PETA says Canada is no friend to animals
Spokesperson Alka Chanda points finger at vivisection and lab experiments
By Simona Giacobbi

Alka Chanda with Sally, who was adopted by a colleague at PETA.
What happens in laboratories where animal testing goes on? What are the rules that regulate the treatment of experimental lab animals?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the most outspoken organization in launching heavy accusations against Canada. There is no federal law in our country, according to the well-known animal rights organization, regulating the treatment of animals in labs. The responsibility falls on individual provinces with the exception of British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec which PETA charges with inhumane testing and unspeakable cruelty to animals.
So begins a Corriere Canadese/Tandem inquest on basic animal rights, not so much to raise public awareness – there are numerous animal rights organizations for this, like PETA, the best-known and loudest-spoken organization, founded in 1980 – but to analyze and clarify that fine line between useful animal testing in the field and cruel exploitation and useless suffering inflicted on experimental lab animals.
The PETA philosophy is clear. It appears on the Internet site between an anti-McDonald’s blurb denouncing the manner in which chickens are tortured, killed, and turned into nuggets and chicken sandwiches, and a blurb against IAMS – a company that manufactures animal food after restricting dogs and cats to crammed cages in tropical-like temperatures. The 10-month long investigation was done between 2002 and 2003 at the Sinclair Research Center in the U.S.
PETA’s investigative department is always ready to do battle. Alka Chanda of PETA’s Laboratory Investigation Department in Virginia, U.S., was contacted by phone. She openly discusses the organization’s investigations.
“Volunteers who clean out cages, armed with tiny cameras, or researchers who successfully got onto the medical teams that perform the experiments.”
It was not very difficult for them to discover what happens in the three Canadian provinces lacking controls – the animals are treated cruelly and savagely – whether they are mice, monkeys, cats, or dogs.

“We simply read some documents that are public domain,” explains Chanda, “published by some lab techs from these universities. In particular, in the ‘Methods & Materials’ section, we found details on which species of animals are used and on the nature of testing, such as the type of operation. Then there’s always a note on which institutional commission revised and approved the experiments, the Animal Care Committee, and where they are held. If an animal dies during an operation, that isn’t necessarily reported in these documents, but is registered in veterinarians’ files. Those initial documents however, give us an idea of the experiments that are effectuated in research centres.”
The treatments reserved for some Canadian experimental animals have been defined by PETA as “cruel, useless, and totally superfluous.”
The photos sent to Corriere Canadese/Tandem speak for themselves. Powerful images. Images that show how, in British Columbia, monkey skulls are drilled and in which toxics are injected that damage the brain. Or of injuries caused by electro-convulsive shock. And kittens raised in the dark for eyesight experiments. Chanda then describes what happens in Alberta. Scientists inflict cerebral-spinal damage to cats which are then forced to walk on conveyor belts to study their movements and if they’re able to avoid and sidestep obstacles with their back legs.
“The author of this document,” explains Chanda – who sent Corriere Canadese/Tandem extracts from these publications – had already written another similar piece explaining the same procedures on cats in labs at the University of British Columbia (UBC). We became interested in this university when some of the province’s students and activists contacted us to launch a campaign to stop these atrocities.”
Researchers at McGill University in Quebec have also recently been subject to numerous criticism and condemnation by animalists for tests on mice, which are injected with noxious chemical substances in their abdomens, legs, and paws. They are then placed on hot slabs and operated on without painkillers being administered.