TEMPE — Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, has been put on notice for alleged actions of a massive breeding mill in Minnesota that supplied chinchillas to ASU.
According to PETA, the organization fired off a letter to Crow, calling on him to end the practice of buying chinchillas to experiment on.
PETA claims that an investigation has found that the chinchillas at the breeding mill were suffering from open wounds, exposed bones, infections, and other painful injuries and untreated ailments.
Records show, according to PETA, that experimenters at ASU have induced ear infections in chinchillas by injecting a strain of influenza in the animals’ ear tissue. They were kept alive for at least 14 days while the experimenters observed the persistence of the infection.
As a result of PETA’s findings, local Minnesota officials executed a search warrant and are conducting a criminal investigation.
According to PETA, Moulton Chinchilla Ranch sells chinchillas to laboratories, and staff affiliated with ASU as well as the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Navy, Harvard Medical School, and numerous universities in China, Germany, and the U.S. have experimented on them.
A PETA eyewitness who worked at Moulton Chinchilla Ranch gathered video footage and photographs showing that nearly 1,000 chinchillas on the premises were confined to small, exposed wire cages. The animals were denied veterinary care for abscessed and ruptured mammary tissue and protruding or pus-filled eyes, among other serious conditions. One chinchilla died after being deprived of veterinary care for a raw, bloody wound, and another died after the breeder’s dog attacked her and she suffered overnight without care. Yet another had a large mass under the chin. The mill owner admitted to killing this one and others by snapping their necks, which does not cause a painless or quick death.
PETA has also submitted evidence to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has cited Moulton Chinchilla Ranch for more than 100 federal Animal Welfare Act violations since 2013 and, in 2018, filed a formal complaint against the mill, which is still pending.