PETA Files Federal Complaint, Condemns Gruesome Death of Vole at UC-Berkeley

For Immediate Release:
October 12, 2023

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Berkeley, Calif. – Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna regarding the citation posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against the University of California–Berkeley for its violations of federal animal welfare regulations:

Yet another animal has died a painful death due to the UC-Berkeley laboratory staff’s callousness and incompetence, proving once again that the school shouldn’t receive another red cent of taxpayer money.

According to a just-posted U.S. Department of Agriculture report, a vole was subjected to invasive surgery last month and staff were required to document that they had monitored the animal’s condition and provided the required pain relief for three days afterward. But two days after the surgery, no such documentation was made, meaning the vole’s condition and whether the animal had received pain medication were a mystery. The following day, the vole was found dead with the surgical wound burst open.

PETA has filed a complaint urging the National Institutes of Health to investigate the incident. UC–Berkeley must redirect its resources toward modern, non-animal research methods that will actually help humans, and we urge officials there to adopt PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.