Feds Cite Emory University for Animal Welfare Violations and Death; PETA Calls For Investigation

For Immediate Release:
February 27, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding a slew of citations posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against Emory University after staffers at the school’s Whitehead Biomedical Research Building violated the federal Animal Welfare Act numerous times. PETA has filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), urging the funding agency to investigate and cut Emory’s funding.

The workaday callousness and cruelty at Emory University documented in this sickening raft of U.S. Department of Agriculture citations shows that the school shouldn’t be allowed to get its greedy hands on another red cent of taxpayer money.

Experimenters drilled into animals’ skulls, exposed their brains and spinal cords, operated on their brains, surgically inserted probes, and even injected a vein behind the animals’ eyes—all without ever checking to see if a less painful alternative was available, as required by law. Neglectful staffers let a gerbil jump from his cage and sustain so many bone fractures that he had to be euthanized, injured a pig’s snout during transport, and kept guinea pigs in an unusually cold room for seven days.

Emory should get out of the business of tormenting animals and redirect its resources—more than $485 million in NIH grants last year—toward modern, non-animal research methods that will actually help humans. We urge the school to adopt PETA’s Research Modernization Deal. 

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.