Video: Protesters Disrupt Texas A&M Board of Regents Meeting

During World Week for Animals in Laboratories, PETA Supporters Demand End to University’s Cruel Muscular Dystrophy Experiments on Dogs

For Immediate Release:
April 27, 2017

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

A PETA supporter disrupted Texas A&M University’s Board of Regents meeting earlier this afternoon. Displaying a sign proclaiming, “Close Muscular Dystrophy Dog Lab,” the protester stood in front of the speakers and informed the shocked board members that the school deliberately breeds dogs for crippling muscular dystrophy in experiments that have not yielded a cure for humans with muscular dystrophy. Protesters also just confronted the board at the later afternoon meeting. Video footage is available here.

“Thirty-five years in which dogs have suffered and died in muscular dystrophy experiments is 35 too many,” says Dr. Alka Chandna, PETA’s chief of laboratory case management. “PETA is calling on Texas A&M to end these useless experiments and release these dogs into loving adoptive homes.”

Today’s actions come in the midst of World Week for Animals in Laboratories and follow the release of eyewitness video footage showing dogs who struggled to walk, swallow, and even breathe in the university’s laboratory. Those who didn’t exhibit symptoms but carried the gene for canine muscular dystrophy were used for breeding—and were left to pace frantically on the hard, slatted floors and gnaw in frustration on the bars of barren runs.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—is calling on Texas A&M to commit to using cutting-edge, animal-free research methods.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

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