned hard—and now the dogs will be in homes before the end of the year.
You can read more about our win for the nine dogs here.
Originally posted on September 12, 2019:
The notorious muscular dystrophy (MD) laboratory at Texas A&M University (TAMU) is permanently shutting down its dog breeding program! This huge progress follows two and a half years of unrelenting pressure from PETA and hundreds of thousands of activists, who refused to be silent in the face of suffering.
And that’s not all—TAMU has also been caught lying about breeding dogs. But is it really surprising that a university that breeds and tortures golden retrievers has no problem lying to the public? The university issued statements blatantly insisting that the dogs were “already affected [by canine MD],” despite the indisputable evidence that we had collected from former lead experimenter Joe Kornegay’s own publications as well as documents from the university itself.
Even as university officials were stating that they weren’t breeding dogs to suffer from the devastating muscle disease, as many as 100 puppies were born in the campus laboratory.
But TAMU’s dirty tricks don’t end there. The university stooped to censoring visitors’ messages on its Facebook page—it used a filter that automatically deleted visitor posts and comments if they contained words such as “PETA,” “cruelty,” “lab,” etc., compelling us to file a groundbreaking lawsuit to restore the First Amendment rights of everyone who wanted to speak out against the school’s cruel experiments on animals.
PETA and our supporters have rightfully thrown everything but the kitchen sink at TAMU: eye-catching protests, celebrity action, disruptions of football games and public meetings, multiple lawsuits, call-ins, support from 500 physicians, testimonials from people with MD, even a “dog” riding public transit—anything we could think of that might help the caged individuals suffering every day for experiments that do little else but line the pockets of their tormentors. Johnathon Byrne, who has MD and must use a wheelchair at all times, even traveled from his native England to ask the university to stop hurting dogs. He was illegally detained and harassed by TAMU officials for simply asking to see the dogs, which compelled him to file suit against the university.
This end to TAMU’s breeding program is certainly progress, but our work isn’t finished yet. We must keep the pressure on until the dogs who still remain in the university’s lab are released into good homes.
Let’s make TAMU’s dog laboratory a thing of the past. Help us to turn this progress into a victory.
It’s too late to help dogs like Peony, Jelly, Rex, Buckley, and Danica, but we can ensure that no more dogs are tormented and killed at the university.
Help Us Close the Book on TAMU’s Atrocities
Click below to urge TAMU to close its dog laboratory, release all dogs for adoption into good homes, and redirect resources into humane and effective research methods:
