Pus-filled eyes, naked bones found in a supplier’s warehouse Hundreds of animals sold to laboratories
For immediate release:
18 February 2021
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Oklahoma city – PETA sent letters this morning to Joseph Harroz Jr. and Stephen Prescott, Presidents of the University of Oklahoma (UO) and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF), respectively, urging them to stop buying chinchillas for experiments. The letters came after a new undercover video investigation by PETA at Moulton Chinchilla Ranch, a large Minnesota chinchilla breeding plant that supplied chinchillas to the Oklahoma lab, showed the chinchillas were suffering from open wounds, exposed bones, infections, and other painful and incurable injuries. ailments. … Based on PETA research, local authorities have executed a search warrant and are conducting a criminal investigation.
A PETA witness who worked at the Moulton Chinchilla Ranch has collected video footage and photographs showing that around 1,000 chinchillas indoors were trapped in small open wire cages. The animals were denied veterinary care for an abscess and ruptured breast tissue, bulging or pus-filled eyes, and other serious medical conditions. One chinchilla died due to being deprived of veterinary care due to a raw bloody wound, while another died after being attacked by a breeder’s dog and suffered overnight without care. Another had a large swelling under the chin. The owner of the mill admitted that he killed this and the others by breaking their necks, which did not lead to a painless or quick death.
Moulton Chinchilla Ranch sells chinchillas to laboratories, and employees associated with UO, as well as the National Institutes of Health, the US Navy, Harvard Medical School, and numerous universities in China, Germany and the United States have experimented with them. Records show that the OMRF experimenters caused hearing loss in chinchillas by holding them in small wire cages and blowing a 105dB noise over them for six hours before killing and dissecting their ears. The UO experimenters caused painful ear infections in animals by injecting a strain of the influenza virus into their ear tissues. They were kept alive for up to eight days and then killed.
“At the Moulton Chinchilla Ranch, animals were constantly kept in wire cages, which gave them nowhere to hide (a basic need for predatory animals), made them suffer and die without minimal veterinary assistance, and sold them to laboratories for further harm and killing. “Says PETA’s senior vice president of cruelty investigation Daphne Nakhminovich. “PETA is urging every laboratory that has dealt with this chinchilla factory to stop using these vulnerable animals in experiments.”
PETA also provided evidence to the USDA, which cited Moulton Chinchilla Ranch for over 100 federal animal welfare violations since 2013, and in 2018 filed a formal complaint against the mill, which is still pending.
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