A new study conducted by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) found the University of Wisconsin-Madison committed more animal rights violations over a recent two-year period than any other top-funded university in the country.
The study, published in the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law’s Journal of Animal and Environmental Law Monday, studied the top 20 universities receiving the most funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the 2023 fiscal year.
PETA, an anti-“speciesism” organization that promotes a vegan lifestyle, obtained each schools’ Public Health Service (PHS) violations through open records requests and identified UW-Madison as the “worst offender” of animal welfare of the universities studied, with 35 violations against animals on record between Oct. 1, 2021 and Sep. 30, 2023, based on institutional self-reports. The runner-up, the University of Washington, committed 29 violations during that same period.
Of the 235 total self-reported animal rights violations, 135 centered around animal neglect — most commonly, improper pain management and providing inadequate food, water and oxygen. The actual number of violations is likely to be higher because oversight is low and experimenters are not incentivized to self-report violations, the authors of the study said.
The study concluded current animal welfare laws, including the Animal Welfare Act and the Health Research Extension Act, fail to provide appropriate protection to animals.
“Even though federal laws require that institutions meet only minimal animal welfare standards, and for only some animals, institutions that use animals in experiments repeatedly fail to meet these standards,” the study said.
Several of UW-Madison’s violations were highlighted in detail. UW-Madison did not give painkillers to 35 infant rhesus monkeys after performing surgeries on them to collect their cerebrospinal fluid, according to self-reported data, and an adult female monkey was able to access the enclosure of three juveniles after a student accidentally opened a divider, leading to injuries. The study also said an antibiotic was accidentally administered to a different monkey in the same enclosure as the monkey it was intended for, and that UW-Madison researchers inadvertently drowned and gassed 11 mice and rats, according to the violation reports.
UW-Madison referred request for comment to Chris Barncard, a university science writer, who told The Daily Cardinal PETA themselves acknowledged their tally of violations was assembled with “more art than science” and lacks a concrete metric for classification.
“In each case cited by PETA, NIH officials noted their approval of the corrective measures taken by the university to comply with federal policy and prevent reoccurrence of the incident,” Barncard said in an email statement. “The realities of biological science and the demands of public health keep UW-Madison researchers, veterinarians and animal care specialists committed to safe and ethical animal studies when they are necessary.”
In the past, UW-Madison has received fines due to animal rights violations. PETA has campaigned against several previous animal research projects at UW-Madison, though the university has said the claims they make are often misleading. For example, PETA claimed their activism halted UW-Madison experiments involving research on sheep, but UW-Madison said the research stopped because the study’s grant timeline had ended.
In 2022, PETA filed a motion against the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center for allegedly abusing monkeys by holding them in small, isolated enclosures, depriving them of food and sleep, and subjecting male monkeys to “electro-ejaculation” to collect their semen.
The Cardinal investigated these claims and spoke to previous lab workers and Dr. Michelle Ciucci, faculty director of the UW-Madison Animal Program and a professor of surgery at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, who believes PETA tends to misrepresent ethical, legal and valuable animal research. A Dane County judge declined to appoint a prosecutor for the case.
“Research with animals is one of the most complex and highly regulated activities undertaken by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison,” Barncard said. “Only when there is no alternative means available do they design a study of live animals. Research like this remains necessary, because there are still incredibly important questions about the development of complex living organisms and the diseases and disorders that cause so much human and animal suffering that cannot be answered without studying animals.“
The authors of the study suggested the NIH publish animal rights violations data on its website instead of only making it available through a public records request. They also recommended the Office of Animal Laboratory Welfare — which holds self-reported animal rights violation data —revoke approval of studies if they receive animal rights violation reports.
They also argued university-wide Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) should not be “rubber-stamp” committees and should contain at least some individuals who are not animal experimenters themselves. The Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare requires that IACUC committees contain at least one member unaffiliated with UW-Madison and one member whose “primary concerns are in a nonscientific area.”
Finally, the study’s authors concluded by saying the only way to completely eliminate animal welfare violations would be to end animal testing entirely. Barncard disagreed with that solution.
“Research with animals has been a necessary step in advances in organ transplantation, understanding brain function and dementia, healing wounds and the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases, cancer, diabetes, glaucoma, birth defects and more,” Barncard said. “The stakes are too important to cast aside this research without alternatives that can guide the way to new vaccines, treatments and potential cures.”
Editor's note: this article was updated on 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 to include additional context and more accurate terminology
