Group Targets Publicly Funded and Deadly Experiments on Cats and Monkeys at UW, Equates Animal Research With Murder
For Immediate Release:
August 16, 2011
Contact:
Robbyn Brooks 202-483-7382
Madison, Wis. — Showing a monkey peering through the bars of his cage in a laboratory next to the words "If You Call It 'Medical Research,' You Can Get Away With Murder," a brand-new PETA billboard has just gone up a stone's throw away from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), where more than 100,000 animals are used in experiments each year. Desperate to protect itself from further scrutiny after PETA and Wisconsin-based Alliance for Animals (AFA) brought painful, illegal decompression experiments on sheep to a halt, UW successfully convinced the state government to exempt its laboratories from all of Wisconsin's anti-cruelty statutes.
"Torturing cats, monkeys, mice, and other animals is a felony in Wisconsin—unless you're an animal experimenter at UW," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "Now, in addition to using public funds to maim and kill animals in cruel and archaic experiments, UW can hide behind the new law and virtually get away with murder."
PETA and AFA recently asked the Dane County district attorney to investigate and file charges against UW for another study in which UW faculty staged fights among hundreds—possibly thousands—of mice for aggression experiments. Staging fights between animals is illegal in Wisconsin, and these cruel experiments took place before the new exemption, which is not retroactive, was passed.
PETA also has a pending open records request lawsuit against UW for documents—which include veterinary records and photos—pertaining to invasive brain experiments on cats and monkeys in which holes are drilled into the animals' skulls, restraint posts are bolted to their heads, electrodes are inserted in their brains, and stainless steel coils are implanted in their eyes. The cats have even had their ears cut off in the past, and they are starved six days out of the week in order to coerce them to perform during the experiments in exchange for a bite of food.
The billboard is located along U.S. routes 12 and 18 (Beltline), near Home Depot, facing west. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
