Summary: PETA has requested the USDA to investigate the University of Wisconsin–Madison for potential Animal Welfare Act violations involving a sleep deprivation experiment on marmoset monkeys. Veterinary records obtained by PETA revealed the animals experienced diarrhea, weight loss, and other health issues during the study, raising concerns about their treatment and the ethical conduct of the research.
Key Takeaways:
- Animal Health Concerns: PETA reports that veterinary records showed the marmosets experienced diarrhea, weight loss, and other health issues during the experiments, with some requiring medical treatments and special diets.
- Ethical and Regulatory Issues: PETA alleges the university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee may have failed to comply with regulations requiring minimization of pain and distress, as the protocol was classified as Category E by the USDA.
- Call for Accountability: PETA argues that the continuation of experiments despite the monkeys’ health issues may have worsened their pain and distress and compromised data integrity.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has called on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act related to sleep fragmentation experiments conducted on marmoset monkeys at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.Â
PETA’s request comes after obtaining veterinary care records for six marmosets enrolled in the study. The records revealed that all six monkeys were observed to have diarrhea for several consecutive days at the time of testing. Some of the monkeys also showed signs of swollen anuses and had feces on their bodies, according to the complaint issued by PETA to the USDA. The complaint further notes that one marmoset experienced a 3% body weight loss before the sleep fragmentation procedure, while two others required treatment with budesonide and special diets due to severe diarrhea.
“Despite these ongoing health issues and the likelihood that they would impact the integrity of the data being collected, the experimenters chose to forge ahead to ensure that some amount of data was acquired before the scheduled end date of this project,” reads the complaint.
PETA argues that the university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee may have failed to comply with Animal Welfare Act regulations requiring the minimization of discomfort, distress, and pain in animals. The protocol in question was classified as Category E, a USDA designation for procedures likely to cause significant pain or distress.
“Allowing these six marmosets, whose gastrointestinal issues may have been the result of stress, infection, poor diet, or the onset of marmoset wasting disease, to remain on study and be subjected to repeated behavioral testing, urine collection, and a night of noise-induced repeated sleep disruption, the experimenters likely exacerbated the discomfort, distress, and or pain the animals would experience from those procedures,” PETA states in its letter to Sarah J. Helming, deputy administrator of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
PETA states that the procedures were led by principal investigator Ricki Colman at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (Certificate No 35-R-0001) and involved subjecting marmoset monkeys to sleep deprivation and other procedures under approved protocol G006540.
PETA called for the experiment to be shut down last January, citing the test, coordinated by University of Massachusetts–Amherst experimenter Agnès Lacreuse, planned to prevent monkeys from sleeping for more than 15 minutes by using loud sounds for up to 24 nights. PETA reported in June that, “[a]fter hearing from PETA and thousands of supporters,” the experiment ceased after one night.
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