By Susan Bird From care2

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , the Louisiana State University veterinary school may have violated the federal Animal Welfare Act by buying dogs — both alive and dead — from a Baton Rouge animal shelter.

PETA asserts that a whistleblower reached out to them — a former executive director of the Companion Animal Alliance, a Baton Rouge animal shelter.

That individual reportedly gave PETA documentary proof of an unofficial arrangement between the Companion Animal Alliance and LSU to send the school live and dead animals for use in anatomy courses.

The whistleblower indicated that LSU purchased animal cadavers for $20 each and live dogs for $40 each. PETA claims that at least 70 live dogs were supplied for this purpose in 2018 alone.

Assuming these allegations are in fact true, LSU would have violated the Animal Welfare Act at least 140 times.

Photo credit: Getty Images

The Animal Welfare Act (7 U.S.C. § 2137) states:

[It] shall be unlawful for any research facility to purchase any dog or cat from any person except an operator of an auction sale subject to section 2142 of this title or a person holding a valid license as a dealer or exhibitor… pursuant to this chapter.

And PETA maintains that Companion Animal Alliance has no such dealer/exhibitor license.

Additionally, the regulation implementing the Animal Welfare Act (9 C.F.R. § 2.31) requires that LSU “make, keep, and maintain records or forms which fully and correctly disclose… information concerning each live dog or cat purchased or acquired, transported, euthanized, sold or disposed of by the research facility.”

Despite repeated requests for these records, LSU informed PETA that it had no responsive records for that particular request. The records LSU did release are appended to PETA’s complaint letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which you can see here. They include emails between LSU and the shelter regarding the dogs to be provided.

The LSU School of Veterinary Medicine denied PETA’s allegations in a statement:

The cadavers are used to train veterinary students, whose life work is dedicated to serving and saving animals. In some cases, live animals are brought to the veterinary school for euthanasia. In all of these cases, the animals were already scheduled for euthanasia.

The Companion Animal Alliance’s board was not aware that it was sending live dogs to LSU for research until the shelter’s former executive director, Desiree Bender, told them so, according to Christel Slaughter, the shelter’s chairperson.

Slaughter told Nola.com that the board terminated Bender’s employment in October 2018 and passed a resolution at that time to stop providing animals to LSU or other institutions for research use.

Perhaps most distressing finding is that the shelter apparently provided LSU with dogs that had been impounded by animal control as strays or loose dogs. PETA says the shelter marked those dogs as “adopted” or “released” in its records.

For more on this story go to: https://www.care2.com/causes/lsu-allegedly-bought-live-shelter-dogs-for-research.html