Andover’s Ora Inc. Cited by USDA: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
June 1, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding federal documents that reveal serious animal welfare violations in the laboratories of Ora Inc. According to just-posted federal inspection reports obtained by PETA, three rabbits “died acutely” after they were placed in a restraining device with a hood that was lowered over their heads. This device is used for “both rodents and rabbits,” but experimenters had failed to adjust the equipment to “accommodate the larger body size of rabbits”—and it appears that the rabbits’ necks may have been broken. In another experiment, the lead experimenter and staff members failed to follow the approved experimental protocol and failed to take appropriate action when rabbits were “observed in pain and distress.” Other experimenters applied experimental contact lenses to both eyes of 12 rabbits but failed to euthanize them when “symptoms of ocular pain [became] so severe” that the animals couldn’t open their eyes, as was required. Four rabbits exhibited “severe conjunctival swelling and redness” but were permitted to experience “unrelieved pain and distress.” In yet another test, experimenters injected chemicals into the eyes of rabbits without first searching for alternatives to this procedure, as required by law.

Injecting chemicals into the eyes of rabbits is business as usual for Andover-based Ora Inc., but incompetence and a culture of disregard add to the animals’ suffering. It’s a nonstop horror show for the rabbits trapped inside the company’s laboratories, as scalpel-wielding experimenters routinely flout minimum animal welfare laws and treat the animals like test tubes with tails. In 2021, Ora used 378 rabbits in experiments—animals who feel pain and value their lives just as much as any of the company’s executives do—so Ora would do well to modernize its testing program by leaving archaic and cruel animal tests behind and using only sophisticated, human-relevant testing methods.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.