PETA’s Response to Secretary Vilsack’s Announcement re USDA-Run Meat Animal Research Center

Secretary Vilsack’s announcement regarding updates to the USDA’s Meat Animal Research Center (MARC) is too little, too late and fails to address the program’s inherent flaws. No “retraining” of staff will help the sheep who were injected with male hormones, which deformed their lambs’ genitals. There is no acceptable way to let lambs die unaided, left to starve outside in the winter. The program has made animals suffer to achieve results that only cause further harm to them, including breeding mother pigs so large that they crush their young and producing cows who lose their calves at a rate four times higher than normal as experimenters push each cow beyond the breaking point to bear ever more calves. New standards won’t eliminate these and other problems with the government program. MARC needs to be shut down now and forever. It’s a new world, and this program is from a past, unenlightened time.