New Hampshire School Kids Can Now Say No To Animal Dissection

PETA Works With Board to Create New Policy; Group Offers to Donate Humane Teaching Tools to Classrooms

For Immediate Release:
March 28, 2014

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

You’re a kid who doesn’t want to dissect a cat or a frog? From now on you won’t have to, if you attend a New Hampshire public school.

Following discussions with PETA, the New Hampshire State Board of Education has just adopted a progressive policy advising schools to allow students to pick modern learning methods such as interactive digital dissections instead of cutting up animals in their science classes. New Hampshire joins 20 other states —  its neighbors in Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont — plus the District of Columbia, that have policies allowing students to opt out of animal dissection.

“PETA applauds New Hampshire for creating more compassionate classrooms by allowing students to say no to cruel and archaic animal dissections and providing them with modern learning methods instead,” says PETA Director of Laboratory Investigations Justin Goodman. “More students than ever now oppose the use of animals in experiments, and now there is a system in place to allow them learn to understand and appreciate animals without harming them.”

Studies show that students who oppose animal dissection often don’t voice objections and participate because they aren’t presented with a choice, or they fear being punished for opting out.

PETA has offered, through its national educational grants program, to donate state-of-the-art virtual dissection software to New Hampshire, which has been shown to teach anatomy better than old-fashioned animal dissections.

The millions of animals who are still used every year in some classroom dissections come from biological supply houses, which breed some animals and obtain others from animal shelters or the wild. The National Association of Biology Teachers, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), and the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS) endorse student dissection-choice, and the NSTA and the HAPS also approve the use of modern non-animal methods as full replacements for animal dissection.

PETA will be alerting all its youth and adult members in the state about the new policy. For more information, please visit PETA.org/Dissection.