In a letter to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Health Secretary Rachel Levine, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is urging the administration to shut down animal labs throughout the state "for the sake of public health" as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
The organization wrote, "Given the uncertainty of the reopening of Pennsylvania and the continued high infection rates throughout the country, we urge you to intervene for the sake of public health and permanently end experiments on animals at laboratories and universities in your state, starting with those already deemed by institutions themselves to be non-essential during the initial shutdown because of COVID-19."
PETA says Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, Penn State University and the University of Pittsburgh either indicated or likely indicated that animals in their laboratories be culled.
"This pandemic should be a wake-up call to shift away from experiments on animals and toward a 'new normal' of modern, non-animal research methods," says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. "PETA is calling on state officials to learn from the past and keep all animals from suffering in cruel and wasteful tests."
The letter continued, "PETA questions why any of these animals are being bought, bred, trapped, or experimented on in the first place since they're now, in response to the pandemic, so readily being disposed of and since experiments are now being ended or delayed."
On Monday, the Wolf administration said COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania have reached 'critical levels' and implored residents to follow mitigation guidelines currently in place.
Statewide, COVID-19 cases now total more than 426,000. The positivity rate jumped from 11.7% last week to 14.4% this week.
You can read PETA's full letter to the governor and secretary here.
