BROOKINGS, S.D.(KELO.com) — South Dakota State University has been slapped with a critical violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act.
This type of violation is the most severe a USDA inspector can give according to PETA.
The violation comes after records and paperwork were being reviewed by the USDA.
In September of 2019, a Bighorn ewe was found dead in its pen.
Diagnostic tests on the ewe found the animal suffered from pulmonary edema or fluid in the lungs, mycoplasma infection or respiratory illness, a copper deficiency, aspiration pneumonia which is a complication when you inhale food, stomach acid, or vomit into the lungs, and mild suppurative hepatitis which is inflammation of the liver.
On September 28 the ewe was not demonstrating normal behavior when personnel of the research area entered the animal’s pen.
The animal was left in the pen overnight and found dead the following day.
To read the full USDA inspection report visit here.
PETA did provide a statement in regard to this violation below.
PETA Statement re Animal Death at South Dakota State University
Greetings. Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Dr. Alka Chandna regarding a federal Animal Welfare Act violation at South Dakota State University:
South Dakota State University should get out of the animal experimentation business now. The university imprisons hundreds of vulnerable animals in its laboratories for use in experiments that, according to federal documents, inflict unalleviated pain and distress on some of them. A just-released federal inspection report documents the school’s failure to comply with even the minimum animal welfare laws. According to the January 29 report, a sheep who had been inflicted with disease was found dead in her pen. The autopsy report shows that the animal was in unimaginable pain and misery when she died and that university officials didn’t even euthanize her to end the suffering, as is required. She suffered from “pulmonary edema, mycoplasma infection, copper deficiency, aspiration pneumonia and mild suppurative hepatitis.” PETA calls on the school to stop tormenting animals and switch to modern, non-animal, human-relevant research methods, which are widely recognized as being faster, cheaper, and more reliable than cruel, archaic experiments on animals.
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.
