PETA Statement: UW Horror Show

For Immediate Release:
August 13, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Alka Chandna on the amputation of a monkey’s leg after mishandling at the University of Wisconsin:

Mishandling, incompetence, and carelessness at the University of Wisconsin have once again led to pain and suffering for monkeys and other animals—and PETA is calling on the National Institutes of Health to pull funding from this horror show. New federal documents show that a worker broke the femur of a marmoset through improper handling and that the small monkey’s leg was amputated. Another monkey lost part of his tongue and fingers after two monkeys freed themselves from their cages and fought. There were 12 similar incidents of escape, injury, and death in 2016. In recent years, a monkey died of dehydration after no one noticed that the drinking water supply line to her cage had become disconnected, a monkey died after her head became caught in a chain in her cage, and a marmoset being used in an experimental surgery died when an employee failed to operate the anesthesia machine properly. In 2014, the school paid $35,286 in fines after a dog who was used in experimental transplant surgery and a gerbil who was observed to be “thin, weak, wobbly and having difficulty breathing” died as a result of inadequate veterinary care and a cat named Broc was burned as a result of experimenters’ negligence.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.