Following the discovery of documents revealing appalling negligence at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that resulted in more than 400 mice, rats, hamsters, rabbits, monkeys, etc.PETA urges the Laboratory Animal Care International Organization for Evaluation and Accreditation Association to withdraw CDC accreditation. The organization’s accreditation program is minimum standards for the care of animals – which the CDC clearly does not comply with.
The CDC has been entrusted with the health of our nation, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic, but obviously it cannot even be trusted to comply with minimum animal welfare rules.
It’s just few Examples from an extensive list of incidents at CDC Atlanta and Fort Collins between November 2017 and April 2021 that demonstrate a pattern of blatant neglect and total disregard for animal welfare:
- The mouse was steamed to death after a staff member did not notice that the animal was still in the cage before being placed in the sterilization machine.
- A mouse stuck in a food dispenser died of dehydration after staff did not notice the animal’s plight. Four mice were left without food, and one died of hunger.
- Several rats died after staff injected the wrong dose of anesthesia.
- The prairie dog had to be euthanized after employees did not notice for a week that the animal was injured in a fight, lost weight and developed sepsis.
- Fifty-five chickens have died – five of them, likely from starvation – in two separate incidents where employees placed eggs in incubators instead of refrigerators.
- Forty-two mice were left without oxygen, and four of them died because the staff were unable to connect their cages to an air source.
- Several guinea pigs did not have access to water for 48 hours because the staff did not notice that the water dispenser was faulty. One of the animals had to be euthanized.
- The vaginal ring was implanted in a female monkey and left there for almost three years instead of the planned 14 days, because the staff could not find the ring and simply assumed that the monkey removed it herself. Almost three years later, a mass was discovered in her body, in which the ring was “partially enclosed in mineral matter.”
CDC has abandoned its blatant disregard for animal welfare for years
It’s simple some about incidents – which do not appear to be new to the CDC. In 2005, his accreditation received a probationary period due to a variety of problems, including egregious negligence that resulted in the death of six monkeys. Sixteen years later, nothing seems to have changed. It is clear that the only way to protect animals is not to use them in laboratories at all.
Help the suffering animals in the labs – support the new PETA course!
It doesn’t matter if the laboratory is accredited or not, there is no humane way to use animals that have families, emotions, and interests of their own for experimentation. That’s why PETA’s research modernization program lays out a plan to replace animals used in experiments with humane, forward-thinking research methods. Help us save animals from suffering in laboratories:
Support peta’s research modernization deal