Decision Follows Consultation With PETA and Animal-Free Science Advocacy
Sydney – After hearing from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), PETA US, and Animal-Free Science Advocacy (formerly Humane Research Australia), the University of Western Australia confirmed that it has ended its use of the widely discredited and cruel forced swim test.
In the test, experimenters drop rats, mice, or other small animals, who may have been dosed with a test substance, into inescapable beakers filled with water, in which they must swim to keep from drowning. It has been used to try to determine the effectiveness of antidepressant medications but has been shown to be inaccurate.
The university’s decision comes after 25,000 PETA supporters wrote to the institution to urge it to end the test. In a letter to PETA, a university representative confirmed that “UWA no longer conducts any active projects that make use of the forced swim test.” Recently, the National Health and Medical Research Council changed its policy on funding the test, also thanks to PETA, PETA US, Animal-Free Science Advocacy, and their supporters.
“Forcing desperate animals to swim is cruel and unscientific,” says neuroscientist and PETA US senior scientist Dr Emily Trunnell. “The University of Western Australia joins many universities and pharmaceutical companies in ending this atrocity, and PETA is now calling on other Australian universities and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand to follow suit.”
Academic institutions that have banned the forced swim test include Griffith University, Macquarie University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of South Australia as well as more than a dozen universities in the UK.
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.au and follow the group on Facebook and Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli; Media@peta.org.au
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