1. Meat Animal Research Center

Following reports of horrific cruelty at the taxpayer-funded U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (MARC)—including that animals were left to suffer, starve, and die—the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) halted all new experiments at the laboratory.

It’s good news that new experiments have been put on pause, but countless lambs, pigs, cows, and other animals are still suffering and dying in ongoing experiments at MARC—and that’s why PETA is calling for this cruel laboratory to be shut down for good.

Adding insult to literal injury, the lambs, pigs, cows, and other animals suffering and dying at MARC are not even considered “animals” under the federal Animal Welfare Act, as farm animals used in agricultural experimentation are explicitly excluded from the law’s definition of “animal.” As a result, the animals at MARC are deprived of the minimal protections afforded by the act and are completely at the apparently non-existent mercy of the facility’s experimenters.

Tell Congress to Curb Abuse at Cruel Meat Animal Research Center!

2. Experiments on Monkeys

Every year, more than 100,000 monkeys are experimented on in the United States. Monkeys in labs are subjected to painful, invasive, and irrelevant experiments. They’re starved and restrained, and they’re infected with diseases and pumped full of chemicals and drugs. Experimenters drill holes and screw objects into their heads. Eventually, the animals are killed.

Thousands of these monkeys are imported into the U.S. each year. Air France is the last major airline flying monkeys to labs. Some monkeys are captured from the jungle, torn away from their families, and stuffed into tiny cages. Some are the babies of captured monkeys, bred on decrepit farms in Africa and Asia. They are never allowed to experience freedom or the natural life intended for them.

Monkeys are locked into tiny shipping crates and loaded onto planes (often under the feet of unsuspecting passengers). Sometimes, these monkeys aren’t given food, water, or veterinary care and die on the journey. These grueling trips can have multiple stops and last more than 30 hours! Those who survive are loaded onto trucks and must endure days-long transport to labs, where they will live a “life” of systematic torture.

Tell Air France to stop shipping monkeys to their deaths!

3. Sex Experiments

Right now, NIH is funding dozens of horrifying sexual behavior studies in which animals have the sexual pleasure area of their brains damaged and their genitals mutilated.

Mice and rats similar to the ones pictured below have all the skin cut off their penises. Their genitalia are electrically stimulated with electrodes and injected with chemicals. They are then killed, and their penises are dissected. In other tests, experimenters locked female mice into restraint devices, drilled holes into their skulls, and burned lesions into their brains. The females were then presented with urine samples from both castrated and intact males, and the amount of time they spent sniffing each urine sample was recorded. All the mice were killed and dissected.

In yet another test, experimenters measured the time taken for male rats to mount females, insert their penises, and ejaculate. The experimenters then restrained the rats, cut into their skulls, implanted tubes into their brains, and pumped in a chemical that would block the rats’ ability to process sexual pleasure. The experimenters then watched the rats having sex, withheld sex from the rats for seven to 28 days, and noted the rats’ increased interest in an amphetamine reward. All the animals were killed, and their brains were dissected.

Urge feds to stop funding sick animal sex experiments!

4. Military Tests

Each year, more than 10,000 live animals are shot, stabbed, mutilated, and killed in cruel military training exercises.

©Jørn Stjerneklar

In a horrific, never-before-seen undercover video footage leaked to PETA, training instructors hired by the military are seen breaking and cutting off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stabbing the animals, and pulling out their internal organs. After PETA filed a complaint about this disturbing video footage, which shows goats moaning and kicking as they’re stabbed and cut into (signs that they had not received adequate anesthetics), the USDA issued an official warning to the training provider for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act and Congress called for an investigation.

Violent military exercises like these continue regularly across the U.S., even though most civilian facilities and many military facilities have already replaced animal laboratories with superior life-like simulators that breathe, bleed, and even “die.”

Help end the military’s war on animals!

5. Smoking Experiments

Health officials have known for decades that smoking cigarettes causes disease in humans and that animal tests are poor predictors of these effects. Yet animals are still used in smoking tests, even though alternatives exist.

In these tests, animals have smoke from cigarettes, e-cigarettes, or other smoking products pumped directly into their noses for hours a day. Alternatively, their skin is painted with tar, causing it to peel and their hair to fall out, and in long-term testing, they may develop tumors.

Help end archaic animal smoking experiments!

Help End Experiments on Animals at Colleges