Dressed to Kill? PETA India’s ‘Cruel Vivisector’ Halloween Costume Shines Light on the Real-Life Horror of Animal Testing
For Immediate Release:
30 October 2025
Contact:
Utkarsh Garg; [email protected]
Sanskriti Bansore; [email protected]
Hyderabad – Following People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India’s (PETA India) ongoing efforts to speak out against the abuse of animals in laboratories like Palamur Biosciences, the organisation has launched a ‘Cruel Vivisector’ costume ahead of Halloween Day. The kit, available to order via PETAIndia.com, includes a paper mask depicting the sinister face of an animal experimenter wearing a laboratory coat covered in blood and printed with the words ‘Cruel Vivisector’, a stuffed toy beagle with a ‘Rescue Me’ collar tag, and a prop syringe. The costume aims to highlight the torment and helplessness experienced by dogs and other animals caged and poisoned for cruel experiments, urging policymakers and the public to reject animal testing in favour of modern, non-animal and human-relevant methods.
The unique get-up is available for order via PETAIndia.com, and proceeds will go towards PETA India’s work to urge the government body Committee for Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CCSEA) to facilitate the rescue of the 1200+ beagles, monkeys, cows, pigs and other animals at Palamur Biosciences—a recommendation made in a detailed report by CCSEA-appointed inspectors submitted to the agency on 17 June. Among the animals imprisoned at Palamur Biosciences are 73 beagles who are no longer used for breeding or experiments, that the facility itself has marked as for ‘rehabilitation’, but that so far the CCSEA has not ordered to be rescued and that Palamur Biosciences has refused to let go despite offers from NGOs to facilitate the dogs’ care, rehoming and adoption into loving homes.
‘Forget dressing up as vampires this Halloween — the real bloodsuckers are in laboratories, experimenting on animals,’ says PETA India’s Scientist and Research Policy Advisor Dr. Anjana Aggarwal. ‘This costume may be playful, but its message is deadly serious. Every day, beagles and other animals endure painful, pointless experiments. It’s time to end this real-life horror show once and for all.’
The CCSEA-appointed inspectors’ report submitted to the agency on 17 June documented that the facility confined far more dogs than were approved by CCSEA and couldn’t provide an inventory of any animals; animals were reused frequently in painful experiments in violation of CCSEA guidelines; dogs, minipigs, and cows were in poor condition, yet Palamur could provide no suitable medical records; animals were experimented on without adequate pain management procedures; and animals were killed without first being sedated; and other examples of cruelty and mismanagement. The report concludes, ‘The operational deficiencies observed at PBPL [Palamur Biosciences] are not isolated incidents but indicative of entrenched structural, procedural and ethical failures. The scale and severity of non-compliances documented during the inspection raise significant concerns regarding the facility’s adherence to established standards of animal welfare and regulatory accountability.’
PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that ‘animals are not ours to experiment on’ – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA India’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
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