Criminal Charges Filed Against Dissection Supplier Whose Workers Drowned Pigeons, Killed Crayfish

25 Counts of Cruelty to Animals Follow PETA Exposé of Bio Corporation

For Immediate Release:
January 10, 2018

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

The Alexandria City Attorney’s Office has filed criminal charges against Bio Corporation, whose workers were shown drowning fully conscious pigeons and injecting live crayfish with chemicals in a PETA video exposé of the classroom dissection supplier.

Based on PETA’s evidence and following an investigation by Alexandria police, Bio Corporation has been charged with 25 counts of cruelty to animals under a Minnesota statute that makes it a crime to “willfully instigate or in any way further any act of cruelty to any animal or animals.” The first hearing in the case is scheduled for January 31 at the Douglas County Courthouse

“These criminal charges send a strong message to the cruel, secretive animal-dissection industry that it’s not above the law,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “The only sure way for caring educators and students to guarantee that they’re not supporting cruelty is by opting for superior virtual-dissection methods.”

PETA’s exposé also showed workers discussing how frozen turtles shipped to the facility sometimes came “back to life” and were refrozen. Workers without respirators injected dead animals with buffered formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen, and faulty formaldehyde lines sprayed them in the face. In response, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

TeachKind, PETA’s humane education division, has sent letters urging the dozens of school districts nationwide that have purchased dead animals from Bio Corporation to eliminate dissection from their schools. PETA offers free 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.