USDA inspectors found numerous troubling animal welfare violations, including housing monkeys separately in barren cages and allowing them to suffer from untreated medical conditions.
PETA: Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has obtained damning photos from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspections of Johns Hopkins University (JHU) laboratories revealing that monkeys are locked in cramped barren cages, apparently driven by stress and a soul-crushing lack of stimulation to tear out their own hair, and left suffering from untreated medical conditions.
The photos, taken by USDA inspectors, document violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA), which sets the minimum standards for the treatment of animals in laboratories. More importantly, each photo vividly shows that JHU warehouses monkeys and treats them like laboratory tools, rather than viewing them as intelligent, loving animals who are capable of feeling pain, anxiety, and depression and deserve to be free.
USDA inspectors found numerous troubling animal welfare violations, including housing monkeys separately in barren cages and allowing them to suffer from untreated medical conditions. Monkeys, normally gentle, social animals, were kept separated, alone in empty metal cages barely large enough for them to turn around in, with nothing to make their lives worth living…
Monkeys caged alone, as USDA inspectors have photographed in JHU labs, tend to exhibit “stereotypic behavior,” such as repetitive movements like pacing, circling, swinging, and rocking, to alleviate their mental anguish and to try to cope with their inadequate environment…
Hair loss is seen in many of the photographs of monkeys in laboratories at JHU. Their stress levels skyrocket in laboratory settings, where extreme isolation and deprivation are interrupted only by unpredictable humans, who frequently inflict pain on them during experiments…
JHU’s repeated failure to comply with the AWA is shameful… JHU must stop using and harming animals in its laboratories, including the one headed by Shreesh Mysore, who torments barn owls in gruesome and invasive brain experiments. SOURCE…