PETA: 25,000 test animals killed as ‘non-essential’

Several college testing facilities funded by the National Institutes of Health killed some 25,000 “extraneous” and “nonessential” animals during the COVID-19 crisis, prompting a call from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for a national investigation.

Documents collected by PETA indicate that at a cost to taxpayers of $9 million, 22 schools euthanized the unneeded animals in part because some experiments were simply tossed aside during the pandemic.

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“Tens of thousands of animals died for publicly funded tests that were never carried out because experimenters admitted that they were unnecessary,” said PETA Vice President Shalin Gala.

“The issue we’re flagging is that the COVID-19 pandemic forced universities to really sit down and explicitly label on lab cages which animals are actually extraneous to the research, and this then begs the critical question that we’re posing to NIH funding agency: why are any of these animals being bought, bred, trapped or experimented on in the first place if they’re so easily disposed of,” Gala told Secrets Friday.

Years of pressure from PETA and other groups have prompted some schools and testing facilities to slow their animal testing. PETA, meanwhile, has devised a new testing program that doesn’t primarily use animals in tests.

In a letter to NIH’s Deborah Kearse, PETA requested an investigation into why so many animals were deemed “non-essential” by the schools and then killed.

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“There is no justification for continuing to waste public resources to support activities related to the acquisition, breeding, confinement, maintenance, re-population, and/or experimentation of animals in laboratories who are deemed ‘extraneous,’ ‘nonessential,’ or ‘noncritical’ or described using similar terminology and subsequently killed,” wrote PETA’s Shriya Swaminathan.

“The number of ‘nonessential’ animals used in the aforementioned experiments should have been zero from the start, since they weren’t relevant to the protocols led by these institutions’ employees. Also, because taxpayer funds were used to acquire, breed, confine, and/or maintain these animals who were deemed ‘extraneous’ (or described using similar terminology) and then so readily euthanized and disposed of in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, these institutions should reimburse the funding agencies for this fiscal waste instead of seeking compensation for losses incurred,” Swaminathan added.