You might think that after carelessly freezing a few baby mice, leaving monkeys for days without water, or not being able to numb a few monkeys who have just had surgery, you will learn to take better care of the animals under your supervision. … Alas, not so if you University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)where violations of federal animal welfare rules accumulate like garbage in a landfill and stink just as bad.
PETA previously exposed rotten monkey treatment at university Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, and it is not surprising that the behavior in all everything his animal laboratories are just as disgusting.
What animals tolerate in experiments at UW-Madison
Between February 2018 and February 2021, 56 separate reports were filed, some of which documented multiple irregularities, demonstrating the astounding negligence, incompetence and carelessness of the experimenters at UW-Madison. This is one or two reports a month.
UW-Madison labs have repeatedly failed to provide animals with even the most basic necessities. During an incident in February 2018, three baby mice starved to death, and two had to be euthanized after the experimenters forgot to feed them. And while the lab staff lounged in their sun loungers at the Memorial Day picnic that year, the three macaques did not get water for the entire long weekend. Since then, there have been at least seven additional incidents in which staff did not provide food or water to animals.
In August 2020, 35 zebrafish died when a lab employee turned off the water line connected to the tank and forgot to turn it back on. In October 2020, three mice died and a fourth had to be euthanized when placed in an airtight chamber and a worker forgot to activate the airflow. The workers were unable to anesthetize the pig and rhesus monkey, which were used in experimental operations in September 2020 and January 2021, respectively.
The word “euthanasia” comes from the Greek “good death”, but some of the animals that were so-called euthanized in the sterile laboratories of UW-Madison did not escape suffering even in the last moments of life. During the 2019 incident, six newborn mice survived unsuccessful gas poisoning and were found alive in a freezer. Last year, another mouse languished alive in the refrigerator for “about half an hour” after a lab staffer could not confirm his or her death.
UW-Madison Labs sometimes missed the same issue or error for days before anyone noticed. It took nineteen days before someone realized that a veterinarian had prescribed a joint treatment to the wrong macaque in 2018. It was only two weeks after the macaque escaped from the test cage and damaged its tail, “[t]The severity of the wound was … assessed, ”and the monkey received veterinary care.
Even when several people were tasked with making sure the animals were fed or the cage door was locked, UW-Madison couldn’t do it. In the 2019 incident, after not one but two the staff did not notice the incorrectly locked cage, two macaques escaped and interacted with a third monkey. All three were injured and required veterinary care.
But perhaps the most shocking incident during this time period occurred with a teenage monkey whose right leg had to be amputated after he or she suffered a femur fracture, “sometime before or after several protocol-approved conscious manipulations.” As for what led to this injury, destroying the leg, inattentive experimenters at UW-Madison could only shrug: the incident was attributed to unknown causes.
When animals are thought of as living test tubes that humans can use and discard, it’s no wonder they are treated like trash. But in reality, the garbage is the belief that we can use animals, not to mention the so-called “science” that comes from this cruelty. UW-Madison must close its animal labs and switch to human-friendly methods without the use of animals.
University of Wisconsin | Jeff MillerWhat can you do
Take action now to tell animal exploitation organizations like UW-Madison to stop experimenting with other species:
To begin!