Ask the University of Colorado to Get Serious!

Thanks to a whistleblower who worked at the University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center (UCHSC) for five years, PETA exposed alleged violations of animal protection laws at UCHSC, including failure to provide veterinary care to sick animals and failure to ensure only properly trained personnel handle animals. PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—and even as we wait for federal investigators to complete their own investigation, we have uncovered evidence that UCHSC still hasn't cleaned up its act.

Recent USDA inspection reports—from November 2007, a month after PETA filed our complaint—show that UCHSC failed to require some experimenters to do a full, adequate search for alternatives to the use of animals in their proposed experiments, as is required by law. UCHSC also appears to be violating its own policy to buy animals only from Class A-licensed dealers.

A mere three months after this policy was implemented, the university bought 12 cats from the same scandal-ridden Class B dealer it has been using for years. (Read more about Class B dealers here.) Even worse, the cats were for experimenter Moshe Solomonow, whose reportedly painful, invasive back experiments were listed in our original complaint.

PETA is calling on UCHSC to clean up its act and finally step up and treat these concerns with the seriousness that they deserve, and we need your help! Please contact UCHSC Provost Mark Alan Heckler and politely ask him to implement real change at UCHSC: