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Update: July 6, 2021
If Brown University is vying for the title of “Worst School for Animals Imprisoned in Labs,” it’s well on its way to glory.
PETA has obtained federal reports proving that the school still can’t manage to feed and give water to all the animals in its laboratories, euthanize them when their suffering becomes unbearable, or prevent its experimenters from going rogue.
Here are just some of the atrocities that recently took place:
- Workers’ negligence resulted in the deaths of eight mice by starvation and another 12 mice by dehydration.
- Experimenters failed to euthanize animals in a timely manner—resulting in exacerbated suffering. In one case, after experimenters ignored a veterinary technician’s directive to euthanize a mouse, the animal was found in what was described as a “moribund state”—likely with labored breathing, sunken eyes, and the inability to reach food or water.
- Experimenters failed to monitor animals after they’d been used in surgeries, and one failed to provide “thermal support” to help relieve the animals’ pain. In a separate incident, an experimenter injected a substance into mice’s feet without first securing approval. The mice developed footpad swelling so severe that they had to be euthanized.
- After a mouse was gassed with carbon dioxide, workers failed to ensure that the animal was dead. Other workers found that mouse still alive in a refrigerator intended for dead animals.
- Seven mice escaped from their cage as a result of a missing grommet. Four mice were recovered, one of whom had to be euthanized. Three mice were never found.
And the list goes on. All told, Brown chalked up nearly one violation of federal animal welfare regulations and guidelines a month from March 2019 through April 2021.
In 2020, Brown spent an estimated $63 million of taxpayers’ money on experiments on animals. Yet this Ivy League school can’t even comply with minimal federal animal welfare regulations and guidelines. Take action below to tell the university’s president that this needs to change.
Every year in the U.S., more than 105,000 primates are imprisoned in laboratories, where they are abused and killed in invasive, painful, and terrifying experiments.
Original post:
PETA has uncovered U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection reports that document, once again, that animals imprisoned in Brown University laboratories are victims of the school’s neglect and incompetence.
In one federal Animal Welfare Act violation—which the USDA categorized as “critical”—two macaque monkeys were injured so severely that both required surgery after university employees failed to secure latches on a cage, allowing one animal to enter the other’s enclosure.
This is hardly the first time that the university’s staff members have demonstrated their carelessness and incompetence in the way they treat the animals in their laboratories.
A previous USDA inspection report documented that a similar incident occurred in which a monkey escaped from an enclosure and sustained injuries—also requiring surgery—following an altercation with another monkey. That escape also occurred after personnel failed to secure the enclosure adequately. In 2018, two bats died after staff failed to feed them. In 2014, three bats died because of the same outrageous incompetence.
In 2010, the USDA found that Brown’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) failed to ensure the psychological well-being of young monkeys held captive there. Another monkey went without water for 72 hours when his or her care was overlooked by staff. The IACUC’s poor oversight also resulted in suffering and death for animals used in experimental surgeries.
Join us in asking Brown University to implement a zero-tolerance policy for animal welfare violations—including by revoking experimentation privileges from experimenters who fail to comply with directives from veterinary staff—to address the incompetence and chronic neglect evident in the school’s treatment of animals and to pursue superior, animal-free methods of research that actually offer patients hope of treatments and cures.
Also, please ask the school to adopt PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Deal—a strategy for replacing animal experiments with modern, human-relevant, animal-free research methods.