Rare USDA Fine for Johns Hopkins University After Animal Deaths

For Immediate Release:
December 21, 2023

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Baltimore – Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo regarding fines levied against Johns Hopkins University by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act:

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) violated animal protection laws in its laboratories and now has to pay up. The U.S. Department of Agriculture took the rare step of fining the university $12,300 for its despicable actions leading to the deaths of a dog, a rabbit, a pig whose broken elbows had gone unnoticed, and monkeys—including one who had escaped and gone down a drain. PETA filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health, which continues to throw more taxpayer dollars at JHU each year than at any other university in the country, including $1,664,708,575 in the last two years alone.

JHU’s animal laboratories have a long history of noncompliance, neglect, and nonsense. For years, the university failed to obtain mandatory permits to use owls in invasive brain experiments, and then it skirted Maryland law to continue harming and killing these birds. JHU must redirect its resources toward modern, non-animal research methods by adopting 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.