On August 31, PETA authored a letter claiming that the use of animals in nonessential experiments at five universities across the UC system was in violation of various federal research standards, including those from the U.S. Public Health Service. The reason for PETA’s alarm is twofold: first is the belief that hundreds of animals were euthanized in order to reduce laboratory populations when nonessential experiments were postponed or cancelled because of the pandemic, and second is an inquiry into the taxpayer dollars used in nonessential experiments. It is their hope that an audit would determine if any of the reported $428 million in public research funding allocated to UC campuses in fiscal year 2019 was used for experiments on animals found to be extraneous during the pandemic, and also to take corrective action if this is found to be the case.
Although official university representatives have denied these beliefs to be the case, PETA’s perspective is an important consideration for other universities to be reminded of the high sensitivity involved with animal subjects research, and in the possibility of similar probes being requested elsewhere.
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