The largest animal rights organization in the world is taking actions against the LSU System on behalf of thousands of laboratory animals killed by Hurricane Katrina.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA, is urging state Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. to charge LSU officials with cruelty for abandoning animals during the Katrina aftermath.
Under state law, to abandon an animal means “to completely forsake or desert an animal previously under the custody or possession of a person without making reasonable arrangements for its proper care, sustenance, and shelter.”
PETA officials said that all 8,000 animals “imprisoned” in LSU’s Health Sciences Center laboratories have died – including mice, rats, dogs and monkeys.
PETA is urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to charge the Health Sciences Center with failure to abide by the federal Animal Welfare Act. The federal law governs the humane care, handling, treatment and transportation of animals used in laboratories.
“There’s very minimal requirements, and LSU failed to abide by those requirements,” said Holly Mattern, PETA spokeswoman.
The organization is urging Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to make certain that HSC does not receive federal funds to rebuild animal laboratories in high-risk areas.
“Dental Sciences had a lab in the basement,” PETA researcher Alka Chandna said. “And the animals were not moved to higher ground. By abandoning them, they sealed their fate to drown.”
Chandna said lab animals that did not drown died of suffocation, starvation or dehydration.
In another action, PETA contacted LSU Chancellor Sean O’ Keefe to request the dismissal of both Larry Hollier, dean of LSU Health Sciences Center School of Medicine, and Joseph Morschbaecher, vice chancellor for academic affairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center.
“Larry (Hollier) is the one ultimately responsible that all animals are protected under the federal Animal Welfare Act,” Mattern said. “Some of the animals were euthanized. The rest were left behind.”
“They were not keen to euthanizing the animals because the animals represented data,” Chandna said. “They totally forgot that these are animals – not test tubes.”
“We think it’s a shocking statistic to find that 100 percent of the lab animals under the supposed watch of University officials died,” Chandna said.
But LSU System spokesman Charles Zewe said 31 primates, four cats, one dog and several hundred rats and mice survived. The 31 primates were transported to Delta Primate Center in Covington – a facility operated by Tulane University, Zewe said.
“The caretakers did everything they could to save those animals,” Zewe said.
He said it was impossible to evacuate the animals before the storm because there was nowhere to take them.
Zewe said the HSC filed a request with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2004 for a contingency plan in case of such a natural disaster. But FEMA denied the request.
“It would’ve been nice if we would’ve had the support of FEMA originally,” Zewe said.
PETA officials say their attorneys will file a more detailed formal criminal complaint within the next 10 days.
The attorney general could not be reached for comment.
Contact Chris Day at [email protected]