Dartmouth Voles Forgotten in Cage Sent to Wash Room Starve to Death: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
August 18, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding a just-posted federal inspection report documenting the deaths of three voles at Dartmouth College and other animal welfare violations obtained by PETA via a Freedom of Information Act request:

It’s bad enough that Dartmouth College torments gentle and sensitive voles in curiosity-driven experiments that won’t produce cures or treatments for humans, but incompetence and disregard amplify the animals’ suffering. According to a new federal inspection report obtained by PETA, three voles starved to death when the cage in which they were held was sent to the cage washer room with the animals still inside. Left without food or water, the voles were discovered four days later, dead in the cage.

Case reports, dated May 2, 2018, to March 13, 2020, just obtained by PETA document eight additional violations of federal animal welfare guidelines in Dartmouth’s laboratories. Four mice died from exposure to radiation after experimenters subjected them to a higher dose of radiation than had been approved. In addition, seven rats were left without food for three days, two infant mice died after employees removed them from their mother but failed to provide them with food or water, an unapproved individual assisted in conducting an experimental surgery on rodents, and more.

Dartmouth—which received more than $86 million last year from the National Institutes of Health—is unable or unwilling to comply with minimum animal welfare laws. The animals imprisoned in the college’s laboratories feel pain and value their lives just as much as any Dartmouth employee, so the school would do well to modernize its research program by leaving cruel and archaic experiments on animals behind and using only sophisticated, human-relevant research methods. 

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