VIDEO: PETA Allies Confront UMass Officials at Winery Event Over Monkey Torment
For Immediate Release:
January 23, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
PETA supporters disrupted the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s (UMass) Accelerate event last night with chants and a sign declaring, “CHANCELLOR REYES: End Cruel Tests on Marmosets!” The supporters highlighted the worthless experiments and shared their own experience with menopause before being escorted out by security. Photos and videos are available here.
The event, held at the Cask Room at Domenico Winery, was attended by UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes, deans, directors, and alumni. The action is part of PETA’s campaign urging the school to shut down the miserable laboratory of monkey experimenter Agnès Lacreuse.
“While UMass officials mingle at a winery, tiny marmosets back on campus are caged, cut open, and killed by ghoulish experimenters,” says PETA Chief Scientist Dr. Katherine Roe. “PETA urges Chancellor Reyes to shut down Agnès Lacreuse’s shameful laboratory, and embrace modern, animal-free research that’s actually relevant to humans.”
In nature, marmosets live in cooperative groups high up in the canopies of rainforests, where they groom each other, huddle affectionately, share food, and care for their young. In Lacreuse’s laboratory, experimenters screw electrodes onto marmosets’ skulls, cut into their necks, deprive them of water, zip-tie them, and shove them into plastic cylinders. Many of the tests are purportedly studying menopause, a condition marmosets don’t naturally experience. Lacreuse has squandered more than $6 million in taxpayer money on these curiosity-driven tests.
PETA recently urged federal officials to investigate whether Lacreuse misused taxpayer money after she spent approximately $340,000 on a failed sleep deprivation experiment at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
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 PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
