Dear Editor,
Thank you for your article on the controversy over animal
experimentation (“Of Mice and Men,” April 21). It’s a tragic day for
taxpayers when the UC system responds to public outcry over the suffering of
animals by proposing to curtail free speech and to limit access to records on
animal use. It would be more useful for the UC to deal with the problems within
its laboratories. Numerous federal reports indicate that facilities routinely
flout even the minimal protections of the Animal Welfare Act, the only federal
law that provides protection for animals in laboratories. According to multiple
federal audits, even this law, which deals mainly with caging and husbandry
issues, is not being adequately enforced, and it entirely excludes rats, mice
and birds.
A scathing 2005 audit report published by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Office of the Inspector General shows that
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees — oversight committees that are
charged with approving proposed experiments and ensuring that laws and
regulations are followed — are utterly failing to carry out their
responsibilities. As a result, sick animals go without veterinary care, animals
used in invasive surgeries do not receive sufficient pain relief and extremely
sick animals are denied humane euthanasia. An astounding 29 percent, nearly a
third, of oversight committees are failing to ensure that experimenters look
for alternatives to painful procedures on animals, as they’re required to do.
The failure of IACUCs to ensure that the AWA is enforced
results in immense suffering for animals used in sometimes painful, often
stressful and ultimately lethal experiments. UC officials need to stop pushing
for legislation that curtails freedom of speech and information and focus
instead on fixing the mess created by the arrogance and carelessness of its
animal experimenters.
— Alka Chandna, Ph.D.
Laboratory Oversight Specialist,
People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals
